This is our guide on how to hire staff for a small business.  It includes a checklist for hiring employees, some ideas about how to find employees in Australia, and general tips for hiring employees for small businesses.  

If you own a small business, you know how important it is to find the right people.  You know that a great employee can make or break your business, yet so many small business owners have no strategy for acquiring this crucial element of your success.  If you’re ready to cherry-pick the best candidates and skyrocket your business, it’s time to create a process for hiring new staff.  

Here’s our checklist for hiring new employees…

Before You Hire Staff for Your Small Business 

1. Write a Clear Job Description 

Clarity about the role, requirements, and expectations will make finding the right person for the job so much easier.  First, you need to get 100% clear about the kind of person you would like to hire, what kind of skills and experience they need, and what you are willing to pay that person. Start by writing a list of the kind of tasks you need done and then elaborate to include what the person needs to know about your company.

You can use our blog post for candidates about reading a job posting to work backwards and think about what kind of information and presentation job seekers might expect.  

“My favorite first approach for better job descriptions comes from Charlie Munger: “Avoiding stupidity is easier than seeking brilliance.” Make a list of the language you’ve seen that sounds lazy, selfish, overused, or out-of-touch. Then avoid it.

Describe the opportunity in sincere language. “A great opportunity” is so often regurgitated on job descriptions it’s become meaningless. Real opportunity is defined by what this person will contribute and why it matters. Attracting talented people starts with communicating that there is meaningful work to be done. Extraordinary people won’t take ordinary jobs.”

Gregory Ciotti, Help Scout

2. Decide Who Will Do the Recruiting

Consider hiring a recruiter. At Uplift Recruitment, we deal with failed attempts at DIY hiring way too often.  If you need reasons why trying to do everything yourself is fraught with failure, read about why do-it-yourself hiring is costly, ineffective, and time-consuming here. 

Sit down and think about how much time and money it will actually take to recruit each new employee. Don’t forget all the phases including writing the job description, advertising the job, communicating with candidates, reviewing resumes, interviewing candidates, and dismissing unsuccessful candidates. 

3. Get Your Role the Attention It Deserves 

Depending on the role and your company’s industry, decide which platforms are best to grab the attention of potential candidates.  This starts with your company’s career page. Make sure your career page offers a look inside your company in addition to showing off vacant roles! Candidates want a snapshot of what it will be like to work for your company.  Next, decide which job boards are appropriate for the role and consider LinkedIn, Seek, Indeed, Gumtree, or industry-specific job boards.  

4. Plan Your Onboarding Experience and Think About Employer Branding 

Remember, your onboarding experience begins as soon as you make first contact with a potential candidate. Thus, it’s best to decide how you are going to onboard employees and think about your brand as an employer before you start the hiring process.  If you don’t think you have an employer brand amongst candidates, think again.  An employer brand is essentially your reputation as a company to work for and it’s more important than you think if you want to attract top talent.   

“The differentiators for job seekers will usually be culture and reputation, and social platforms offer a great opportunity for businesses to bring these to life. As long as you understand why you need to hire, what your new hire will be doing and how their skills and capabilities may develop, and how their role fits in with the overall values and purpose of the business, then recruitment is about having the right conversations with the right people at the right time. And there is no better way to achieve that then through the effective use of social media channels. ”

Mervyn Dinnen, Award winning recruiter @MervynDinnen

 

During Hiring Process

1. Filter Based on Your Hiring Criteria

Shortlist the most qualified candidates by matching their key skills with the job description, reviewing cover letters, and gauging the candidate’s enthusiasm and likelihood of being a good cultural fit.  Where applicable, consult the manager or lead that would be supervising the new hire to get their opinion.  

2. Filter Again on the Phone

Once you have your list of qualified applicants, set up a phone interview to weed out any time wasters before you schedule a formal interview.  You’ll save time if you interview only a select few top candidates.  

3. Meet in Person or Using Video Chat 

As a hiring manager, you should also prepare for an interview so that you don’t seem disinterested in a candidate or ask inappropriate questions.  How you present yourself reflects heavily on your company and a bad first impression can scare away top talent (we’ve got advice for hiring managers on the blog).  Be sure to use a mix of technical, behavioral, and situational questions, so you get a better understanding of how a candidate would react in common workplace situations and get a feel for the character. 

“How well a candidate thinks they did significantly impacts their desire to work with you. This means that in every interview cycle, some portion of interviewees are losing interest in joining your company just because they don’t think they did well, despite the fact that they actually did.

To mitigate these losses, it’s important to give positive, actionable feedback to good candidates immediately. This way they don’t have time to go through the self-flagellation gauntlet that happens after a perceived poor performance, followed by the inevitable rationalization that they totally didn’t want to work there anyway.”

Aline Lerner @alinelernerLLC

CEO Interviewing.io

4. Make an Offer & Follow-Up with Unsuccessful Candidates 

It’s a good idea to create a standard employment offer letter that you can fill in with specifics before you hire anyone.  By the same token, create a customizable template for a rejection letter as well.  Get a lawyer to review it and then you can use it over and over again.  After you make your offer to the successful candidate, be sure to follow up with the unsuccessful ones you interviewed.  Let them know that they weren’t successful in a simple email and provide basic feedback as to why so they can improve in the future.  How you treat unsuccessful candidates reflects on your employer brand and is important for your reputation.  

Stats: 75 percent of candidates never hear back from a company after sending in an application

60 percent of candidates say they’ve gone for interviews and never heard back from the company

42 percent of disgruntled candidates will not apply for a position at the company again.

22 percent will tell others not to apply to the company and nine percent will ask others to boycott products

https://www.workable.com/candidate-experience-recruitment

After Hiring 

1. Start an Employee File 

Every employee should have a file with their details including their tax file number, general working rights check, name, email, address, and phone number. Also include everything about the terms of employment such as employment type, start date, base salary, super info, and commissions.  

2. Bring Your New Hire Up to Speed with an Employee Handbook

In addition to handing over the employee’s contract, give them a through employee handbook that not only gives a company and office overview but includes all your company policies including your code of conduct, email, internet and computer use, non-disclosure agreements, confidential information, work attendance, and conflicts of interest.  

3. Be Aware of Your Tax Obligations

You should be aware of your requirements to keep tax records for five years for every employee, pay PAYG withholding tax, and superannuation. 

4. Provision You New Employee 

Make your new employee’s transition as seamless as possible.  Add him or her to payroll, send out an organisation-wide email announcing their arrival, and schedule team introductions.  From an IT perspective, make sure they have all their hardware (computer, phone, headset, etc) and software (installed and logins provided) set up before they arrive. 

5. Set Clear Goals and Expectations 

Help your new hire ensure his or her success through constant, clear communication about expectations for the role.  Assist them in setting SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-based) goals that can be monitored, evaluated, and adapted to best suit the role and the candidate,  Schedule weekly or bi-weekly catch-ups during the first three months to give the new hire feedback about their performance.  By the same token, ask for feedback from that employee about the role, hiring process, and onboarding.