A Practical Step-by-Step Guide To Hiring An Employee For Your Small Business

If you haven’t hired many people, going through the process can be scary. While you’ll find a lot of articles on what to look for in candidates, how to hire great people and what type of interview questions to ask, these don’t always paint a full picture of all the steps you have to take to hire someone.

I wanted to provide a practical and detailed step-by-step guide of my own hiring process. I find that being walked through a process A-to-Z is a great way to learn and visualize the things you’ll have to go through as well. Hopefully this helps you get started, and jolt some ideas of your own on how you can create a hiring process that works for you.

Step 1 | Scope the Position

You have to determine exactly what this person’s day-to-day will look like. This is crucial, so don’t skip it and don’t take it lightly. If you catch yourself saying “we just need a social media person” or, “we just need someone to help with sales”, you haven’t put enough effort outlining the position yet. You have to figure out exactly what they will be doing, what results you want from them and if you have enough work to fill their day.

If you don’t know this, how will you measure their performance? How will you determine if they are doing their job well and that you made a good hire? People are expensive, and you want to feel good every time you sign that paycheck.

Step 2 | Determine the Salary

How much is this person going to cost? What is a reasonable salary expectation for their profession and their experience? Educate yourself on this before going any further. While there will always outliers that ask for too little or too much, knowing what the market rate is for the position will help you build confidence in making a job offer. My favorite website for this is PayScale.com (not sponsored, I just really like their service).

If your company cannot afford the position you want to hire for, you will need to be upfront with the candidate (honesty is always key). Maybe they are willing to work for less because they lack experience, or because they believe in your company.

Step 3 | Write the Job Posting

Time to put it on paper. First, the actual job title is super important! Early-on with my company, I made the mistake of using “creative” job titles like “Tech Guru”. No one was applying because my job postings were not showing up in search results for “customer service jobs” or “technical support jobs”. Don’t get fancy, use the proper titles for the position. The previous two steps will probably help you determine what the most common job title for that position is — use that.

For the posting itself, make it short and sweet — job postings that are three pages long with 137 bullet points just scare people away, even qualified people. Remember that this posting is also an ad for your company, you want to convince people to take a chance and apply for your unknown business as well. Everyone wants to work at Google, but what about Joe’s Tech Services Inc.?

You can look at Helcim’s Career Section on our website for examples on how we write our job postings. Oh, and always ask for a cover letter — more on this later.

Step 4 | Post It Online

There are lots of places to put job postings, and the websites we’ve used have changed over the years. Sometimes University and College websites have been fruitful, sometimes they’ve been duds. Usually there is one website that dominates at any given time, and right now it’s been Indeed.com for us.

Try using their free services at first and see how many applicants you receive. If you don’t receive many, try refining the job title and posting. If that still doesn’t work, then consider the paid listings.

Don’t use Craigslist or Kijiji. I’m sure someone can point to a diamond in the rough story, but for the most part you’re just going to get… rough…

Step 5 | Go Through Resumes

Congrats, you now have an inbox with 50 applicants! So how the hell do you narrow down the list? I remember when I first started hiring people, I would feel overwhelmed with trying to narrow down candidates. I would suddenly become an expert psychologist and think things like “oh this person grew up here, they will be a scrappy worker” or “they don’t have any experience with this, but me giving them a chance will make them appreciate the job and they will work extra hard”.

That’s all wrong, the trick is to not overthink it but instead be very objective and non-emotional in your filtering process:

Typos, they are gone!

No cover letter, gone!

Generic cover letter, gone!

Don’t mention the company or job posting in their cover letter, gone!

Bad formatting, gone!

Bad punctuation, gone!

This will get rid of a surprising amount of people. This is a good thing, you want people that have attention to detail. Now to filter it some more. Stay objective, look at the experience, the skill set and consider their “pitch” in their cover letter.

Regarding cover letters, nobody likes writing them, and that’s the point. It filters out a lot of laziness and half-assery. It also allows great candidates to shine through.

Step 6 | Schedule Interviews

Pick your best candidates (I usually aim for 5 to 8 people) and send a short email. “Thank you for your interest, are you available next week for an interview on Monday or Tuesday at either 9am, 10am or 11am?”

I’ve learnt to immediately offer candidates preset times, instead of asking them when would work for them. You avoid a bunch of additional back and forth emails. I also try to pack all my interviews within a few days. Interviews take a lot of energy and time, and I want to get back to my business.

Also, if someone doesn’t answer your email within 48 hours, remove them from your list. From my experience, the lack of responsiveness were red flags from the start.

Step 7 | Create Interview Questions

Before the person walks into the room, print yourself a cheat-sheet of questions that you want to ask them. I always start with “What do you know about our company?”. To this day, I’m amazed that 2 out of 3 people disqualify themselves with this question. I will get answers such as “Uhmm.. something about payments?” If someone is not willing to put a few hours of effort researching your website and a few of your competitors, do not waste your time — this is another red flag.

PS. If you’re a candidate and you did enough research to find this article, bonus points for you!

For the rest of the questions, I try to stick to open ended questions that ask about their experience, their interests and their passions. I always look for candidates that are passionate about what they do, so I’ll ask questions like, “Why did you get into computers when you were a kid?” or, “What made you go into accounting?”. Everyone should be passionate about their work (yes, there are passionate accountants, some people love Excel and tidy books). If they can’t show passion for their profession, how will they show passion for your company?

Step 8 | Interview Candidates

Candidates that show up early are a good thing, make note of it. On the flip side, I have a 10-minute rule. If a candidate is late within 10 minutes, they better have the world’s best excuse. Over 10-minutes, they are shown the door (this is another red flag).

I usually break the ice by asking about themselves, and then I go through all the questions I’ve prepared. This allows me to more clearly compare candidates afterwards. Make sure to have some room for improvisation and additional questions based on how the conversation is going. The goal is to get them talking so that you can get a feel for this person. Could you work with them? Are they intelligent? Are they full of hot air or do they actually know their stuff? Are they passionate?

“I protect my computer by hiding my password from my wife.”

~ An idiot candidate

I find that hiring someone is less about finding the right person, and more about filtering out the wrong ones. Once again people will filter themselves out in interviews by saying incredibly stupid things like “I protect my computer by hiding my password from my wife.” (a real answer from a Linux-admin candidate) or “My last boss was a real feminist bitch.” (another real gem from a web developer).

“My last boss was a real feminist bitch.”

~Another idiot.

I always ask candidates about salary expectations. It can be a very awkward question, but I will press to get at the very least a salary range that they would be satisfied with. I understand why people don’t like this question — they don’t want to undervalue themselves, yet they don’t want to aim too high and miss an opportunity. I explain to them that we already have a salary range in mind for this position (determined in Step 2), but that it’s important for us to know so that the expectations of both parties are aligned. For those that undervalue themselves, they’re happily surprised when they receive our job offer. For those with salary expectations that are too high, they’re removed from our potential candidates. Based on my experience, people that accept a job with a significantly lower salary than they expected will always be looking at the exit door.

Don’t forget to sell your company as well. If you feel that the interview is going well and that you like this candidate, you also need to convince them that joining your company will be a great decision. Talk about your business’ work environment, the direction you’re heading in, and why you’re passionate about this business. An interview is a “sell” for both sides. You may find the perfect candidate, and despite your appropriate salary offer, they decline to work for you as you didn’t sell them on your own vision. At this point of the interview, I will also go over our vacation time, employee benefits, work hours and work expectations.

Finally, ask them logistical questions about their available start date, already planned vacation, available hours, their ability to commute to your location, etc. This will come in handy in Step 10.

Step 9 | Select a Candidate or Start Again

As you interview candidates, always focus on finding a front-runner. Was Jenny better than Ryan? Yes? OK, she is the new front-runner, goodbye Ryan. As you do more interviews, compare each new one with your front-runner, and either replace your front-runner or keep your current one. By the end of the process, you will hopefully know who you want to hire, instead of having to line up all interviews and try remember each one again.

If you haven’t found anyone, there are a few things to consider. Is your job posting accurately depicting the job and skills you want to hire? Is your salary appropriate? Does your office smell like old garbage?

You may have to wait for more resumes to come in and schedule more interviews. Some positions have taken me three rounds of resumes and interviews before finding the right candidate.

Step 10 | Make a Job Offer

Once you have your candidate in mind, time to send the offer. You will need a good employment agreement that covers numerous things including compensation, benefits, vacation, confidentiality, moonlighting, etc. I would recommend hiring a lawyer and getting this done right the first time — it will save you headaches down the road. Once you have a good employment agreement template, you can keep re-using it for future staff.

I usually send them an email with the job offer attachment and a quick message about being excited to have them work for our company. The job offer will contain the salary and the start date previously discussed.

Remember how you asked logistical questions during the interview as well as salary expectations? Be wary of candidates that start making new demands at this part of the process. I’ve had people suddenly demand for different hours, to work remotely, for higher salaries, more vacation time, etc. I make the interview process candid and informative, and I expect people to provide me with honest answers the first time. As much as it has pained me at times, I’ve revoked job offers and restarted my candidate search when this has occurred. Red flags, don’t ignore the red flags.

Step 11 | Always Keep Communicating

Congratulations, you just hired a new team member! Managing and empowering staff is a topic for another day, but remember that communication is key to any good relationship. Communicate your expectations of them early and provide opportunities for them to give you feedback, share uncertainties and concerns.

Try to remember how scary the first few days of a new job can be, and create an environment that allows new staff members to feel safe and welcomed so that they can bring their best selves to their new work.

My final piece of advice for hiring people? Stay objective, and don’t ignore the red flags.

Now get out there and build a great team!

-Nic