Women Founders and Leaders on What They Wish They Had Known Before Hiring Their First Team Members

Building a company is equal parts exhilarating and challenging, and that’s perhaps never more true than when it comes to hiring your first team members. Bringing others in to help bring your vision to life is an exciting step in your business journey, but jumping in without a clear understanding of your needs and a plan of action can be risky for everyone involved.?

So, what should you know before hiring your very first team members? We tapped into the experiences of 21 successful female founders and leaders who have built powerful teams of their own, delving into their collective wisdom as they reflect on what they wish they had known in the early days. We hope their valuable lessons will empower you to make the right hiring decisions—and foster a thriving team from the start.

Suze Dowling

Co-Founder of Pattern Brands, a family of six brands helping people enjoy daily life at home.?

My experience: It’s so imperative that you are clear on your values and vision and hire a person with the right skill set but, more importantly, who shares your purpose and passion. It took me some time to realize that it’s less about the specific role and more about the person in the role. Look for someone who helps create a culture of agility, entrepreneurship, and brings a can-do attitude.

Divya Hegde

Chief Commercial Officer and Advisor at Orderchamp, the No. 1 B2B marketplace connecting independent brands and retailers.

My experience: In any young company, your first 10 hires are crucial. Your first hire sets the bar for all future hires. These early employees will determine the culture, the overall caliber of the company, and your own confidence as a founder. Take your time to get that very best first hire, even if it's urgent and you’re under pressure. Do not settle.?

Jessica Greenwalt

Co-Founder of Unum Game, a Web3 future simulation game that challenges players to gain control of districts in the year 2140.

My experience: You don’t know what something is going to be like until you try it. There isn’t one thing I want to know before hiring my first team member—there are many things I want to know. This is why I opt to work with people on smaller projects, on a contractor basis, before making the decision to bring them on to the team.

Lindsay Jurist-Rosner

Co-Founder and CEO of Wellthy*, a platform helping families balance work and care responsibilities through a combination of human expertise and precision technology.

My experience: When you're hiring those first team members, it's totally reasonable to emphasize things like mission alignment, adaptability, passion, and hunger. But one thing stands out to me: hiring people who have different but complementary skills to yours. It is simply electric to collaborate with team members who can augment the skills of a founder. Sometimes it may feel uncomfortable, but the synergy created by "different but complementary" has the power to unlock unlimited impact and scale.?

Jenny Hanh Nguyen

Co-Founder and CEO of Y'OUR Skincare, utilizing powerful AI and human insights to create personalized skincare solutions to help people feel and achieve their best self.

My experience: Work ethics and being a team player is more important than experience and skills. I've come to recognize that unsuccessful hires often stem from individuals who struggle to integrate effectively with their team, resulting in internal conflicts, or those who possess the necessary skills but fail to keep pace with our dynamic work environment. Thus, while skills and experience are crucial, finding someone who aligns with the company's values, vision, and work culture is equally important. When individuals have similar work ethics, communication styles, and problem-solving approaches, they can work together seamlessly and efficiently.

Milena Berry?

Co-Founder and CEO of PowerToFly*, an international diversity platform connecting diverse talent to free live chats and virtual events with hiring managers.?

My experience: I wish I’d understood earlier that team members’ impact on an organization depends on much more than just their productivity. You also have to think about how they interact with the team as a whole, and the impact they have on company morale and focus. A simple way to visualize this is by picturing a chart where the X-axis represents productivity and the Y-axis represents conflict. You never want team members with low productivity. But if they’re low conflict, you might invest time and energy coaching them on how to improve. What you definitely don’t want are team members who are low performing and high conflict. High-performing and high-conflict team members are tempting to keep, but over time they can destroy your company culture. Ultimately, you want to have as many employees as possible in the high-performance and low-conflict quadrant of the graph.

Kimone Napier

Founder of Hire Breakthrough, dedicated to helping founders overcome hiring challenges and achieve breakthroughs.?

My experience: It is crucial to establish open and transparent lines of communication from the start, ensuring everyone is aligned on expectations, goals, and responsibilities. Setting up regular check-ins and providing constructive feedback early on can help foster a positive and productive working relationship. Remember, effective communication is key to building a strong foundation for collaboration and success within your team.

Margaret Ruvoldt

Founder and Former CHRO of Eve Was Framed, a women's health company on a mission to empower women with knowledge about the intersection of gender and health.

My experience: Thinking about what must-have items someone needs coming in the door versus what they can learn on the job or can be coached on helps compare candidates with varying sets of skills. Hands down, hiring for intellectual curiosity always brings the best candidates. People who have a demonstrated desire to learn and grow will make the best long term hires.

Hanna McCarthy

Experience Design Strategist at barre.[d] studio, a fast-growing, low-impact dynamic studio.?

My experience: When it came to hiring my first team member, I wish someone would have told me it was okay to go with my gut! I have learned that it’s more than okay to say no and to pause and wait for the right people for your business rather than feeling pressure of needing the help. The right people will always come!

Allison Ullo

Founder and CEO of Leaves of Leisure, a luxury herbal tea and botanicals brand created to bring peace and pleasure to ordinary days without caffeine.

My experience: I hired an assistant as soon as I started my company, thinking that having the extra set of hands would do wonders. While I did need help, it was way too early to hire someone because I hadn't even mapped out a clear vision of exactly what I needed someone to do in order to be fully effective. I wasted thousands of dollars and ended up having to redo all the work. Don't hire anyone until you are 100 percent clear on what they will be doing, how they can support you, and that the direction you are giving is very well-thought out.?

Yewande Faloyin

Founder and CEO of OTIT? Executive Leadership Coaching, helping leaders manage their energy for a direct business impact.

My experience: Aligning values and vision with your hires is just as important as ticking the skill set boxes. My first assistant ticked all the skill set boxes, but it was clear within a few months that something wasn't quite working. She was experienced, but didn't express the values of ambition, continuous improvement, leadership, and partnership that I wanted. Basically, I didn't want an assistant—I actually wanted an executive assistant with the ambition to grow into a chief of staff. With this realization, I replaced my assistant and three years later, I can say that it was one of the best decisions I've ever made.?

Summer Delaney

Founder and CEO of CollabWORK*, revolutionizing the $140 billion staffing industry by building the first community-empowered hiring platform and productizing referrals at scale.

My experience: It's incredibly important to see if your first team members can thrive in a startup environment. The metrics of success at a large corporation are different from the benchmarks at an early-stage team. It's important to find people that are comfortable in ambiguity, can wear many hats, and roll up their sleeves to get the job done.

Tamara Kostova

CEO of Velexa, offering a B2B2X investing technology platform which empowers any institution to capitalise on the demand for modern and ubiquitous investing solutions.?

My experience: What I need now is not what I will always need. In the beginning, I was typically overwhelmed, so I needed help; any help. Then I had this person, or people, and they were mediocre, but I didn't have the time to find new people who could make a material difference. So they stayed. Intentional hiring can be such a slippery slope to continue pushing off. Therefore, before you even begin the first hire, you need to think about who you need, how long you need them, communicate that to them, and hold yourself accountable as well.?

Sydney Sherman

CEO of Montie & Joie, an ethical home goods and clothing brand that focuses on financially empowering women around the world.

My experience: I started my first company, Admin Boutique, right out of college and did most of the work myself or hired part-time contractors to work under me. It was relatively simple, contract-based work and so that strategy was great for a while. However, when I started The Etho and Montie & Joie, I struggled to change my hiring strategy, making profitability harder to achieve. With businesses like M&J, we should have hired more experienced employees first—people who knew what they were doing but also weren't afraid to get their hands dirty handling the details that are required when starting a business. They could have directed our strategy, preventing us from making some of the mistakes we made early on with M&J. From there, they would have helped us build the team we needed during growth.

Rachael King

CEO of Pod People, a content and marketing studio for award-winning podcasts and social creative.

My experience: If you're hiring a true employee, it's so important to have the business vision, brand, and North Star figured out before bringing someone on. These things may change over time, of course, but it's hard to ask someone to join your mission and trust what you're building if you can't clearly communicate what it is they're joining. Remember that you're asking them to take a risk with you, so having your logo/website, mission statement, and ideal customer profile already figured out will make it easy for them to say yes.

Allison McGuire

Founder and CEO of McGuire Method, a communication coaching firm that takes performance techniques and applies them to real life.?

My experience: When I started my first tech startup nearly a decade ago, I was looking for anyone to build it for me. I made hasty hiring decisions from a scarcity mindset, leading to a values mismatch. My advice is to focus on your values. Make sure your colleagues share them, and do not compromise. Skills can be learned; values are hard to change.

Antoinette Alexander Adefela

Founder and CEO of Exp.Design LLC, a creative learning agency that partners with training teams to design and develop performance-driven learning solutions.

My experience: Before I had any team members, I worked with my attorney and HR consultant to create contracts, forms, job descriptions, and employee profile structures. But I later learned that I needed to develop a timeline for HR management that starts with recruiting and goes past development to the stage where the team member can thrive, be promoted, or leave the organization. Later, I developed an interview guide and scorecard with the same criterion for everyone to limit possible bias. I created a personal new hire orientation to talk about goals, the company's vision, and the culture. From the job description and the first conversations with the potential new hire, I should have spent more time discussing their values, goals, and view of how they work on projects and with others and established a roadmap of growth and timeline together.

Sara Miller

Board President of Student Organ Donation Advocates (SODA), a national nonprofit that supports more than 50 high school and college campus chapters across the country.?

My experience: Ask lots of questions and encourage them to do the same. Get to know how they think and make decisions, and create an environment where they feel comfortable asking you questions to understand why things work the way they do. This process of investigation on both ends of the relationship builds trust and facilitates innovation.

Renia Carsillo

Chief Strategist at Realign Consulting, a business strategy firm that partners with founders and leadership teams to develop sustainable, people-driven systems.

My experience: Most of the hiring advice widely available has a strong survivorship bias and is geared toward fast-scaling larger organizations. I wish I had understood earlier how differently a small team with remote employees needs to operate. Someone who performed well in a corporate or government environment might not do so well on a tiny team. I now look for past performance as a freelancer or on a micro team and spend much more time ensuring candidates will thrive in our work structure.

Tsvetta Kaleynska

CEO of Rila Global Consulting, a boutique social listening agency located in New York City offering tailored research and insights to clients globally.

My experience: One invaluable lesson I wish I had known before hiring my first team members is the transformative power of embracing global talent diversity. Prior to remote work, I was very focused on hiring locally and hiring people with a similar mindset to mine. Thankfully with remote work, many companies, including mine, have been able to erase geographical boundaries and build global teams that help with 24/7 timezone coverage and seamless project execution. I also underestimated that hiring talent globally and not locally has provided income opportunities for underprivileged women with exceptional skills. The same women have helped expand our team's mindset beyond boundaries and brought in diverse backgrounds and perspectives, which have greatly contributed to our success.??

Amanda Dahler

Founder and CEO of Outspoke Design, helping founders and leaders entice, excite, and expand their niche audiences through branding and design for transformational events.

My experience: As founders, we tend to be scrappy and hyper-capable. In the startup phase, team members to me were liabilities instead of assets. That is, until I talked to a peer who said that in the year after she hired her first employee, her business grew seven times. I've had four team members now and with each one, I've grown in my role as much, if not more, than they have. The value is as much in the intangible as in the revenue.

All individuals in this article are either *HearstLab portfolio companies or Dreamers & Doers members. Dreamers & Doers is an award-winning community that amplifies extraordinary women leaders and entrepreneurs by raising their profile through PR, forging authentic connections, and curating high-impact resources. Learn more about Dreamers & Doers and get involved here.