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Most entrepreneurs’ vision of success includes hiring an employee or two somewhere along the way. While the process marks a true milestone for some, it serves as a source of source of nervous contention for others. Not only are you responsible for your own livelihood, you now will directly affect the livelihood of your first employee. With a little prior planning and some deep reflective thoughts, hiring your first employee can be an interesting and exhilarating experience.

1. Who do you need and why? Are you looking for Dilbert or Clark Kent? An administrative guru or a sales specialist? Spend some time mulling over how this employee will spend their day? If they are going to be in the “office”, you need to make sure you have the tools (computer, phone line, etc.) that they will need to be successful. If they will be working from their own base, make sure that you establish specific communication plans. A daily phone conversation and a weekly face to face meeting are a start. Once you create a picture of your new employee’s job, there is still work to be done—you need to think about training. Who will train the new employee on skills that they do not possess? If you are spending 9 days out of 10 traveling, how are you going to get the new employee started??

2. Finding Candidates. Even with the millions of dollars spent every year on marketing internet recruiting sites, good old fashioned newspaper ads maintain their top spot on the recruiting source list. When deciding where to advertise, it is important to think about the type of person you are seeking. Is it an office job where the employee will live near your office? A traveling salesperson that can live any where in the state? Country? World? Would it appeal to a college student? A bowler? Someone who would shop at a gourmet grocery store? Many places will allow you to post jobs in their location as long as you ask (and are not trying to recruit their current workforce). There are two benefits to this type of recruitment. First, you are hitting passive job seekers, people who have their eyes on a new position, but haven’t yet started scouring the classifieds. Second, this type of recruiting has virtually no costs.

3. Choosing your Employee. One of the easiest traps to fall into when hiring employees is to choose the candidate most like ourselves. We see traits in this person that we see in ourselves and are immediately drawn to them. However, the best person to bring on board is someone who complements you, not someone that is you. Make sure you find a candidate who will thrive under your management. If you hire someone who will excel independently, make sure you don’t micro-manage.

The best way to determine what a candidate would be like as an employee is to use behavioral based interviewing. This technique is based on the theory that past performance is the best indicator of future behaviors. A behavioral based interview question must be open ended, focused on the past and related to the job at hand in order to be effective. A traditional interview question generally solicits a hypothetical response—“If you answered the phone and a customer was yelling about a damaged order, what would you do?” Most of us know what type of response would be deemed favorable here and would reply accordingly. However, if we tweaked the question just a bit “Tell me about a time you had to deal with an angry customer on the phone. How did you handle the situation?” we force the candidate to tell us a real life story. Did they take the callers name and number and pass the problem onto a manager or did they do what they needed to do at the moment to make the customer happy? Which one do you want representing your business?

4. Checking your Employee. In today’s world of multiple lawsuits, it is sometimes hard to conduct a meaningful reference check on a potential employee. Most often, a previous employer will tell you if the person worked there, when they started and what they did—the

important stuff. As an employer, you can be held liable for the actions of your employees. The legal term is negligent hiring and in laymen’s terms it means not checking up on your employees. A simple background check can protect you from this claim. Your insurance company or an internet search will provide you with a list of organizations that perform these searches. If the employee is going to be driving as part of the job, it is also a good idea to run a driving record check and to ask for proof of insurance. You will need to get a signed release from the candidate that allows you to access this information and states that they understand it is a condition of employment.

5. Making the Offer. Now that you have found your ideal candidate, it is time to bring them aboard. You’ll want to make sure that the starting wage is similar to related jobs in the area. Salary.com is a good source of local salary information as are your local classified ads. In addition, you should be prepared to discuss benefits with the prospective employee. Health insurance is a costly benefit to provide employees. You should know whether or not it is something that you are going to offer you employee. If not now, maybe it is something that you are going to offer in the future. What about time-off? Just like you, your employee is going to need time off, whether to recover from an illness or just to get away and relax. For many people, the amount of time off offered by an employer is almost as important as the level of pay offered. Finally, will there be set hours? If you are hiring an Administrative Assistant and you will expect this person to answer the phones during your office hours, make sure they understand that there are set hours you expect them to work. If the work schedule is more flexible, make sure the candidate knows that as well.

6. Welcome Aboard! Congratulations on hiring your first employee! With all the effort that you put into the process, you want to do what you can to ensure the person will stay with you for a while. To do this, make sure that you establish clear expectations of your employee. Too often, we assume that our employees know what is expected of them when in reality, they do not. They might be producing results, but they are not the type of results that we are looking for. What follows is either constant disappointment, an uncomfortable disciplinary process or a termination of the employment relationship. The unpleasant options can be avoided if clear expectations are communicated at the start.

7. The Legalities of Being an Employer. There are a plethora of federal and state labor laws to comply with. The laws vary based on the size of your workforce and the type of business you do. A quick check of the DOL’s website will provide you an overview of these laws. The following apply to all employers, regardless of size.