Premier Solutions International

Small Business Tips- Hiring Your First Employee

Monday, November 21st, 2011 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment

If you have already started a small business and your business has begun to grow, you will invariably encounter one of the most common questions asked by small business owners: When should I start hiring employees, and how should I know who to hire? While many resources are available to answer these questions, here is a quick list of tips to consider upon hiring the first set of employees for your small business:

1) Take the necessary legal steps

You can contact the Small Business Administration or visit their website to learn about the steps you must take to ensure that you obeying the law when hiring employees. This process can be long and tedious and involve lots of paperwork and correspondence with the Internal Revenue Service. For example, you will need to obtain an employer identification number (EIN) in order to report information about your employees to the state. You can apply for an EIN online. You will also need to look into setting up records for withholding taxes and learn about the different types of withholding taxes that you will be required to withhold from your employees’ salaries. There are several other important steps you as a business owner must take to make sure you are complying with the law when hiring your first employees – you can visit the SBA website for more information.

2) Consider whether the work can be freelanced or outsourced

Before you embark upon the employment process, first, take a step back and ask yourself: Are you really ready to hire employees? Do you really need to? More and more business owners are relying upon freelancers or outsourcing their work to employees from all different places to help them in their business endeavors because these steps can often save you money in the long-run.When considering whether to contract a freelance employee, first consider how frequently you will need their services. The rest boils down to an analysis of the costs involved – if you think that you will be relying too much on the freelancer for too long, it would probably be in your better interest to hire a full-time employee. Similarly, in today’s technological age, it is now possible to hire people from all around the world for many different positions and save money in the process. But you must consider the costs involved with conducting your business in this fashion. Communicating with someone who is working remotely can be unreliable: because of different time zones, language barriers, or unreliable internet or telephone connections, it can often be more effective to hire someone who can work in-house.

3) Understand what type of employee to hire

If you have made the decision to hire an employee, you have to consider what type of experience you are looking for in your potential employees. For one, while a candidate whose resume is loaded with tons of professional big-business experience might impress you, this might not make the ideal employee at your small business. You will find that employees with backgrounds in small business are often used to the challenges that are specific to small business, and more willing to take on a variety of tasks to help keep the business running. There is a different set of protocol in small businesses and candidates with a background in small business are aware of that.

4) Start within your own social and professional network

The next question you will face is whom to hire. Start within your network of friends, families, former coworkers, and other colleagues. The reason for this is intuitive: if they are already within your network, you most likely already have a stronger sense of trust with the candidate than you would with someone completely new. Furthermore, resorting to online job boards or other classified sections will inevitably bombard you with tons of job applications, and who has time to sift through hundreds or even thousands of applications? Before you post to job boards or make your open position known to your community, be prepared for an overwhelming response, and have a plan of attack for how you will approach the actual interview and employment process.

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