Tips for hiring your first employee.

By Rieva Lesonsky

To hire or not to hire: That is the question. Hiring even one employee changes everything. You’re hit with a multitude of legal requirements and management duties you’d never have to deal with if you worked solo.

But if you do need employees, there are plenty of ways to meet your staffing demands—without driving yourself nuts.

Begin by understanding the requirements of the job. Do a job analysis covering the physical and mental tasks involved, how the job will be done (methods and equipment used), reason the job exists, and necessary qualifications. What kind of personality, experience and education are needed?

Then use the job analysis to create the job description, which points out in broad terms the job’s goals, responsibilities and duties; and the job specification, which describes employee requirements such as education, experience and specialized skills or knowledge.

The best way to avoid wasting time is to write an ad that will lure qualified candidates and discourage others. Look at your job specifications and pull out the top four or five skills most essential to the job. Don’t list requirements other than educational or experience-related ones. Also, avoid making requests for specific personality traits, since candidates may imitate the characteristics they don’t really possess. Instead, focus on the excitement and challenge of the job, the salary, and what applicants will get out of it.

Interviewing Applicants
Once you’ve narrowed the resumes down to about 10 candidates, it’s time to start setting up interviews. Prepare a list of basic interview questions in advance. While you won’t read off this list like a robot, having it ensures you’ll cover all the bases and ask all the candidates the same questions.

The initial moments of an interview are the most crucial. As you meet the candidate and shake his or her hand, you’ll gain a strong impression of his or her poise, confidence and enthusiasm (or lack thereof).

Ask open-ended questions about the candidate’s related experience, skills, educational training or background, and unrelated jobs. Start by saying, for example, “Tell me about your last job.” Use follow-up questions such as, “How did that situation come about?” or “Why did you do that?” These queries force applicants to abandon preplanned responses and dig deeper.

Finally, leave time at the end of the interview for the applicant to ask questions. This is when applicants can show they’ve researched your company . . . or conversely, that all they care about is what’s in it for them. Candidates who can’t come up with even one question may be demonstrating they can’t think on their feet.

End the interview by letting the candidate know how much longer you will be interviewing and when he or she can expect to hear from you.

During the interview, discreetly jot down notes. After the interview, take five minutes to write down the applicant’s outstanding qualities and evaluate his or her personality and skills against your job description and specifications.

After the Hire
Congratulations! You have hired your first employee. Now what? As soon as you hire, contact the applicants who didn’t make the cut and tell them you’ll keep their applications on file. That way, if the person you hired isn’t the best—or is so good that business doubles—you won’t have to start from scratch.

For each applicant you interviewed, create a file including your interview notes, the resume and the employment application. For the person you hire, that file becomes the basis for his or her personnel file. Federal law requires that a job application be kept at least three years after a person is hired. Even if you don’t hire the applicant, make sure you keep the file, with a brief note or memo explaining why he or she wasn’t hired. Under federal law, all recruitment materials, such as applications and resumes, must be kept for at least one year after the employment decision has been made.

The hiring process doesn’t end there. Employees are most motivated on their first day. Increase this motivation by making them feel comfortable and welcome. Be prepared to spend time with them explaining job duties, getting them started on tasks or even taking them out to lunch. By doing so, you’re building rapport and setting the stage for a long and happy working relationship.

Excerpted from Entrepreneur Magazine’s Start Your Own Business (Entrepreneur Press)