Hiring for your business is not just about filling roles, especially when you’re hiring for a whole new department. It’s closer to building a machine inside your business and hoping that all the parts actually work together. The challenge here is that you’re making a lot of decisions before you even have your first employee in place, and that’s where things can either go smoothly or get very messy very quickly. Let’s take a close look at some tips to help you to build it properly from the beginning.
Get the right help early on.
If you’re not sure where to begin, don’t try to figure everything out by yourself. There are specialist recruiters out there like accounting staffing agencies that can help you to find candidates who already match what you need, especially for technical or finance heavy roles. Even if you don’t rely on them fully to do your hiring, they can save you time and help to avoid early hiring mistakes. Sometimes hiring a recruiter to help work through all of the CVs and all of the information that you need is going to make a big difference.
Be clear about what the department is for.
Before you hire anyone to find the job of the department itself, what problem is it going to solve? What will good performance actually look like? If you can’t explain that clearly, hiring becomes guesswork rather than something that’s easy. You want to know that the people who will be working with you are working in a way that makes sense for your business. That means understanding what every department role is going to be so that you can define what the roles are within the departments.
Map the roles before you post any jobs.
Speaking of defining the roles, it’s tempting to hire the first good candidate and build around them, but that will create gaps later on. Instead, you need to have a detailed sketch out of the key roles that you’ll need, even if you don’t fill them all immediately. This gives you some structure and helps you to avoid overlap. You also don’t want to hire one person to do two or three jobs because that’s too much for one person. It’s important that you pick people that fit your business model, but also fit the roles that you’ve got.
Look for adaptability.
Skills really do matter, but flexibility matters more when you’re building something new. Your processes are likely to change, your responsibilities are likely to shift, and you will need people who can go with the flow and adjust without resistance. When it comes to looking for people, make sure that they are technically qualified, but also make sure that they are the kinds of people who can go with that flow that you’re trying to input for your business. This doesn’t mean that you eventually expect your admin team to be going in and doing IT work, but it does mean that you want people to be flexible across departments, not just the role they’re hired for.
Don’t ignore that culture fit.
A new department will develop its own mini culture very quickly. If you ignore this, you might end up with talented people who don’t work very well together. You should look for talent, sure, but you also want to look for people who communicate clearly and work well together. You don’t want to make everything harder than it needs to be, and that means you need to look at that culture from day one and make sure that people fit the vision that you’ve got.
Set your expectations early on.
It’s important to be specific about what every role in your business involves. What are they responsible for? What does success look like in the first 3-6 months? Clear expectations reduce confusion and help new hires to settle faster. It’s also important that you have a good HR team onboard with you, whether that’s an external one or an internal one. They will be able to help you with the interview and hiring process to ensure that the people that you are bringing on meet the expectations that you’ve set.
Take onboarding seriously.
A rushed onboarding process usually leads to slow ramp up and repeated mistakes. Even a simple structure of introductions, systems, walkthroughs, and clear documentation to be filled out can make a difference in how quickly people become effective. You don’t want people to have a long and drawn out onboarding where they feel like they’re on show for the business, but you do want them to feel like they can settle in quickly. You also want to make sure that you balance all of the things and information that they need to know with their start date.
Take your time building your processes.
You will not have everything figured out on day one, and that’s normal. The key is to make sure that you document processes as they emerge, even if they’re not perfect. This will prevent confusion and make scaling up easier later on. When you build your processes slowly, you get everybody on board at the same time. .
Encourage honest communication.
New departments often struggle when people don’t speak up early. If you create an environment where questions and feedback are normal, small issues caught earlier are much easier to fix than big ones discovered later on. It’s vital that everybody across your business knows how to speak to one another, and that means ensuring that you are leaning on that communication from day one.
Anticipate a learning curve.
No new department runs perfectly at the start. There will be gaps, adjustments and a few surprises, and this is part of the process. The goal is to have steady improvement from day one, not to be perfect from day one, so it’s important not to put too much pressure on yourself. Keep it as simple and consistent as possible and you won’t be able to rush anything.
