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What to write down before your first hire

What it costs 6 min read

Hiring hands over the parts of your job you can explain, and keeps the rest. What has to exist on paper before somebody else turns up on Monday.

You are either turning work away or doing paperwork at eleven at night, and both point the same direction.

Hiring somebody does not hand your job to them. It hands over the parts of your job you can explain. Everything you have never written down stays exactly where it is, with you, on top of a person to supervise.

The bottleneck you are hiring against

Write down the thing that is actually limiting you, in one sentence, before you write an ad.

"I am turning down two jobs a week because I cannot be in two places" is a bottleneck, and the answer is somebody who can do the work. "I lose Sundays to invoices and quotes" is a different bottleneck, and the answer is a few hours a week of somebody in an office, not a tradesperson at all. "I am tired" is real but it is not yet a bottleneck, and a hire makes it worse for the first two months.

Getting this wrong is expensive. Somebody hires a second pair of hands and finds the constraint was never hands, it was quoting, and now two people wait on the same person to price a job.

What an hour of somebody else's time has to earn

An employee costs more than their wage, and the gap is not small. There are the costs on top of the wage, the insurance, the gear, the phone, the vehicle if they need one, and the time you stop earning while you train and check.

Not every hour you pay for is an hour you can bill. There is travel, loading up, the day a job falls through, the time spent learning. Build the numbers on billable hours rather than paid hours, or the arithmetic will look better on paper than it does in the bank.

Do this with whoever does your books before you advertise, because employment costs, tax treatment and insurance requirements differ by state and by how you engage somebody.

Sometimes the numbers say hire. Sometimes they say your prices have to move first, because hiring at your current number multiplies a thin margin.

Write the job as a day, not as a title

"Labourer" tells a person nothing. What they need, and what you need, is an ordinary day written out.

Where they meet you and when. What they carry. What they do while you do the part they cannot. Who packs up. What time it ends and what happens when a job runs long. Who they call if a customer asks a question.

Write it as prose, one page. It takes forty minutes, it becomes most of your ad, and it shows you how much of your day runs on things that are only in your head.

The three things that have to exist on paper before day one

Three handwritten pages, not a manual.

The first is what finished looks like for the jobs you do most. Not how to do the work, which they were trained for, but your standard. What gets cleaned up, what gets checked before leaving, what gets told to the customer.

The second is what to do when something is not right. Who they call, in what order, and what they are not to decide on their own. This is the page that prevents the two worst first weeks: a person guessing, and a person standing in a driveway because your phone was in the van.

The third is what they are allowed to say about money. Whether they can quote, whether they can agree to extras, and the exact sentence they use when a customer asks for a price. Usually that sentence is that they will get you to call.

Who talks to the customer now

For years your business and your judgement were the same thing. From Monday somebody else is standing in a customer's kitchen with your name on their shirt.

Decide in advance what that person is allowed to do. Whether they turn up alone at a first visit. Whether they can move an appointment. What they say when a customer asks for something extra.

Two things follow. Your published hours and your phone need to say there are two of you, because somebody who cannot reach you assumes you are closed. And be ready for their name to appear in a review, good or bad, which is worth telling them plainly on day one.

The part you should not write yourself

Whether somebody is an employee or a contractor is decided by how the work actually happens, not by what you write on an invoice, and getting it wrong is expensive in a way that arrives years later. Payroll, workers compensation cover, insurance that covers an employee rather than only you, and what you must give somebody in writing are all real requirements, and they vary.

That is a conversation with an accountant and, for the employment side, somebody who does that for a living. It is the cheapest part of this whole process.

Do not take a friend's arrangement as evidence that yours is correct. It might be. You will not find out from him.

The first two weeks are the whole hire

Whatever happens in the first two weeks becomes the standard, including everything you let pass.

Work alongside them at first. It feels like paying two people to do one job, because it is, and it is the cheapest training you will ever buy. Let them do a whole job while you watch and do not take the tool off them, which is the hardest instruction on this page.

Then tell them where the work was not right, early and quietly, on the day. Corrections given in week one are instructions. The same words in month three are a complaint, because by then you have been signing off work you were unhappy with.

What to have written down before you place the ad

If most of this is already on paper, you are ready. If none of it is, you have found your weekend job.

Questions people ask

Should my first hire be an apprentice or somebody experienced?

It depends on the bottleneck you named. Experience buys a person who can be sent out alone sooner, at a higher cost. An apprentice costs less per hour and a great deal of your time, which is the thing you were short of.

Should I hire an office person instead of a tradesperson?

Consider it seriously if what is limiting you is quoting, invoicing and answering the phone. A few hours a week of admin can return more of your time than a second pair of hands on site.

Can I take somebody on as a contractor to keep it simple?

That is not a choice you make by preference. It is determined by how the work is actually done, and it is expensive to get wrong. Ask your accountant about your arrangement before anybody starts.

What if it does not work out?

Some hires do not, and that is not a verdict on you. Agree a date early on where you both sit down and say how it is going, and take advice on your obligations before you need it rather than after.

Do I need to change my website when I take somebody on?

Only where it now says something untrue. Hours, whether you can take more work, and anywhere the site says "I" about work two people do. That is a twenty minute job, not a rebuild.

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