|
What to Do If You Need
Staff
If you grow large enough, the time may come when there's no
getting around it any longer. You simply don't have the time in
the day to do everything that needs to be done. You need to
hire some staff.
Staff Create Profits
The chances are that you've worked for a wage for a decent part
of your life, but you might not have realised the exact nature
of the transaction that was going on. Essentially, you were
hired to create profit for the company -- if hiring you wasn't
profitable, they wouldn't have done it. By taking a wage, you
agreed to create profit for them, while your wages remained
relatively flat ('stable') whatever you did.
In theory, this protects you against the consequences of your
work being unprofitable. You could see what's happening as
being something like you giving the company a percentage (a big
percentage) of your earnings in exchange for them being the
ones providing the resources and taking all the financial
risk.
In practice, of course, if you stop making money for the
company, you lose your job. Thus you can see that the situation
becomes win-win for your employer: they get to keep most of the
profits you create, while maintaining enough control over you
that you can't really create any extra risk for them.
Employing people, then, is like investing -- you put in some
money as wages and get more out of it. If you stop getting more
back, you can cancel and change your investment by getting rid
of them and employing someone else.
The Interviewed Becomes the Interviewer
The first step in finding staff that are going to make you a
good profit is to advertise the job. You shouldn't have too
much trouble with this, since there are always people looking
for work -- put up a few signs, go round a few agencies, tell
some people you know. You'll pretty quickly have people beating
down your door.
The next step, then, is the interview process. Since you've
probably been through the interview process a few times, it'll
feel good to be sitting on the other side of the table. Don't
get carried away, though: remember that the purpose of the
interview is to try to figure out whether the person you've got
in front of you would do a good job for your business if you
employ them.
Here are a few ideas for questions:
'Tell me about yourself.' While this sounds clichéd, the
applicant's response to this will give you a good idea about
their personality and what they think is important, as well as
their ability to think on their feet.
'Why should I hire you?' You're looking for the person who's
been listening to what you've said you're after and responds by
telling you how they meet your needs.
Give an example of a real problem in your business and ask them
how they would solve it. This gives them an opportunity to help
you and impress you in the process.
'What did you like or dislike about your last job?' This gives
you an opportunity to spot problem candidates -- if they use it
as an excuse to have a bit of a moan, you probably shouldn't
hire them.
If in doubt, just remember that you can ask anything, as long
as it's open-ended. Whatever you do, don't ask yes or no
questions.
Finally, it's important to know that, by law, you can't ask as
anything that could be thought of as discrimination, including
questions related to age, race, religion, nationality, marital
status, medical history or disability.
Paying Their Taxes
Finally, when you hire people, you need to remember that you're
setting yourself up for all sorts of tax complications. You
will usually need to pay their income taxes for them, as well
as various other medical and security/insurance taxes. If you
get this wrong, you can set both you and your employees up for
a lot of inconvenience
By now you hopefully have an accountant who can help you.
Still, make sure you're paying enough that working for you will
still be worthwhile for your employees after tax.
| 
Delicious
Google Bookmarks
Stumbleupon
Digg
BlinkList
Ma.gnolia
Reddit
Yahoo My Web