Your First Hire: A Practical Hiring Playbook

Deciding whether to hire at all

Before writing a job ad, log two weeks of your own time in thirty-minute blocks. Most founders discover that a small number of recurring activities consume the majority of their week, and that the strategic work they intended to do is happening late at night or not at all.

Then apply three tests to the biggest recurring block:

• Is it repeatable? If you cannot describe the work in a page of instructions, you cannot delegate it yet.
• Does it need to be you? Customer relationships, final pricing and strategy usually do. Bookkeeping, scheduling, fulfilment and first-line support usually do not.
• Is it permanent? If the workload is a six-week project spike, use a contractor. Hiring for a temporary peak creates a permanent cost.

If the answer points to hiring, the next question is arithmetic. If the role frees up hours you will spend on revenue-generating work, does the expected additional revenue exceed the fully loaded cost? If it frees time for delivery, how many additional units must be sold to cover the hire? Write the number down. It becomes your hiring target for the first quarter.

The true cost of an employee

Cost element	Typical range
Base salary	The starting point
Payroll taxes and statutory contributions	10% to 25% of salary, country dependent
Benefits, insurance and pension	5% to 20%
Equipment, software, phone, workspace	Frequently $2,000 to $6,000 in year one
Recruitment: advertising, agency, screening time	Commonly 10% to 20% of salary
Onboarding and training time	Roughly 5% to 15% of a founder's hours for a month

Add it up and a $60,000 salary commonly costs $78,000 to $85,000 in the first year. That is not a reason not to hire. It is a reason to know the number before you sign, so a surprise payroll period does not become a cash crisis.

Link it back to contribution margin. If your average sale contributes $80, covering a $6,500 monthly fully loaded cost requires about 81 additional sales a month, or four extra sales every working day. If that is obviously achievable, the hire is likely to pay for itself. If it is not, you are proposing to work harder to stand still.

Writing a role that attracts the right person

Job ads full of adjectives attract applicants who excel at writing applications. Ads built on outcomes attract people who have done the work.

Structure the description in four parts:

• The outcome. What will be measurably better in three months? For example, "invoices out within 24 hours of delivery, receivables under 35 days".
• The work. The honest day-to-day, including the unglamorous parts. If 60% of the job is data entry, say so.
• The first ninety days. A short plan: weeks one and two learning, weeks three to six owning the process, weeks seven to twelve improving it.
• How success is measured. Two or three metrics, no more. People manage what they can see.

One further piece of honesty is worth more than a higher salary: the constraints. Say that the systems are half-built, that you work in a particular way, and that there is no HR department. The best candidates for a small business are people energised by building, and they will self-select out if you mislead them.

Interviewing for judgement

For a first hire, general judgement beats narrow expertise. Ask for specific past situations rather than hypotheticals:

• "Tell me about a time you found a mistake that was not yours. What did you do?" Reveals ownership.
• "Describe a process you improved. What changed and how did you know?" Reveals whether they notice inefficiency and measure results.
• "When did you last ask for help, and how did you decide it was time?" Distinguishes confidence from arrogance.
• "What would you want to know about our business in your first week?" Shows curiosity and preparation.

Give a small paid work sample. A short real task, paid at a fair hourly rate, tells you more than three interviews and it respects the candidate's time. It also lets you see their communication style, which for a first hire is as important as their skill.

Onboarding that pays for itself

Most first hires fail at onboarding, not selection. The pattern is familiar: a founder with no time hands over a login and a vague brief, the new person flounders, and both conclude the hire was wrong.

• Write down the process before they start. Even a rough checklist cuts ramp time dramatically.
• Book the training time in your calendar. If it is not scheduled, it will not happen.
• Assign one clear owner of their onboarding. Usually you, for the first hire.
• Set a thirty-day check-in with three questions: what is working, what is unclear, and what would you change?
• Give them one measurable responsibility in week one. Owning something small builds confidence faster than days of shadowing.

Budget for a dip. In month one your output typically falls, because your time is going into teaching. That dip is an investment, and it is far cheaper than the alternative of hiring again in three months.

When the hire is not working

Give specific feedback in writing, with a clear success measure and a date. Most underperformance is a system problem: unclear expectations, no checklist, or a role that was designed around tasks nobody had documented. If a documented improvement plan does not move things within one to two months, act decisively. Keeping a mis-hire to avoid an awkward conversation costs more than the conversation, both in money and in the morale of everyone else watching the standard slide.