Wisdom on How and When to Hire: Intuit’s Tips for Successful Small Business Hiring
Simply Hired Staff
“If each of the small businesses in the U.S. hired just one more employee, 4.2 million jobs would be created.” Brad Smith, CEO of Intuit, opened QBConnect with this provocative statement.
QBConnect is Intuit’s annual user conference, chartered with connecting small businesses to one another and helping each other grow. The importance of employees was acknowledged several times in the conference this month. Entrepreneurs can only get so far on their own. Their connection to current and future employees is a key ingredient in their success.
So how do small businesses attract and hire the employees that can make their venture a success?
Gary Swart, a presenter at QBConnect and former CEO of ODesk, recommends that hiring managers focus on three things:
- Motivation
- Skills
- Experience
While skills are important, Swart has found motivation to be the most essential ingredient, because you can teach skills and knowledge, and experience builds over time, but motivation and personal characteristics are innate. As Swart said, “You can teach a chicken to climb a tree, but it’s better to hire a squirrel in the first place.“ Most frequently when an employee didn’t work out at his firm, it came down to a lack of motivation–either the motivation to learn new skills or to adjust detrimental behaviors.
Many small businesses are hiring young employees, who don’t have a track record of experience. In this instance, one QBConnect panel participant recommended probing for passion saying, “If the candidate is passionate about what you do, that can fuel into skill-building and motivation to learn the job quickly.”
When is the right time to hire? Jessica Alba of The Honest Company said, “You’ll know [when it’s time to hire] while working until 11 p.m. at night is exciting for the first few months, after a while you start to notice the wear and tear on yourself and other team members. You then know it’s time to bring in some additional employees to handle the workload and make sure people can spend some time with their families.”
While employees can help lighten your load, they do also require payroll processes and compliance to employment laws. An abundance of resources on hiring and managing employees from Intuit can be found here.
As QBConnect closed, Sekou Andrews, a popular motivational speaker and entrepreneur, reminded the audience of small businesses “None of us have to be a self-made success alone.”
When you are ready to hire, you are not alone in that process either. Simply Hired’s do-it-yourself hiring solution Simply Post makes hiring your next employee fast and easy. Learn more about how to hire quality candidates for your small business today.
