How to hire your first employee | PAYE Guide

Taking on your first employee is a big deal. If you’ve decided your business is big and busy enough to support a new staff member, things are looking up. Congratulations to you! Here’s our guide on how to hire your first employee to ensure the process goes well and both you and your new start, hit the ground running. 

Before you start – Is it time to take on staff?

It’s really worthwhile ensuring your decision makes sense for you and your business before investing time and money in this process. For example, is there enough work for a full-time or part-time position, should you employ directly or consider sub-contractors, consultants or outsourcing the work? 

There are lots of pay and employment issues to consider too and we find the HMRC advice on this to be comprehensive and really useful, here’s the link. https://www.gov.uk/employ-someone.

Who is your ‘right’ employee? 

If business pressures have meant you’ve thought ‘I wish there were two of me’ you might need to really think hard about the person you need to employ. You’ll need to find someone with the right skill sets and qualities to match the role and that might not be easy. Equally, it may be you need someone to carry out tasks which are outside your own preferred work type (production and admin being good examples). 

It’s really helpful to know exactly what the job requires and what kinds of skills or qualifications suit it best. From this, you can draw up a job description and applicant specifications. Within the job description be sure to include what the tasks of the job are, where and when these will be carried out and the package on offer (make sure you make the job offer enticing!). Taking time to get this right will mean you’re more likely to make a successful hire of someone who’ll fit into the role well and stay on your team.

Your job description should make it clear what qualifications the applicant will need, their experience and skills. Some jobs will depend entirely on these things where specialisation is required ie within the law or engineering etc. It’s helpful to show both these essential requirements and also any useful or desirable skills such as being able to work remotely or having an awareness of certain software packages etc. Take your time again to get this right before you proceed.

Recruitment. 

The recruitment process is more complicated than it first appears. You’ll need to be aware of not introducing anything discriminatory in your processes and consider equality and diversity appropriately. We feel the best independent resource to help with this is ACAS’s advice here. 

You may have someone in mind for the job, you might advertise in a local or trade paper and of course, Jobcentre plus are also a resource. It can be useful for professional roles to look on LinkedIn for suitably qualified applicants or use one of the many physical or internet-based agencies that specialise in recruitment. 

Don’t forget to also share your vacancy on social media! Someone who is already familiar with your brand and work might be a great start.

A process should be in place for dealing with applications, sorting and sifting to decide who’ll attend for an interview and/or skills testing. You’ll want to consider points such as the applicant’s right to work in the UK and the need for a DBS in some settings. 

Interviewing.

Now you’ve got your list of candidates, it’s time to start the interview process. You may be just as nervous as your candidates (especially if this is your first time), but don’t be. The key is preparation. 

Avoid any eye-roll-worthy questions such as “if you could be any animal, what would you be?”. Instead, ask questions about their previous experiences in similar roles or what interests them about the position you’re offering. It might help to write down a checklist – but make sure you don’t sit ticking things off during the interview as you’ll make your candidate feel uneasy. Instead, write notes and tick these off later.

Lastly; be confident and conversational. You are selling yourself just as much as the candidates and you want them to feel enthusiastic about potentially working for you. 

Hiring.

Hopefully, your efforts have paid off and you now have a new team member to help your business grow. Getting that new hire onboard takes a little effort and will require a contract drawn up and signed (some online resources are available but it’s best to have your solicitor check these). 

Ensure you have a  salary agreed, employers liability insurance in place, PAYE and pensions arrangements specified, HMRC notified etc. Some of these processes really tie into using the expertise and capacity of your accountant, of course – it’s something we do all the time! 

Do make sure you make and keep records of your employment process, right-to-work documents etc. In HR and legal terms, making and storing these correctly is essential. 

Conclusion.

Some planning and effort in hiring your first employee can be transformative for a business and we hope we’ve given soe useful pointers to help the process along. We welcome any enquiries you might have and would love to help you grow your business, contact us here to chat.