Join us for another mini episode on leadership with our Leadership coach, Meriah Ayer, as she takes you inside of the Leadership Blueprint to share 7 questions you can ask yourself to help you discover if hiring is a fit for. Plus how to set yourself up for hiring successfully.
[Leadership] Your Brand is More Than a Logo - Listen for why your mission, vision, and values are so foundational to your firm (even if you don’t plan on building a team!!)
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Welcome back to another leadership episode on the Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast. I'm your host today, Mariah Air leadership coach and director of operations inside the Ambitious Bookkeeper brand. As always, thank you for joining me today. I do value your time and I enjoy spending it with you, and I hope that you gain value from these leadership episodes. If you gain value, please feel free to leave us a review and reach out to us also and let us know what you like, what you'd like to hear more of, and any feedback you have. We really love hearing from you, and of course, we value your feedback. The questions I hope to help you answer today as we take a peek inside the leadership blueprint is, should I hire, and if so, where in the world do I start? I'm gonna provide you actionable tips to set yourself up for hiring successfully. But first, let's start with the prestep. The prestep is to determine if in fact, you will even hire. Now this is something you and only you can determine what is best for you and your firm. So I have seven questions that you can ask yourself to help you discover if hiring is a fit for you. Now. Be real and honest about the answers. And remember, there is no right or wrong answer. These are your dreams. You are making come true, not anybody else's. So you get to decide you're the driver.
Step one:
what are your goals? Do these align with staying solo or will you need to hire to accomplish them? If you're not sure what your goals are, you need to get very clear on those first. There is a leadership episode I did that talked about dreams and goals, so you can go back and listen to that episode. It's thinker, dreamer, doer, and we'll also link that in the show notes for you. So start there if you're not sure.
Step two:
what impact do you wanna make? Revisit your mission, vision, and values. And once again, if you have not crafted your mission, vision, and values, there's several episodes that we have, uh, recorded to support you in crafting those, and we'll link those in the show notes as well. I highly encourage you. If you decide to hire, do not do so until you have crafted your mission, your vision, and your values. Those are a very pivotal, pivotal foundational piece for moving forward in hiring.
Step three:
what role do you want to have in your firm?
Step four:
how big do you want your firm to grow? You gotta ask yourself, can this be done solely by you?
Step five:
question five. Actually, these aren't steps. I'm used to giving you guys actionable steps, but these are questions that you need to answer. Okay? Question five, do you want to take on more clients? And a sub-question to that is, can you handle more on your own?
Question six:
do you want to offer additional services? And the sub-question to that one is, can you add additional services on your own?
Question seven:
how much time do you want to spend in your firm? You gotta ask yourself too with this one, is this feasible plus accomplishing your goals? Only you can answer those. These are your dreams, your goals, your visions, and your firm. So you get to decide. You get to call the shots here. If you decide hiring is for you. I'm gonna give you the top seven steps to set yourself up for hiring successfully. Step one, set a goal for when you would like to hire, and you've gotta start looking well before you are in need of your new hire. The most important tip I'm gonna give you about hiring is do not, let me emphasize, do not hire out of desperation. I wanna make sure that you heard me. Don't hire out of desperation. All right. I think you've got it, because it typically does not have a great outcome. The second tip I'm gonna give you is there are specific successful tips to hiring. So if you need support in this area, get the support you need. hiring is too valuable of an investment to just wing it. And yeah, I said investment hiring is an investment of your time, your energy, your money, and your resources. Once again, hiring is an investment of your time, energy, money, and resources. So if you are really uncertain of how to go about hiring, you feel maybe you don't have the skills to do this, get some help, get some support. And another tip is you always want to be slow to hire and quick to fire. Okay. Those are just little tips I needed to sneak in there. All right, now we're gonna go into step two, create a screening process. So to give you an idea of the rigorous process we go through for hiring, there are about seven in-depth screening tips that have many substeps that I go through in the leadership blueprint that a candidate must pass prior to us extending a job offer our chosen candidate. All right. Just kind of briefly, it includes two assessments and three phases they have to go through prior to even getting an interview. One of my favorite screening tools that we have is the initial video. This is where we ask the candidate to tell a bit about themselves and why they're interested in the position. This initial video reveals a lot about the candidate before ever connecting with them. So I'm gonna give you a few items that you wanna have in your hiring process. They are steps for potential candidates to go through where you will advertise or post the position your specific interview steps. So the steps for potential candidates to go through. Those are certain steps that you want them to go through, even before they have. Entered your world, certain steps like following directions such as email subject, a specific email subject. You want them to have a specific place where you want them to email their resume, what format you want, their resume to be in. Things like that that you wanna have in the job posting, because those are big tips to show you if these people are following directions or not. All right, so just backtracking there again, I'll rephrase that. Or re resay it. So one step is have steps for potential candidates to go through. Number two, where will you advertise or post the position? Three, what are your interview steps gonna be? And four interview questions. That's all part of your screening process. Step three, determine the role. This includes the position title, whether you're gonna hire an employee or have a contractor. And you really have to take a look at which best, fits your needs, a contractor or an employee? And before you decide, be clear on the differences and if it's even possible to hire a contractor in your state for the role that you're desiring to feel. Step four, detailed job description. You wanna clearly line out and define your ideal candidate for the position in your hiring vision. You're gonna define what role you're hiring for, what are the qualities your ideal candidate possesses? Once again, for this, go back to your values that you designed. Also, ask yourself, what skills do you need your ideal candidate to have, and how many hours a week do you want them? Step five, clear expectations for the role or KPIs in each position you hire for. It is also important to have KPIs for each role. Well, you might ask yourself, what in the world are KPIs? Good question. KPIs are key performance indicators, which major and track data over time and reveal areas for growth or improvement. Inside the leadership blueprint, I provide you with KPI examples for various positions you might hire for inside your firm. An example for a KPI, for a bookkeeper within your firm might be provides excellent customer service to the clients. Polite, professional, responds to client inquiries within 24 business hours. An example for a KPI for an administrative assistant might be a first ask resolution. They complete tasks or projects they have been asked to do and take ownership of them the first time you have asked, without a second request or any reminders. Step six. Determine the kind of boss that you're gonna be. This is really important and you've gotta be real and be honest with yourself. Some examples of what I'm talking about is what are your expectations gonna be of when work? Gets done. Do you have set hours of day, that you want them to work? If they're gonna be part-time, do you still want them to clock in every day or are you gonna let them work certain hours on certain days? Or is it gonna be daily? These are the kind of things you kind of wanna think through and what your ideal is. What is gonna be your boss brand? Are you gonna be stiff, flexible, rigid? What are your expectations gonna be? Step seven, action. Start the process that you lined out. Closing thoughts. Remember that skills are trainable, but someone's ethics and values, those are typically not adjustable. So you wanna place a priority on somebody's character. Remember, when you are hiring, you're not just hiring a robot to check off tasks. You ideally wanna find someone who will be a cultural fit and an integral part of your firm. You're not just simply filling a position. You wanna find the absolute best fit for your organization. Mark Beov said, the secret to a successful hire is this. Look for the people who want to change the world. The secret to a successful hire is this, look for the people who want to change the world. So think about how you wanna change the world. Until next time, continue to embrace ambition.