How to Know If You’re Ready to Hire an Employee with Susan Gygax

Whether you like it or not, growing a business requires taking more people onboard. The thing is, it can be easy to make a mistake when it comes to the hiring process . These mishaps cost you your precious time and resources. To prevent you from wasting your time on the wrong people for your team, today’s guest shares her secrets to hiring success.

Susan Gygax, the founder of Spectacle Talent Partners, imparts wisdom from her decades of experience in talent acquisition. She talks about the questions we must ask a contractor before hiring them and how to know when we're ready to hire an employee. We also talk about the onboarding and offboarding process.

Want to find and keep the ideal candidates to help your team thrive? If you answered yes, then this episode is for you.

Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode:

Avoid hiring staff too late or too early by knowing the best time to begin your hiring process.
Find your perfect candidate for the job by asking the right questions.
Discover how you should tweak your hiring process when you're looking into hiring staff.

LISTEN NOW:

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WATCH NOW (and check out the Resources and Episode Highlights below):

Resources

Download the workbook and jot down relevant notes as you listen to/watch the show
The Influence Alliance — A business-building community for changemakers who want to build a sustainable and scalable business they love.
The Influence Alliance Free Podcast Series
Are you struggling to be known as a trusted authority in your industry? Schedule a chat with Annemarie at help@annemariecross.com.
Learn more from the specialty recruiting firm, Spectacle Talent Partners.
Connect with Susan Gygax through her email or learn more about her on LinkedIn.
Profit First by Mike Michalowicz.

Episode Highlights

[02:50] Susan's Journey

Susan is one of five children to parents who owned a family business. At first, she had no idea what she wanted to pursue.
Temping at a bank’s HR department sparked her interest. She pursued this passion and later specialised in talent acquisition.
For 20 years, she helped multiple companies with the hiring process and developing high-performing teams.
Looking back, she realises how profound her work now could have benefitted her parents’ in their family business.

[06:46] When to Begin the Hiring Process

Feeling overwhelmed and frustrated in the amount of your workload are indicators that you’ve waited too long to start the hiring process.
As CEO, you impose your own glass ceiling of growth. This happens when we stay in our business’ primary stages beyond their usefulness.

[07:48] Hiring Staff During the Primary Business Stages

The first stage is proof of concept. You explore and find out where your business stands and how you would want it to grow.
At this stage, you can hire contractors to help your business operations.
The next stage is active growth. At this point, your focus as CEO should be to work on your business instead of working in the business.

[09:14] Hiring Contractors

While the advice ‘Hire people for things you don’t want to do’ isn’t terrible, it leaves out key components in the hiring process.
Spectacle Talent Partner uses an assessment tool to identify what business owners need to do to achieve revenue goals. It is key to effectively hiring staff or contractors.
Before hiring a contractor, consider the ebbs and flows of your client stream, and make sure you have money in the bank.
The essence of a contractor relationship is transactional. You must know how they contribute to your revenue goals.
Hiring contractors are also useful for handling matters outside of your zone of genius.

[13:13] Determining Qualified Candidates

It is vital to have a clear direction of the steps you need to take towards your revenue goals.
This clarity can minimize the need for marketing. It will also help you form an analytic, rather than emotional, decision during the hiring process.
During the interview process, ask questions about specific outcomes from past clients, their deliverable timeframes, and offboarding.

[15:23] Staff Onboarding and Offboarding

Offboarding employees is not pleasant, but it’s necessary to move your business forward.
Likewise, your employees must be growing with you.
Onboarding can be challenging if business processes and systems are not properly documented. VAs can help with this task.

[19:35] How to Know If You Should Hire an Employee

Having predictable streams of income is a clear indicator that you are ready to hire an employee.
When you’re hiring an employee, it’s important to ask ‘What can I share’? rather than ‘What can I get’?
You need to have the readiness and willingness to delegate responsibilities.
When you feel ready to hire an employee, you need to understand what a full-time job in your industry is like.

[24:18] What to Avoid When Hiring Staff

You should never want to abdicate your role as CEO.
Even as you’re operating in your zone of genius, you shouldn’t ignore everything that’s happening in the back of your business.
Without an awareness of how your business operates, you’ll start to expect more and more from your employees, which is dangerous.
To avoid falling into this trap, communicate regularly and delineate deliverables that you are both accountable for.

[29:39] The Right Fit for Team Members

When creating a people strategy, it's important to consider what would serve you as the CEO best while still protecting your business.
Document processes and systems to allow people to fit into this role.
Understand what instead of who. This concept allows you to let other people fill in the role of a team member if needed.
Furthermore, it gives you room to place someone somewhere they can better grow and develop with your business.

10 Powerful Quotes

‘Your dream can only go as far as your team.’

‘When we have somebody in our business who is misaligned with our business, we're actually taking up space in their world for them to shine brilliantly someplace else.’

‘Our businesses should be the most authentic reflection of ourselves.’

‘With the contractor, you're asking, ‘What can I get,’ because it's very transactional. With the employee, the question you're asking is, ‘What can I share?’’

‘When you're ready to hire an employee, having that understanding of what a full-time job looks like in the market relevant to your business is a really key conversation to have.’

‘We never want to abdicate our role as CEO. So what that would look like in practical terms is you are basically doing the one thing in your zone of genius.’

‘There should be regular deliverables, weekly, monthly, quarterly, at the very least, that you are both accountable to each other for so that you can start to create this synergy, where it's not just you plus one, equaling two, it's you plus one equaling three.’

‘When we're creating that people strategy, it's very important to ask the question, what not who.’

‘Once you start documenting these systems, the ‘what,’ then the person can fit into that, and you can continue to expand.’

‘Outside of ourselves and what we do, what we bring as part of our businesses, that is the most important business decision we can make is the people that we bring alongside us.’

About Susan

Susan Gygax is the founder and CEO of Spectacle Talent Partners. A specialist when it comes to the hiring process, Susan helps entrepreneurs from all over the country to find the right candidates for the right job. Her decades of experience in human resources and as a talent leader lets her engage with entrepreneurs, experts and leaders and build amazing teams with them.

Founded on the belief that people are the single most significant resource of a company, Spectacle Talent Partners aims to help business owners through the hiring process. They provide customized recruiting services and hiring strategies to help businesses reach their goals. Susan's expertise guides CEOs as they face the challenges of the recruitment process head-on.

Learn more about Susan and Spectacle Talent Partners on their website and connect with her through email and LinkedIn.

Enjoy This Podcast?

Hiring, onboarding, and keeping staff happy is a critical function in your business. Making mistakes in any step of the way can be costly not only for you but also for your contractors and employees.

But with Susan’s advice, you can make better decisions around your hiring process. If you enjoyed today's episode of Ambitious Entrepreneur Podcast, then hit subscribe now!

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To staying ambitious,

Annemarie