Who Should I Hire?

Okay so maybe I've given you a little bit of encouragement 0:00 to consider hiring your first employee. 0:03 If you do go down the route, the next question is, 0:06 "Well who should I hire?" 0:09 A lot of freelancers have this habit of sidestepping the issue 0:11 of hiring their first employee by working in partnership with other freelancers. 0:15 And it certainly is an option, but it does have some disadvantages 0:20 that you need to be aware of. 0:24 Firstly if you work with other freelancers, you're giving away 0:26 a big chunk of your profit margin 0:30 and none of us really want to do that. 0:32 But secondly you can find yourself turned into a glorified project manager 0:34 where you're dealing with the client and all of the associated problems 0:38 and someone else is doing the fun work that you prefer to be doing yourself. 0:42 Taking on anyone does mean a degree of management, 0:46 and you do need to be aware of that. 0:50 You can't hire an employee and expect them to completely manage themselves 0:52 and be no additional work for you whatsoever. 0:57 But that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. 0:59 And if you do decide to hire, there are certain things that you need to consider. 1:02 First of all hire to fill your weaknesses. 1:06 We have this tendency to hire a clone of ourselves, 1:09 but actually what we need is somebody that can fill in and do the jobs we hate. 1:13 For example if you're weak at doing admin, get yourself a project manager. 1:19 If you don't like doing finances, hire yourself an accountant. 1:25 You get the idea, but remember what I said earlier, 1:30 the one position you can't fill no matter how much you hate it is sales. 1:33 That is something, unfortunately, you need to be actively involved in 1:39 and cannot avoid. 1:42 Remember it's not just about the skills of the person you're hiring. 1:44 Don't become so obsessed with whether they use jQuery 1:49 or whether they know Ruby on Rails or whatever else. 1:53 There are other things to consider beyond just their skillset. 1:56 You need to hire people based on their personality and not just skills. 2:00 Afterall you're going to have to work with these people day in and day out. 2:05 So it's important that they're people you like and can get on with. 2:08 Hire like-minded people, but that doesn't necessarily mean 2:12 they need to be the same temperment as you. 2:17 It just means that you have to view the world and view work 2:19 in a vaguely similar way. 2:23 You actually could do with having people that view things 2:25 and approach things in a slightly different way to you in order to balance you. 2:29 For example, I'm very lucky in the 2 people I co-founded my company with 2:34 because they're both very different personalities to me, 2:39 although we have the same attitudes towards business. 2:42 One of my colleagues is incredibly good at dealing with detail 2:45 and making sure that things work 2:50 while I tend to be big picture, visionary kind of guy. 2:53 So we complement each other beautifully. 2:56 But my last piece of advice when it comes to hiring someone 2:59 is hire someone that likes to tinker—that likes to play with the web— 3:03 that likes to experiment and try new things. 3:09 The web is so dynamic, and things are changing so often 3:12 that hiring for a particular skillset may be relevant now, 3:15 but it won't be relevant in a year or 2 years 3:19 because things will change. 3:22 So what you need is someone who is passionate about learning, 3:23 passionate about the web, and passionate about trying new things. 3:26