Preparing to Hire #1
Getting the business tidy enough that your first hire can succeed.
Notes from Randall Harper. Thirty years working alongside owner-operators, executives and boards — companies of all types and sizes — across entertainment & media, hospitality, service based business, lifestyle businesses, financial services, retail and not-for-profit, in Australia, Asia, the United Kingdom and the United States. What follows is the thinking I keep returning to.
Hiring will not fix chaos
Owners often hire because they are overwhelmed, hoping the new person will absorb the disorder. They will not. A new hire walking into an undocumented, undisciplined business inherits the chaos and, within a few months, leaves or becomes part of it. The first hire works when the business is ready for them — not when the owner can no longer cope.
The pre-hire checklist
- At least three core processes documented well enough for a stranger to follow.
- A clean job management or CRM system the new person can be onboarded into.
- Pricing and quoting standards the new person does not have to invent.
- A defined role — what they own, what they do not, who they go to with questions.
- Twelve months of cash visibility, so the wage commitment is genuinely affordable.
Hire for the gap, not the dream
It is tempting to hire someone to take over the parts of the business you dislike — admin, scheduling, follow-up. Often the right first hire instead does what you currently do best, freeing you to do what only you can. Decide deliberately which one this hire is, because the trade-off shapes the next three years of the business.
The first 90 days
Plan the first ninety days before the new person starts. Week one: orientation and shadowing. Weeks two to four: paired work, with you reviewing every output. Weeks five to eight: independent work, with weekly checkpoints. Weeks nine to twelve: ownership, with a formal review at the end. A vague start is the single most common reason first hires do not work out.
Letting go on purpose
The hardest part of the first hire is not finding them; it is letting them do the work without your hands on it. Owners who micromanage their first employee either lose them or never get the leverage they hired for. The discipline is to set the standard clearly, then trust the standard, not the moment. Hiring well is, ultimately, a long exercise in deliberately letting go.
Want this as a PDF?
Tell us where to send it and we'll email you a copy to keep.
The contents of this paper are the opinion of Clear Point Advisory only. Readers should rely on their own judgement and obtain professional advice appropriate to their circumstances.