By David Stamper, NPI, Inc.’s President & CFO

So your business has grown to the point that you simply have too much work and can’t do it all yourself—congratulations! This is a great problem to have, but hiring employees to help your business grow can be daunting. Whether you’re bringing on your first employee or your 10th, it’s important to follow a few simple guidelines to avoid bad hires and set your new employee on a path to success.

Define the role you’re hiring for.
Before you even start thinking about looking at resumes, you need to know exactly what position you’re trying to fill. This starts by defining what your new hire will be in charge of and what their day-to-day responsibilities will be. It helps to be as specific as possible at this point—if you’re hiring another inspector, you’ll want to include details about what they’ll be expected to do in the field, like climbing ladders, going into crawlspaces or operating specialized equipment. If you’re hiring a marketing person, be clear about which marketing and social media platforms they should be familiar with (Google AdWords, Facebook, Instagram, etc.) and what you want them do be able to do, whether that’s writing ad copy, attending industry events or visiting real estate offices.

Decide on compensation.
Once you’ve written your job description, you have to decide how much you’re willing to pay someone to perform the tasks you’ve outlined. This may not be an easy question to answer, but a good way to approach it is to ask yourself, “how much more valuable will this person make my company?” If your employee will work directly to bring more money into the business, say by doubling the number of inspections you can perform or increasing your referral sources by 30 percent, you can easily calculate their hourly wage as a percentage of that additional income, with incentives or bonuses for hitting pre-determined goals.

If your new employee will be playing more of an administrative or support role, it can be more difficult to put a dollar amount on what they bring to the business. For these types of employees, it’s helpful to look at how much money they save you. Determine what it would cost you if they weren’t part of the team, and base their wage on this figure. Here are a few compensation models that we’ve found to work especially well for the property inspection business.

For Additional Inspectors:

For Marketing Employees:

Ultimately, how much you pay your employee will be determined by a couple of factors:

Set your compensation too low and you won’t attract qualified candidates. Set it too high, and you might find your profits shrinking. To get an idea of what others with similar job titles earn in your area, you can use sites like PayScale.com to gauge the sweet spot for your compensation offer.

Find your candidates.
After you have an idea of how much you’d pay your ideal hire, you have to find them! Start by asking your current trusted employees if they know anyone who’d fit the role well. These kinds of referrals are great because they’re essentially pre-screened and reduce the time you spend coming through giant piles of resumes.

If you’re hiring your first employee, though, you can start by posting your listing on job search sites like Indeed, ZipRecruiter or LinkedIn. These sites work especially well for hiring marketing professionals and other office support staff.

Ace the interview process.
The interview isn’t just a time to go over your potential employee’s qualifications—if you go into the interview with a clear strategy in place, you’ll also be able to tell a lot about their personality and how they’ll get along with your existing company culture. Here are a few guidelines to get your strategy going:

Get your paperwork together.
You’ve found your perfect match, but where do you go from there? Before they complete even an hour of work, make sure that your file of necessary paperwork is complete. The U.S. Department of Labor instructs every employer to maintain the following items of record:

In addition to these records, you’ll also want to make sure that your new hire’s tax paperwork is in order. As an employer you’re responsible for a number of different taxes related to hiring an employee, as well as making sure the correct paperwork is filed with state and federal agencies. Here’s a breakdown of the documents you’ll need for each employee:

Set clear goals and benchmarks for success.
Even talented employees can flounder if you don’t provide goals to help them measure success. Incremental, measurable goals help the company grow and thrive on a day-to-day basis and give your employees a sense of accomplishment as they work toward them. Having everyone on the same page is more than about hitting goals, though—you also want your employees to keep their eyes on the big picture, the “why” of your business. Whether it’s helping people make smart real estate decisions or protecting families by identifying defects in a home, your employees should share your company’s vision.