Don't Waste the Chaos

Hiring Your First (or Fifth) Employee? Watch This First!

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Description

If you're a solopreneur getting ready to hire your first employee — or a small business owner who's hired a few people but never really built a system around it — this episode is going to save you from the mistakes that cost the most time, money, and frustration. Most small business owners either skip the HR foundation entirely or wing it one hire at a time, and then wonder why their people aren't performing the way they hoped. The answer almost always comes back to the foundation — and this episode gives you the eight-area framework to build it right from the start.

In this episode, you'll learn:

  1. How to build a hiring and recruitment process that works — why using ChatGPT or Claude to generate your job description (with your business type, state, and role specifics included in the prompt) will produce something more professional than most small businesses have ever used, how to set up a structured three-stage interview process (written questionnaire, 60-second video clip, then live interview), why asking candidates to send a short video before you schedule an interview lets you evaluate communication skills before you've spent a minute of your time, and why structured interview questions eliminate bias and make sure you're not just hiring the most charming person in the room
  2. What a real onboarding program looks like at a small business — how Kerri onboarded her marketing coordinator through a multi-week structured program with her EA, broken into specific segments covering technology setup, timesheet tracking, team meeting expectations, branding guidelines, social media vision, and 90-day goals — why you should set clear expectations for what success looks like in the first 30, 60, and 90 days before you ever let someone start changing things, and why a handwritten note sent to their home costs almost nothing and communicates everything
  3. How to build an employee reward and recognition program on a small business budget — why remote work and flexible scheduling are compensation in their own right and should factor into how you think about pay, how the lifestyle spending account model works ($350 per year per employee gives them access to gym memberships, health care plans from the marketplace, therapy, teen coaching, and wellness tools), why documenting a $2,500 annual growth and development budget for your team will produce more results than leaving it undefined, and what consistent non-monetary recognition looks like in practice
  4. Why employee satisfaction, engagement, and policies aren't optional even when you're small — how to run anonymous surveys through SurveyMonkey with a team of three, why sharing your monthly prospect list with your team in your regular meetings gives them business context that makes them better at their roles, why consistent handbook enforcement builds trust faster than almost anything else, and how to approach legal compliance without spending a fortune
  5. Leadership development, talent management, and benefits administration for small business — why succession planning doesn't require a software or a spreadsheet (Kerri's approach was simply asking her first hire whether she wanted to go deep on EA work or marketing as the business grew), how to encourage a decision-making framework by modeling it in real time through how you respond to your team's research, and why wellness culture doesn't have to be expensive — it starts with modeling it yourself on your own team calls

Chapter Markers:

If you're ready to stop winging your HR and start building the foundation your business actually needs, the free HR Audit is the fastest way to see exactly where you stand across all eight of these areas: saltandlightadvisors.com/hraudit

Resources to keep building:

🎯 Take the free HR Audit — Score your HR systems in 5 minutes and see exactly where your gaps are. 👉 saltandlightadvisors.com/hraudit

🎙️ Listen to Don't Waste the Chaos — The podcast for small business owners building strong people operations. 👉 kerrimroberts.com/podcast

📖 Get The HR Easy Button — Kerri's book on building HR systems that actually work for small businesses. 👉 https://amzn.to/4cPyrFh

✉️ Subscribe to the newsletter — Weekly HR insights for founders, in your inbox every Monday. 👉 saltandlight.myflodesk.com/saltandlightadvisors

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Need fractional HR support or want to talk through a specific challenge? 👉 saltandlightadvisors.com/contact

Ready to build foundational HR systems on your own? 👉 saltandlightadvisors.com/hrfoundations

Connect with Kerri: 📷 Instagram: instagram.com/kerrimroberts 💼 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kerrimroberts 🐎 Hippo Creek Farm on Instagram: instagram.com/hippocreekfarm

Episode-specific resources mentioned:

Full show notes + transcript: kerrimroberts.com/dontwastethechaos/episode-54-hiring-your-first-employee

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