What Do You Need Done?

After deciding to hire someone, you need to determine exactly what you want the person to do for your business. Don't just think of it as "a little bit of everything" — try to narrow it down into specific tasks that you want taken off your hands. Before you start the process of hiring, figure out what you want — it's the best way to make sure that you get the right person for the right job.

Getting the right person. If you invest in an expensive piece of equipment for your business, you will probably compare prices. You will check with several vendors, compare features and prices, and then make a decision. When you buy clothes, you look for just the right fit. The same effort and care should go into making sure that you get just the right person for your job and that the fit is the best that you can find.

There are three steps in the process to finding out what you need in an employee, and each can be as complicated or as simple as you want:

• doing a job analysis to gather information and make decisions about the work to be done
• determining what the job qualifications for the position are
• creating a job description to document what the job will entail