12 Lessons from Hiring Hundreds of Employees

Time is the most valuable wealth we possess. If you don’t know how to delegate, you’ll never be wealthy. Here are 12 lessons I’ve learned while running my recruiting firm and hiring hundreds of employees for my business and my clients’.

1. The best leaders are obsessed with controlling their time

In order to become a master delegator, you need to understand why you are delegating. It’s not just to do more, it’s to own your time. When you own your time, you have the ability to create a better quality impact.

In order to learn how to delegate well, you first need to establish why delegating is important for helping you take your business to the next level. This is the way to go from “owning a job” to owning a business.

2. Understand how to problem-solve

You need to let go of the notion that you must always be working. The biggest bottlenecks in business are overcome through the ability to problem-solve and

3. Understand what your biggest bottlenecks are

When you hear the phrase “hiring and delegating”, you’re probably going to think that it doesn’t apply to you. That you are in too hard of a business for hiring and delegating to be possible for you. This is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Everyone can benefit from hiring someone who will take care of the work that slows them down from solving higher-level business problems. The first step is to understand what those problems are. Then, you need to spring into action.

4. Don’t be afraid to invest

Short-term losses aren’t really losses if you gain knowledge, better systems, or long-term revenue from them. One of the biggest things that hold back business owners from delegation is being afraid to spend money that they’ve worked hard to earn. Invest in things like:

• Coaching

• Better Software

• New employees

• Proper training for employees

• Competitive pay (see point about incentives)

You need to take risks to win.

5. Hire away the repetitive work that clutters your calendar

Once you’ve identified your biggest bottlenecks, you’ve probably realized that they come from the “busy work” that saps your time and drains your energy. Now you know what work you are looking to hire people to do.

6. Don’t hire to grow your business

You don’t hire employees to make your business grow. You hire employees so that you can buy back your time. This makes your business grow. Entrepreneurs function best when they have time.

7. Create systems

When you start hiring to solve your business's bottlenecks, people will flock to join your business. This is when you need to think smart. If someone comes into your business with no playbook, they’ll create more problems than they solve.

You need to create a standard procedure for all people that come into your business. You need to create a culture, a mindset, and a standard that will make it seem like the work that you are no longer doing is still being done with the same quality as it was when you did it.

8. Incentivize good work

This is basic delegation, but it’s really important. Step outside of yourself for a moment and think about what you would want if you were taking on a role at your own company. Create a way to reward good workers. Things like:

• Benefits

• Flexibility

• Community

• Paid time off

• Competitive pay

To put it bluntly, you need to find a way to make the work that you don’t want to do appealing to someone else.

9. Become a good teacher

Building off of the systems and operating procedures that we mentioned, you need to let your employees grow proportionately with your business. This establishes a culture of continuous improvement.

10. Set goals for your employees

One of the most important things you can do when delegating work is find a way to make the work that the employees are doing competitive. Performance standards, deadlines, and more. Doing this will help you boost employee morale and performance.

One great way to do this is “test-first hiring.” In order to determine if an employee is truly going to be able to perform at your company, introduce them to the new role with a test. Do they rise to the challenge or falter?

11. Set clear personal goals

Hard truth: no one cares about the business as much as you. You need to do an inventory of your life, your company, and your goals to know that you are delegating properly.

Set goals for yourself and your business by the year, quarter, month, and week and be clear about them. If you are failing to meet your goals in and out of your business, something needs to change with your delegation.

The best CEOs know how to adapt to get the job done.

12. Trust your team

Although this might seem completely counter to the point I made above, it’s essential that you trust the people that you have chosen to delegate work to. If you don’t, you’ll just create more problems, work, and stress for yourself despite outsourcing.

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About Kyle Mau

Kyle is a serial entrepreneur who’s been building businesses for nearly 20 years, from niche sites to info products to an olive oil company. Today, he’s the founder and CEO of HireUA, a recruiting firm that helps business owners hire premium offshore talent.