About to make your first big hire? Consider these questions first

Making your first big hire is a milestone for any entrepreneur, yet many founders find recruitment among the most daunting of business tasks.

Victoria’s startup sector is an employment powerhouse and has created more than 60,000 jobs globally. Each week, scaleups face fierce competition in the quest to find the right talent.

Many entrepreneurs find themselves forced to grow a team despite never having made a recruitment decision before. That lack of experience can complicate an already challenging process.

“That first big hire often fails,” says Lorena Healey, who helps startups with recruitment strategy through her business Lorena Healey Consulting.

Healey has spent decades building high-performing teams, including eight years at Seek, where she helped the employment marketplace find the right people as the company scaled globally.

In her work with startups, she’s seen first-hand the costs of a bad hire. These include the sunk costs that comes with having to go back to the drawing board in the recruitment search, as well as the handbrake it can put on a company’s growth and the impact it can have on the morale of existing staff.

Recruiting the wrong person can also destabilise a founder’s confidence and detract from the company’s focus on new products and growth goals.

“There is one example I can think of where the CEO felt that his own reputation had really taken a hit because he had invested in the wrong guy – and it probably did have an impact,” Healey says.

When hires go wrong, it’s often because founders aren’t ready to loosen the reins of the company they started, or they haven’t got a clear vision of how a role will add to the company’s growth.

Healey says you can prepare for success by considering a few questions before searching for the perfect match.

Check your readiness

Entrepreneurs should reflect on the value that a new position will add to their business and whether they’re ready to delegate before they put up a job ad.

Too often startups hire for roles because of external feedback, like pressure from investors, without considering what the role will look like and whether they’re happy to let go of certain tasks, Healey says.

“What will that new person have responsibility for? Ask ‘What will they decide on themselves, what will they not involve me in, and what will they decide on in consultation with me?’”

If a founder can’t answer these questions about a new role, they’re not ready to hire, Healey says.

Picture your team at their best

Finding the perfect team member is about more than just matching technical skills to a role. If founders want to retain talent, they should be aiming to find employees who understand the company’s values and growth outlook.

Healey says it’s worth thinking about what leadership looks like for your specific business and asking questions during the recruitment process to uncover these values.

“Knowing what you and your leaders look like at your best, and then asking for evidence of that in an interview process, is critical,” she says.

Set your rhythms and rituals

Once you’ve brought a new employee into the business, you want to make sure they stay for the long term.

“I think the most important thing for this, and it’s so overlooked and boring to say, is having the right rhythms and rituals within the team,” Healey says.

Rhythms refer to structures that help with workflow and communication within a business, like the timing of team meetings and how information is shared.

Rituals are the actions taken within a startup to mark occasions that are important to the team, whether that’s a growth milestone or someone’s recent engagement.

“If you can’t think of the last thing your team celebrated, then there is a ritual missing.”

When a startup has a problem keeping new employees for the long term, they often haven’t built in these activities or brought the new hire into these routines, Healey says.

Get ready to scale the startup summit

Navigating the nuances of hiring will be a key focus of LaunchVic’s new founder education program Basecamp, launching in February 2025.

Participants will have access to experts like Healey who will share insights from their time shaping teams at unicorn companies.

Basecamp will help founders refine a strategic recruitment roadmap to help them attract quality executive talent and make decisions about hiring for the future, as well as their current needs.

Expressions of interest for our inaugural cohort are open until 1pm February 24 2025.

BASECAMP