One of the biggest concerns business owners have is hiring and managing employees. This is a very challenging area that all entrepreneurs face, and I can attest to that after 30 years of starting and running businesses.
Companies are run by people. The most valuable resource that businesses have is not the products or services they offer but their people. Hiring the right people, or the wrong people, has a significant impact on the success or failure of a business. So neglecting this area is at your own risk.
I believe in hiring slowly. I take my time to evaluate and interview job candidates to get to know them and assess their qualities and skills before hiring them. I also believe in firing quickly. Once I realize that I made a mistake and someone I hired is not suitable for the position, I let them go quickly, subject to what the law allows, after exhausting all options to make it work.
In the end, the goal is to find and get the right people for your company and then keep them for as long as possible, which is not long these days.
Here are 10 tips to help you navigate this difficult area: five for getting the right people to work for you and five for keeping the right people working for you.
How to Hire the Right People
Define the Qualities and Skills You Seek
It’s surprising how many entrepreneurs don’t know what they want when it comes to the talent they need for their businesses. They say, “I want this person for this job,” without considering the skills and qualities that person needs to succeed in that role.
To hire the right person for a job, you must take the time to figure out exactly what that position requires. With that knowledge, you can create an accurate job description and follow it as a roadmap when interviewing candidates.
Without a clear definition of the qualities and skills the candidate must have for a particular position, sooner or later you’ll find that the person you hired is not the right fit.
If you don’t know what you’re looking for, you won’t find it.
Post Attractive and Detailed Job Ads
Once you determine what you’re looking for and create a job description, you can post a job ad. The posting should include the job title, a job summary, specific responsibilities, location, keywords, an “about us” section, compensation information, and qualifications such as experience, education, technical skills, and soft skills.
An incomplete or confusing job ad leads to inadequate job applications that won’t help you find the right person for the job.
Use Social Media to Promote Job Vacancies
Job sites are good, but I prefer social media. I use a variety of social media channels to post jobs because it’s easy to share the posts and spread the word among relevant audiences. Social media is also less overwhelming for job candidates. (Have you seen what they have to go through to search and apply for jobs on job sites?)
I also send job postings via email to our database and ask for referrals. Don’t neglect this last part. There’s always someone who knows someone. However you choose to do it, get the word out. And remember that reaching and attracting the right people takes time and effort. So be patient and diligent.
Be Thorough in Interviews
When we receive resumes at my marketing agency, we include them in our recruitment process and start the screening and interviewing process. To successfully identify and hire the right talent, interviews must be thorough. They can be formal or informal, in a boardroom or a coffee shop, but you must review every detail (remember the roadmap?) to ensure that the person you eventually hire is right for the job and the company.
Don’t get too excited about experience, skills, and qualifications before considering corporate culture. Pay close attention to applicants’ communication styles, energy, attitudes, and values. Do they share your work ethic and corporate values? Would they integrate well with the rest of your team?
Once you find the right person for the job, then it’s your turn to sell the company, to share your vision. In the end, it’s not just about you choosing the right people, but also about the right people choosing you.
Offer Competitive Salaries and Benefits
And now comes the part of hiring that makes everyone anxious. After selecting a candidate, it’s time to talk about money and benefits. An attractive job offer includes a competitive salary, good benefits, perks, and professional development opportunities.
Established large companies can show job candidates the path their careers can take if they decide to take the job. But when you’re starting out, it’s hard to offer career advancement opportunities because the business is still small, and you don’t know when or how these opportunities will present themselves. So ask your employees to be patient with you and tell them that as the company grows, they will grow too.
I like to hire people who have an entrepreneurial spirit and want to contribute to building and evolving a business. People who work in newly started companies have the opportunity to learn and grow much faster than people who work in large established corporate companies.
Regarding compensation, keep in mind that times have changed, and although salary and benefits will always be important, the priorities of today’s job candidates are different from those of previous generations. They value flexibility, having a sense of purpose and meaning in their work, democratic corporate structures where they feel valued and heard, work-life balance, and access to mentoring and training. They want to participate in the business, be part of the solution. They want to work for companies and leaders who embrace their ideas and are open to having their ideas challenged. In other words, they are not satisfied with just doing a job and getting paid for it.
You can’t take your business to success alone, so the next time you consider what compensation to offer for a job, think beyond salary and benefits. Money isn’t everything.
And that, in a nutshell, is how to hire the right people for your company. But the challenge doesn’t end there.
Once you hire them, you have to figure out how to keep them. Employees who feel satisfied at work are more engaged, productive, and efficient, and less likely to quit, which is why effective employee management is as important as hiring the right people.
How to Manage Employees Effectively
Employee retention is good for business. Employee turnover is not.
A high turnover rate reduces productivity and causes companies to miss deadlines and lose clients. It lowers team morale as employees have to take on the workload left by departing colleagues. It damages the company’s reputation as rumors spread that it might be a bad place to work.
Moreover, employee turnover is costly. Losing an employee can cost a company between 100% and 150% of the employee’s salary, depending on the person’s level of seniority; it costs less for hourly workers and more for technical and executive positions. Turnover costs include recruitment, onboarding, training, adjustment time to reach full productivity, loss of employee engagement due to high turnover, mistakes, and negative effects on corporate culture.
What does this mean? It means that effective employee management is crucial for business survival and success.
Here are five tips on how to manage your staff as if you know what you’re doing.
Create a Good Work Environment
People quit bosses, not jobs. Often, company leaders mistreat employees, fail them, make promises they don’t keep, don’t pay attention to them, don’t listen to them, don’t include them in the process, don’t guide or mentor them. That’s why most people leave, to find someone better to work with.
As a business owner or leader in your company, it’s your responsibility to create a pleasant work environment where people feel comfortable, safe, and engaged. The work environment includes everything from company culture to management styles, from the equipment and resources available to employees to dress codes.
It also includes putting people in positions where they can excel. Remember that today’s employees want to contribute to the success of the company they work for, not just work for a paycheck. They want to know that what they do has a significant and positive impact on the business.
Sometimes I hire someone for a position only to find that the employee is not happy there. People can’t be passionate about jobs they don’t like, and without passion, they can’t do their best work. When a talented and hardworking employee is not happy and wants a change, I move that person to another position. Yes, it’s a headache for me because now I have to find someone else for that position, but it’s much worse and more costly to lose that employee.
A good work environment encourages valuable people to stay.
Set Clear Expectations and Goals from the Beginning
At the start of the employer-employee relationship, both parties should be clear about what to expect from each other. I share my “dos” and “don’ts” during the first meeting I have with new employees so they know what I expect from them. And in turn, I want to know what they expect from me.{
Expectations and goals are more crucial than ever in today’s job market, where job-hopping is the trend. Statistics show that millennials (people born between 1980 and 1996) stay in their jobs an average of 2.8 years (Zippia, 2022). They are also always looking for a better job: nine out of ten say they expect to change jobs every three years. Therefore, you can expect your employees to stay with you for only a couple of years, so make the most of that time.
I don’t consider employees as mere workers. I see our relationships as partnerships. If I’m only going to have them for two years, I set goals that employees can achieve during that time. I also strive to meet their expectations during their tenure. Many of my employees expect coaching and mentoring from me, so that’s what I do. I help them achieve their goals, knowing they will leave soon.
I believe that when people dedicate their time, part of their lives, to help me and my business grow, the least I owe them is my gratitude and loyalty. And when they leave, they do so on good terms.
Expectations go both ways. Define and communicate your expectations and goals from the beginning.


Offer Professional Development Opportunities
Recently, I was talking to a group of business owners about HR issues. They complained that their employees were not learning or improving on the job. I asked them some questions, including whether they share their business goals and figures (sales, costs, expenses) with their employees.
“Oh no. That’s confidential,” they said.
“Well, do you at least train them?” I asked.
They shook their heads.
I told them about my methods. “I always share key business information with my employees and mentor and guide them.”
“Are you crazy? If you show them everything you know, they’ll leave,” they protested.
“My fear is not that they’ll leave. My fear is that they’ll stay and not learn anything.”
How are your employees supposed to learn and improve if you don’t teach them? Learning is not magic. It’s a process of communication and education.
If you want your employees to do better on the job, you have to help them, teach them, guide them. That’s your responsibility as their leader: to help your employees succeed in their jobs.
I know my employees will leave, and that’s okay. My legacy is to teach them what I know and contribute to their professional growth. After all, what you give is what you get.
Conduct Performance Reviews
One thing younger generations value is feedback. They really, really want to know how they’re doing and what they can do to improve. Sure, you can offer occasional feedback here and there, but you also need to schedule meetings to review their performance.
Like job interviews, performance reviews can be formal or informal. The important thing is that you do them. Don’t skip them. Reviews provide the information you and your employees need to excel in their jobs.
Useful information requires honesty. To retain valuable employees, you need to know how they feel. To know how they feel, you must ask them and provide a safe space for them to be honest. You also need to be willing to listen to honest feedback. It’s the only way to know where you stand. Dishonest feedback is useless and creates problems instead of solving them.
To properly evaluate your employees, you need to measure their performance. There are a variety of metrics you can use for this purpose. For example, in my agency, I use systems that measure areas like effective project management, profitability (whether the services employees are providing generate a profit for the business), and the net promoter score (how likely our clients are to recommend the agency).
I conduct quarterly performance reviews. I ask my clients to evaluate my employees, and the company leadership conducts its own internal evaluations. Then I ask my employees to evaluate me. And I prefer to hear a painful truth than a comforting lie.
Act on Feedback
After evaluating each other and sharing feedback, it’s time to act on that feedback. It’s not enough to know what to do; you have to know how to do it. Now it’s your turn to be an effective mentor and coach. If you don’t know where to start, begin by reading some books on the subject.
Make sure your team understands that feedback and reviews are not meant to be personal. It’s a business matter. Encourage them to have a growth mindset. They should want to hear feedback. Only then can they do what they need to do to grow professionally.
Today I’ve shared with you tips on how to hire and manage your staff. Remember that it’s your job as the owner, president, or CEO of your company to be a good leader, guide your employees, and make it possible for them to pursue their full potential. Eventually, they will leave. But they will leave more developed and with more to offer the world than when they arrived. And you will have done your job.