How to Hire Employees in 14 Simple Steps
If you're reading about how to hire employees, you must be ready to move your business to your next significant milestone. Congratulations! Hiring staff is critical to growing your company, whether you're hiring your first or your hundredth person.
If you want the hiring process to go smoothly, you’ll need to approach each part of the procedure separately, just like when you launch a business. The hiring steps all fit into the following sections:
Before Hiring
How to Hire Employees
After Hiring
In short, before hiring covers legal matters, how to hire employees covers finding the right people, and after hiring covers additional legal issues.
Once you’ve tested and standardized your process, you can use this same three-part plan any time you need to hire new employees. No matter how much the world of business changes, how you accept credit card payments, or what your business model looks like, you’ll still need to know how to hire employees.
Before Hiring
Some of these steps are going to be most useful for the small business hiring their first employees, but everyone should go over them.
Step 1: Set Up Your EIN
If you don’t have your EIN (employer identification number), now’s the time to set it up. The EIN is a nine-digit number that will identify your business and allow you to start hiring workers legally. You'll start with the IRS website, which is their preferred method of application, but you can also apply via fax, phone, or snail mail.
For those who still need to obtain business licenses and permits, you’ll need to do that before getting your EIN.
Step 2: Write Your Job Description
Before you start the hiring process, you’ll also want a great job description to attract top talent. If you don’t know how to write a job description, you might want to save yourself the time and outsource this step. This is one of the most critical parts of learning how to find good employees—extraordinary talent will look for excellent job descriptions.
Step 3: Decide Who Will Handle Recruiting
Recruiting is a time-consuming process that requires you to advertise the job, communicate with candidates, answer questions, interview/screen applicants, and inform unsuccessful candidates. If you’re too busy for all of this, you’ll need to delegate it.
Step 4: Set Up Tax Records
No hiring guide is complete without information about setting up records for withholding taxes. You’ll need to file paperwork for the following employment tax forms:
Federal Wage and Tax Statement
Federal Income Tax Withholding
State Tax Withholding
IRS Form 940
You don't want to handle all of this after you hire your employees. While you will need each person's employee number (or SSN) for reporting purposes, that comes later. This is about getting your tax records in place before hiring workers.
How to Hire Employees
Step 5: Find Your Candidates
Start finding candidates by asking your best employees for referrals. Never rely only on referrals (this can lead to a less diverse workplace), but they're an excellent place to begin. Then you'll want to cast a wider net by posting your job description on sites like LinkedIn, Indeed, Idealist, and even Craigslist.
Make sure your post includes a statement identifying you as an Equal Opportunity Employer. Also, consider using blind recruitment, where your applicants’ names, education, and years of experience are hidden to overcome unconscious bias.
Step 6: Conduct Interviews
If you have a team, select at least three people from your business to conduct interviews and then begin reaching out to the top candidates. This protects diversity, but isn’t a big deal if you’re hiring your first employees right now. You might want to schedule a quick phone interview with each person first to ensure they’re still interested and a good fit.
Next, you're ready to schedule a video or in-person interview with those who passed your phone interview stage. In-person meetings are usually saved for the last stage of hiring. This makes sure that the candidate is as great as they seem from the phone and video interviews.
During this step, don’t forget to verify employee work eligibility if you haven’t already.
Step 7: Select the Best Person for the Job
While keeping your other top candidates on a shortlist, select the best person for the job by conferring with everyone involved in your hiring process. Look at their specific skills and how they performed during their interview to determine who would be best.
Before making an offer to your candidate, this is the time to run a background check, contact prior employers, and check their references.
Step 8: Write a Job Offer
Write a clear job offer to deliver to the candidate. This avoids confusion surrounding how much the role pays, when it starts, and what it entails. If you’re outsourcing the hiring process, this will be easy, but if not, you'll want to put your best writer to the task.
Once the job offer is complete, deliver it to the candidate and wait to see if they accept. Don't be surprised if you must enter negotiations surrounding time-off, salary, training, and remote work options. If your first candidate still refuses the offer, move to your next choice and start back at the previous step.
After Hiring
Step 9: Report Your New Hire
New hire reporting is critical. You’ll need to report new hires to your state’s labor agency per state requirements. You must also report rehired employees.
Step 10: Set Up Worker’s Compensation Insurance
Most states require employers to have an insurance policy for employees who become injured or ill due to workplace exposure. Review your state's requirements and look for a plan that fits your business while staying within them.
Step 11: Create Your Payroll System
With even one employee, you'll need a payroll system to take care of withholding taxes and making sure they get paid. Choosing an established payroll service is the most efficient and reliable method for most business owners how don’t know how to set up payroll.
Some payroll services will even handle new hire reporting, workers' compensation insurance integration, and other helpful options.
This is also an excellent time to set up any employee benefits you’ve offered.
Step 12: Order Workplace Posters
The United States Department of Labor requires that employers display notices in their workplace to inform employees of rights and responsibilities. These posters are available for free electronically, or you can purchase them from third-party providers.
Step 13: Have Your Employee Fill Out Required New Hire Documents
Each employee will need to fill out new employee forms, including IRS Form W-4 and their Withholding Allowance Certificate. You’ll also need to complete Form I-9 and for your new employee. Once these forms are completed, store them in the filing system that you created in Step 4.
Step 14: Plan Your Training and Orientation
You’re finally ready to start planning your training and orientation. Whether you’re teaching a cashier to use your card reader or a financial manager to handle your invoice software, training is an essential part of orientation. You might also consider designing a new employee handbook to make sure there isn't any confusion for company culture or guidelines.
Your handbook might include information about how your virtual terminal works, how to access company cloud software and anything else the employee will need to succeed. This is the perfect place to include your new employee checklist.
Bonus! Step 15: Set Up New Employees on SumUp
The SumUp Air Lite Card Reader enables small businesses to accept credit, debit and contactless payments with a single device.
If you use SumUp for credit card processing, you’ll also need to set up your new employee accounts. Our employee accounts allow each employee to log in and be analyzed individually, all on the same bank account.
Your employees won't be able to log in to your SumUp Account, change your account info, or add a separate bank account. They will only be able to accept credit card payments and check their sales history using the SumUp app.
The following four steps will help you create new employee accounts:
Visit sumup.me to log into your SumUp account.
Select “Employee” in the left-hand menu.
Choose “Add new employee” from the upper right corner.
Create the employee’s login (email address) and password that they’ll use to access SumUp.
In Conclusion
Hiring new employees doesn't have to be difficult, especially if you follow our hiring guide. Now that you have a good handle on how to hire employees, the process will be more comfortable with each subsequent hire.
If you’re looking to streamline all aspects of your business, consider including the SumUp Card Reader in your process. We offer transparent pricing, excellent customer support, and easy-to-use software that keeps business running smoothly. We also provide financial reports so you can easily track sales and even look at each employee's sales individually.
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