Hiring an employee, how to minimise risk?

Altbiz

Hello,
We're looking to hire an employee.

Up until now we haven't had to follow the standard process for hiring as our staff came from interns or freelancers.

Now we want to advertise for someone to come onboard in a part time capacity to fulfil a marketing role. This'll be our first time doing this so we have some basic questions!

Overall we want to keep our risk low here (but at the same time not discourage a good candidate).

We were thinking of a lower salary but good bonus structure (what kind of % would be standard here would anyone know, maybe 10-15% of new contracts earned?)

If things don't go well we'd want to be able to cease the arrangement with minimal fuss - with a probation period, are you able to terminate employment without having to go through any long winded process?

At the same time we'd want the person to stick around long enough to settle into the role and get good results - are contract terms generally just used to define salary, and do employees have any obligation to the role within the contract period? I know they can quit at any stage they like, but besides temporary loss of earnings would most employees seek to honour a contract even if they weren't 100% happy for whatever reason?

Very inexperienced with all of this as you can tell, any advice much appreciated.

antoinolachtnai

You are talking about marketing, not sales, to be clear?

What is so special about your company that you think a well qualified candidate would leave a job to accept a lower salary from you? They are taking as big a chance as you, maybe bigger.

How would you calculate the bonus? Realistically, the sales are going to lag the hard work by months, maybe longer.

I know nothing about you or your business, but I think you should outsource your marketing for now to an agency, or since you are experienced dealing with freelancers, why not get a freelancer?

Axwell

Your post says marketing person but your hiring strategy and salary ideas say sales person. What tasks are you hiring this marketing person to do?

Altbiz

Thanks for the replies. Should have clarified - the person would be providing marketing services for our clients, rather than marketing our own biz.

Axwell

So this person would be employed by you and then would be doing marketing for your clients. So basically marketing is a service you are looking to offer to clients? I am assuming then you are a web design company or digital agency of some sort - would be good if you clarified to give some perspective.

Why then would you be looking to pay them a bonus structure based on contracts earned? They are working with existing clients, they are not the ones gaining new clients (this is a sales persons job). Sorry, not seeing the connection to a marketing role. What tasks are you hiring the person to do, what is their role or job in the company as its coming across as sales but you are saying they will be providing marketing services for clients.

Low salary, part time job but expected to get good results or else will be terminated after probation. On that alone you are not likely to find someone well qualified, they will be busy working in a full time job. Cheap, well qualified and fast results...you are never going to get all 3 together, 2 at best.

Altbiz

So this person would be employed by you and then would be doing marketing for your clients. So basically marketing is a service you are looking to offer to clients? I am assuming then you are a web design company or digital agency of some sort - would be good if you clarified to give some perspective.

Hey thanks again for the reply. Yes that's all correct, we're a web design company and we're looking to take someone on to provide services for our clients.

Why then would you be looking to pay them a bonus structure based on contracts earned? They are working with existing clients, they are not the ones gaining new clients (this is a sales persons job). Sorry, not seeing the connection to a marketing role. What tasks are you hiring the person to do, what is their role or job in the company as its coming across as sales but you are saying they will be providing marketing services for clients.

Part of their role will be to engage with existing clients who don't get any marketing services with us, so there would be a bit of a sales/marketing cross over.

We're not big enough to have absolutely exclusive roles. We try and keep things as segregated as possible for efficiency/clarity sakes, but we're still small enough that there's a bit of a mix of roles from person to person at times.

The new employee wouldn't be leading the sales process for the most part, but they may lead the second phase of it where it might involve, for example, the planning of a marketing strategy and the costs associated therein, which would include a consultation with the client to determine their needs.

I'd like someone motivated in this aspect because there's very good potential there, and the right candidate should see that, so I thought a bonus could be a good incentive. Maybe others would disagree though?

Low salary, part time job but expected to get good results or else will be terminated after probation. On that alone you are not likely to find someone well qualified, they will be busy working in a full time job. Cheap, well qualified and fast results...you are never going to get all 3 together, 2 at best.

We're hoping to attract someone whose preference is to work part-time. They may want to work 2-3 days a week and have more time at home, for example.

Axwell

Imo its a tough sell the way you are looking at it. The client should already know the costs involved from the sales person for the various different types of strategy - "Here's how much a social marketing plan costs per month, here's how much a PPC campaign costs per month". After that it comes down to their marketing spend on ads etc.

The marketing persons role is how best to use that marketing spend on different ad types, coming up with the targetting, coming up with the copy for the ads etc. Not going and selling it during a consultation where you then want to offer them a bonus based on uptake.

Again imo if you want someone part time they should be focused on the campaigns for the 2-3 days they work for you, not out trying to seal the deal. If someone is paying for a marketing campign for the month, multiplied by a number of clients then your employee is going to be busy enough the 2-3 days working on those to make sure the client sees a return on their money.

It may be worth considering outsourcing it or working with a freelancer as was mentioned above. I think if you want to hire someone you really need to nail down what they will be doing and what results you expect as I think your expectations will never be met with the current plans you have in mind with someone part time and hoping for them to be motivated and get the kind of results you want. Outsourcing or working with a freelancer also lets you avoid the concerns of an employee within the company in terms of the contract side of things and everything else that comes with taking someone on.

Thoie

It sounds like you're reaching the size where you need some good HR advice. You've already got a few people on staff, and looking to hire at least one more. Regardless of where the original people came from, you need to start looking at formal employment contracts for everyone, specific job descriptions, and making sure you're following all regulations (working time act, etc).

It's a steep learning curve when a company grows from "a few buddies" to "a real business", but muddling through at this stage will leave you open to problems further down the line (e.g. someone accuses you of unfair dismissal, and you don't have the paperwork to back you up showing that you went through a fair procedure).

Citizen's Information has some of the basic obligations that are worth reading through, but it might be worth the money to pay for a bit of advice from one of those "contract HR" companies - google "employment rights ireland" and a few will pop up in the results, along with links to CI, NERA, etc.

Altbiz

Thanks again for the replies

Axwell wrote: »

Imo its a tough sell the way you are looking at it. The client should already know the costs involved from the sales person for the various different types of strategy - "Here's how much a social marketing plan costs per month, here's how much a PPC campaign costs per month". After that it comes down to their marketing spend on ads etc.

The marketing persons role is how best to use that marketing spend on different ad types, coming up with the targetting, coming up with the copy for the ads etc. Not going and selling it during a consultation where you then want to offer them a bonus based on uptake.

Again imo if you want someone part time they should be focused on the campaigns for the 2-3 days they work for you, not out trying to seal the deal. If someone is paying for a marketing campign for the month, multiplied by a number of clients then your employee is going to be busy enough the 2-3 days working on those to make sure the client sees a return on their money.

Very valid points. However the marketing person would likely only spend 2-3 hours a week participating in meetings or being involved in the sales process in general. The sale would be lead by someone else, but if for example someone was interested in a marketing campaign it'd make sense for the marketing person to participate in the meeting to assist in the sale as well as learn more about the client's requirements and what type of campaign would be suitable, etc. Otherwise the rest of the sales process would be

The rest of the week would be actually working on client's campaigns etc.

Axwell wrote: »

It may be worth considering outsourcing it or working with a freelancer as was mentioned above. I think if you want to hire someone you really need to nail down what they will be doing and what results you expect as I think your expectations will never be met with the current plans you have in mind with someone part time and hoping for them to be motivated and get the kind of results you want. Outsourcing or working with a freelancer also lets you avoid the concerns of an employee within the company in terms of the contract side of things and everything else that comes with taking someone on.

We've tried both outsourcing and working with freelancers and having gone through a number of providers we haven't found it to be great at all. Our clients haven't been getting the level of attention from outside providers that we would like, and working with an outside provider makes the sales process very clunky. Thankfully we do have a few active accounts still so there'll be a base of revenue there for a new employee to work from and their salary will obviously be offset somewhat by the savings we'll make from not having to pay the outsourced company.

Thoie wrote:

It sounds like you're reaching the size where you need some good HR advice. You've already got a few people on staff, and looking to hire at least one more. Regardless of where the original people came from, you need to start looking at formal employment contracts for everyone, specific job descriptions, and making sure you're following all regulations (working time act, etc).

It's a steep learning curve when a company grows from "a few buddies" to "a real business", but muddling through at this stage will leave you open to problems further down the line (e.g. someone accuses you of unfair dismissal, and you don't have the paperwork to back you up showing that you went through a fair procedure).

Citizen's Information has some of the basic obligations that are worth reading through, but it might be worth the money to pay for a bit of advice from one of those "contract HR" companies - google "employment rights ireland" and a few will pop up in the results, along with links to CI, NERA, etc.

Good advice thanks. I was planning on just figuring it out as we go but probably not the best idea at all.

antoinolachtnai

From reading the detail, I have changed my understanding of your requirements.

I now think that what you actually want to do is set up a small marketing agency to capitalize on leads you have available to you.

This is a very difficult thing to do for even a seasoned person in the area, and as you ascertain, very risky.

I do not think you can expect to set up a marketing agency of any quality with just one person, especially if you need to recruit the key person.

I would tread carefully.

lastusername

As Antoin alludes to above, it's a big step and I'd come at it from a different angle. I'd get out there and speak to at least a couple of agency owners about how they grew the online marketing function within their business. You'll get a better feel for what's required then, otherwise you're going in with no experience and hiring an actual employee is a big deal.

Could work out very expensive compared to working with freelancers or contractors who aren't entitled to paid holidays, sick leave, pension (I believe that's mandatory now), and so on. It's all about getting a qualified and experience person but you'd need to ask why would they work for you when they can get a high salary with a bigger and more established company elsewhere.

In that regard it's as much about selling the opportunity and your company as much as anything else (even the Googles of the world have to do this). That's actually the fundamental consideration, as the kind of candidates you want are going to be the ones who are excited about the opportunity in front of them.

I believe the way companies hire employees for new functions is through the owner or someone in a management position knowing at least enough about the function or channel to offer the service at a basic level to clients.

If you are in this position then you have a far better chance of hiring someone as you know what to look out for and even if they are pretty junior, you can train them as much as you can and bring them along, and then hire others like them. This leads to knowledge sharing within a team, and it develops from there.

This is a much easier and more natural, far less risky way of growing the service than trying to hire one single person to run everything on their own. Think about if they had a few clients signed up and they had to take a week or two off for any reason - what then. Having a small team built around the function is a far better solution, even if it takes a while.

You could dedicate even a few hours to learning the skills yourself, whilst doing a bit of networking and getting out there talking to other agencies about how they did it. They might even know of people who are looking for new opportunities in the area.

Altbiz

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

From reading the detail, I have changed my understanding of your requirements.

I now think that what you actually want to do is set up a small marketing agency to capitalize on leads you have available to you.

This is a very difficult thing to do for even a seasoned person in the area, and as you ascertain, very risky.

I do not think you can expect to set up a marketing agency of any quality with just one person, especially if you need to recruit the key person.

I would tread carefully.

Thanks for the reply apologies though, I'm not sure why you'd think we should set up a marketing agency (if you mean as a separate company). The additional service ties in well with what we already do, and it'd be the same clients. I think it'd be most suited as an extension of our current services rather than as its own entity.

The goal would be to turn this into a major part of the business and the potential is there, but we have to start somewhere. We're getting nowhere fast working with freelancers, so bringing it in-house seems to be the best way to go.

lastusername wrote: »

As Antoin alludes to above, it's a big step and I'd come at it from a different angle. I'd get out there and speak to at least a couple of agency owners about how they grew the online marketing function within their business. You'll get a better feel for what's required then, otherwise you're going in with no experience and hiring an actual employee is a big deal.

Could work out very expensive compared to working with freelancers or contractors who aren't entitled to paid holidays, sick leave, pension (I believe that's mandatory now), and so on. It's all about getting a qualified and experience person but you'd need to ask why would they work for you when they can get a high salary with a bigger and more established company elsewhere.

In that regard it's as much about selling the opportunity and your company as much as anything else (even the Googles of the world have to do this). That's actually the fundamental consideration, as the kind of candidates you want are going to be the ones who are excited about the opportunity in front of them.

I'd hope that the right person would be excited to work with us. While I used to think we would, I actually now don't think we need someone who is super ambitious and creative in terms of growing that side of the business, someone who is at the cutting edge of the trade etc. We just need someone who is a good worker, who knows their stuff and who can maintain a decent level of momentum. Down the line we can look at expanding it more aggressively or look for that golden candidate who could take it to the next level. For now I think someone who is steady, reliable and solid would be just fine to get things in motion.

I believe the way companies hire employees for new functions is through the owner or someone in a management position knowing at least enough about the function or channel to offer the service at a basic level to clients.

If you are in this position then you have a far better chance of hiring someone as you know what to look out for and even if they are pretty junior, you can train them as much as you can and bring them along, and then hire others like them. This leads to knowledge sharing within a team, and it develops from there.

This is a much easier and more natural, far less risky way of growing the service than trying to hire one single person to run everything on their own. Think about if they had a few clients signed up and they had to take a week or two off for any reason - what then. Having a small team built around the function is a far better solution, even if it takes a while.

You could dedicate even a few hours to learning the skills yourself, whilst doing a bit of networking and getting out there talking to other agencies about how they did it. They might even know of people who are looking for new opportunities in the area.

I feel we're all too busy to take on this role properly ourselves, and if we were to do so other aspects of the business would suffer as our time is limited. Nonetheless we would have a decent bit of knowledge about the services ourselves, we'd have a good idea of what types of campaigns would work for what types of clients, what the clients themselves would be interested in, etc.

The new person would indeed have a team of people around them to assist in all aspects of their tasks really, and as a group we'd be able to push that side of the biz forward and over time as the number of contracts we secure grows there'd be a good case for building the team.

antoinolachtnai

You want to provide the functions that a marketing agency currently provides. You want to provide those services to a higher standard than is currently done. You want to do this with one part time resource and you are considering paying them less than the going rate. The principals don’t have a lot of time to dedicate to this area of the business.

It is certainly within the realms of possibility but it will be very hard.