My first Employee
I can’t say that hiring an employee was the easiest and most thought out process during the first run. It was actually a bit scary and I certainly knew I needed a bit of help. In the fall of 2008 I brought on my first contractor who eventually became an employee of the company.
I have to admit I was extremely fortunate to bring on the person that I did. He was by no means the most technical person when it came to managing computers but he was certainly a very creative person which showed in a lot of web work that we did. I wasn’t really ready to have an employee in my world at that point but we ended up working together for a good 1 and a half years. Many ups and downs, but also many successes. It’s too bad we left on bad terms since I still have a lot of respect for him to this day.
Hiring your first employee should be a thought out process. It took me almost 3 years to find the perfect person to come work for Eligeo, who has since become a business partner. Back when I started the company everybody said to avoid hiring friends and family. So I did exactly that and went through a lot of people I never knew until the hiring process. I went through a lot of good people throughout but there was always issues that I ran into whether it was commitment, level of mentorship required or simply work ethic.
The first employee I hired was simply the wrong person. I wasn’t entirely settled on the business model for the company but he was incredibly loyal to me as I was to him. I worked hard to make sure he was always paid appropriately and did so at the expense of my own salary most times. But the problem was I was building a tech consulting company, not a web design firm. His expertise was web design. I had him in the wrong job and not only that he was very young so he needed more mentorship than what I would be able to provide as a new business owner. I felt that I failed him in his path to success.
When we finally parted ways it was during a period that became one of the most critical in the 5 years of running Eligeo. We had experimented in building our own CRM product but ultimately abandoned it as it really wasn’t what I was trying to build in a business. We went quickly to 5 employees and quickly down to only me in a matter of months. I attribute this suddenly change in some bad business decisions and personel decisions.
From this point forward I got smarter. I went back to the drawing board on the business and re-focused a lot of the business model. This was all happening in 2010 when the re-structuring occurred. I brought in some good friends to help out throughout the year and the business model was starting to take shape. We were finally becoming a very solid I.T. business.
I learned that hiring friends wasn’t such a bad thing at all. The employee I mentioned in the second paragraph is Karim who has since become a valued shareholder and partner in Eligeo. He not only brought expertise and knowledge to the business but he finally set us on the path to building my vision that I had started working on earlier that year.
I also learned that the process to hiring people you don’t know changed as well. I actively sought out a variety of resumes from different resources and I learned to evaluate people a lot differently and objectively than I had ever before. We have now a real strong team of individuals that are helping make this company a real success into the future.
To close off, here are a few points:
- Hiring friends and family can be risky, but if you have trust issues like I do, sometimes it isn’t a bad thing.
- Learn to evaluate talent either through third party resources (recruiters) or by picking up a book to learn how to evaluate talent.
