When you begin setting up your new ecommerce Shopify store, there are some things that you may want to hire out.
For example, if you want to sell printables and are not versed on graphic design and how to create them, you might want to look for someone to create them for you.
Another task you might want to hire out is the customer service aspect. Someone trained to handle customer requests on your behalf.
You might want to add a chat box to your store and hire that out as well.
Whatever you’re hiring out, you want to hire good quality people in which to work with and finding them can be a little difficult. Here’s how to attract employees for your shop.
How to Attract Employees For Your Shop – Best Practice Guide
The first way to do that is to never call them employees. I literally just loathe that word. People who work with you are not employees, you have to think of them like teammates. Friends. 🙂
Be on the same page
Secondly, I think the biggest thing you can do is to make your mission extremely well-known in your branding message. Everything from what you stand for, what you believe in, to who exactly you’re trying to reach, and what you’re trying to accomplish in the world.
Give your teammates a complete run down of who you’re trying to reach and serve. Why? Because every single person on your team is a representative of you. They need to share your desire to help others, your overall mission, and goals or it won’t work.
For me, I run a popular blog (and by extension, a store) where I teach women how to stay home with their kids, and how to live a more fruitful life for God.
That involves education on saving money, making money from home, blogging education, home and life organization, inspiration, and so much more. It’s my intention to help women who want to be home with their kids to live that lifestyle, and as a single mom myself, I prove to millions of people that it can be done.
It’s such a part of my messaging, that I EASILY ATTRACT the right kind of team members that have the same mission, to help women be home with their kids, and spread the light and love of Christ to others.
The truth is that you can teach a teammate a lot of things, but you can’t teach someone to believe what you believe, so starting THERE is so absolutely vital as a business owner.
Your whole process
Another thing I would say is to not give too many tasks and roles to one person. Don’t let just one person handle the reigns of the whole operation start to finish.
In the past, I’ve had problems every single time I’ve had a team structure like that. The ladies (wonderful as they were), began to get overconfident. Seeing my exact plan and how I do things, they went off and started trying to mimic what I do on their own and failed.
It did both ME and THEM a massive disservice to show my whole operation in any one task start to finish.
Confidentiality statement
Anytime you hire someone who helps you regularly, have them immediately sign a confidentiality statement. Here’s the one I use (it’s free). This will help protect your business and business assets (knowledge).
One caveat is that if you hire someone from say Fiverr or off a Facebook group, you won’t need to do something like this.
How to hire someone
The four main ways I look to hire someone are:
- Put out a call in my newsletter – if they are following me, chances are they have my same belief system (putting people first over money)
- Word of mouth – I ask my friends if they know someone
- Facebook groups – there are some good Facebook groups that are specifically designed to purchase things like content, printables, etc.
- Fiverr – I try to work with people from the USA as much as humanly possible as I’ve found when working with people overseas, there can be a lot more scams.
Facebook groups you should check out if you’re looking to hire freelancers
These are my favorite groups:
- Exclusive Blog Content Buy/Sell Group
- VA for Hire and Pinterest-Friendly Content for Bloggers
- Blogger Resource Room – Buy & Sell Blog Content
- Recipe & Craft Creations by Brooke V
Read the rules for each group, but many times you can post you’re looking for something in particular or hang out in there and buy what others are selling. It’s a great resource if you’re looking to hire someone to create content or printables for you.
Have a great job description
The last thing you want to happen is for someone on the team to quit quickly because you haven’t fully described to them what they should be doing or what you’re looking to have them do.
You want to hire long term friends to help you as you’ll score better helpers this way!
Screen them well
Be sure you ask them lots of questions and screen them well. Follow up with examples of what you’re looking to have them do too.
For example, you could have them do a couple mock emails if you’re hiring for a customer service position.
See how they’d handle things BEFORE you hire them and pray a lot about your decision.
Invest in your people
Hands down you should be investing in your team. This is one of THE most important and best things to do. You WANT them to grow. You WANT them to gain skills. You want to work with them to get better each and every day at what they’re doing.
Likewise, you want to invest in their lives. You need to have some sort of personal contact. They are a human and you should get to know them. Yes, things should be professional, but saying something like, “Happy Thanksgiving” or “How can I pray for you today,” can go a long way.
Be sure you are always respectful. If they make a mistake, it’s okay. It’s not the end of the world. If they CONTINUE to make many mistakes over time, and their work is sloppy, talk to them and give them a chance and if it doesn’t improve, let them go quickly.
One of the biggest mistakes I’ve made in the hiring process is when I’ve held onto team members for way past what I should have. It just caused more problems for me in the long run.
You want to be kind, but if someone is doing sloppy work, you need to find someone else who can appreciate the job you are offering them. It’s a two way street. Be incredibly appreciative for THEIR help and they should appreciate YOURS as well. 🙂
Make sure they are committed
One of the things I require my assistants to do is to agree not to work for other bloggers while working with me.
It would really suck if you found out they were working for someone else and secretly showing another blogger all your secret tricks and playing you. While this is incredibly rare I’m sure, you do want to protect yourself.
Be a great boss
You keep people on your team by being kind, respectful, and appreciative. If you treat them like crap, they will leave. Period.
Provide perks
Whatever perks you decide to provide to your staff, be consistent across the board. One of the things I like to do for my entire team is any time I purchase training material, I find out if it’s okay to share it with my team from the creator and (it usually is), and so, I share it with my team.
If I just paid $2,000 for a course and my teammates also get to go through that same information for free, that’s a really great perk you can give them.
Think of ways you can give your team members bonuses.
Is it time off on the holidays for a customer service rep?
Perhaps it’s a bonus for a job well done or a holiday bonus.
Be creative!
Check their social media accounts
Dude…okay…you can find out A LOT about a person by their Facebook profile…I AM JUST…SAYING!
Make sure that they represent who you want to spend your time with.
If they always are complaining about their boss or current work position or always partying, etc. these are red flags to be aware of.
Let go
One of the HARDEST things to do as a leader is to LET…GOOOOO!
Seriously, you pour your heart and soul into your shop. It’s your baby. It’s something you’ve cultivated since birth. You’ve worked hard and you definitely don’t wanna let all that hard work go down the drain because of someone else who does a bad job. But you need to let go of certain aspects of your job duties and that can take a little bit of time to develop trust.
But DO ALLOW the person to EARN that trust.
Give them a task at a time and be that hoover boss at first, fine, but know that after you see them do well, let go of the reigns and let them do their job. LET THEM HELP YOU!
I know this is really hard to do, but you will lose GOOD teammates by not letting them do what you’ve hired them to do.
