How to Hire employees for your online business

When hiring someone for your online business, whether its a virtual assistant, SEO expert, or a marketing position, here is how you want to interview, and the skills you need to identify.

Here is what you want to hire for:

• Problem solving
• Communication
• Leadership
• Demonstrated expertise in the job you’re hiring for

Here’s a deeper dive:

Problem Solving – you’ll want to find someone that can figure things out, or has a process of evaluating alternatives, and making a decision. As a business owner, it is hard to let go of doing everything yourself, but the faster you can do that, the more you’re able to devote your time to high value activities of growing your business.

Communication – this skill can come in many forms. It can be verbal, written, or even non-verbal. The key here is to find someone that can create a system to keep you informed of their activities, relate to you and your customers, and give you a sounding board and different perspective in aiding your customer interactions.

Leadership – as an owner, you won’t find someone who cares about your business more than you. What you can do, is find someone who wants to take control of their life and career. Someone who doesn’t play the victim and instead steps up and does not only what is asked, but what needs to be done.

Demonstrated expertise in the skills you’re looking for – if you’re hiring an assistant, you’ll of course want to know about their skills and who they have worked with in the past. The key is to ask questions that allows the candidate to explain exactly what they did. Avoid questions that begin with “how would you handle” or “what would you do if.” Instead, questions that begin with “Tell me about a time when you did X”, and have your follow up questions contain “what specifically was your role” and “what was the result or what did you learn?”