Lanny Morton decided it was time to hire an employee after he
spent hours packing boxes and writing shipping labels by hand
instead of focusing on expanding his growing business. "I
needed to be out looking for product and working on marketing-not
packaging and labeling orders all day," says Morton, the owner
of SportsCloseouts.com, an online sporting goods retailer
that launched in 2002.
After just five months in business, 36-year-old Morton began
looking for an employee but quickly discovered that when it came to
finding the right person, he wasn't sure where to start.
"Hiring employees to work in your home is difficult,"
says Morton, who runs SportsCloseouts.com out of his home in
Phoenix. "It's much more personal than hiring someone to
work in a retail store."
"Hiring an employee in a homebased business is pretty close
to having a roommate," says Barbara Cunningham, business
development specialist for the University of Missouri Extension
Small Business Development Center in Kansas City. "It is
really important to hire the right person."
Finding the Right Match
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Unlike many homebased entrepreneurs, Morton didn't have to
look far to find his first employee. "I was talking about
hiring someone during dinner at a Mexican restaurant," he
says. "We had this really great busboy, and I was saying that
I wanted to hire someone just like him--so I offered him a
job."
Morton was lucky--the employee, hired to manage shipping and
receiving, turned out to be a good fit with the company. "He
was a really hard worker," says Morton. "Having him there
gave me time to focus on other [aspects] of the business." But
he concedes the idea was initially a little unsettling: "It
was really scary to have a stranger in my home at first. I watched
him closely for the first month."
Employers have numerous options when it comes to finding the
right employees for their homebased businesses, but Cunningham
suggests asking for referrals before placing an ad in the
newspaper. "Running an ad for someone to come into your home
is risky because you never know who is going to apply," she
says. "I would feel better about finding someone through
word-of-mouth."
Cunningham advises employers to check references, conduct
background and credit checks, and consider drug testing for all
employees. "The more you can check into [a prospective
employee], the better off you'll be," she says.
Frank Minssieux turned to his Rolodex when the time came to hire
an executive vice president for TimingCube, the web-based stock market service
he founded in 2001. A former co-worker expressed interest, and
Minssieux made him a job offer. "From a skills standpoint, I
knew it was a match, but it was also very important to hire someone
I could trust," says the 45-year-old CEO, whose business
generated $1.6 million in 2004. Today, Minssieux has four
employees, each of whom was hired through referral.
Missy Cohen-Fyffe, 44-year-old founder of Babe Ease LLC, a
manufacturer of fabric inserts for shopping carts and highchairs,
hired her first employee in 2000-but says she was cautious about
interviewing prospective employees in her Pelham, New Hampshire,
home. "Initially, I only hired friends because I was working
from home and wanted to be sure my employees were people I knew and
trusted," says Cohen-Fyffe, whose company brought in $1.8
million in sales in 2004.
Eventually, Cohen-Fyffe had to look for employees beyond her
circle of friends. "I prescreened applicants before I brought
them to my home to be interviewed," she says. "I talked
to them a few times over the phone and checked their references. If
I was still interested in hiring them, I brought them in for
interviews."
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