How Should a Small Business Hire its First Employee?
Hiring a first employee can feel very different from recruiting in a larger organisation. There’s no established employer brand, recruitment team or long history of people doing the same job. The candidate is often joining something that's still developing and will probably work quite closely with the founder.
That can actually be an advantage. A small business can give candidates a much better sense of who they’ll be working with, what the business is trying to achieve and what it’s really like to be part of it.
But it’s surprisingly easy to lose that advantage once recruitment starts: a generic advert is posted, hundreds of applications arrive and the owner suddenly finds themselves trying to run a recruitment process alongside everything else they already have to do.
That makes it worth thinking carefully about how the whole process is set up. The aim is not only to find someone with the right skills, but to make sure the role is clear, the business comes across well and realistically and the process will still function effectively when volumes are high.
If you want something more specific, these may help:
Hiring Your First Employee in the UK: A 10-Step Checklist for Small Businesses
Employment Contracts for UK Small Businesses: What to Include and Why Complete
Before You Make a Job Offer: Are the Role, the Terms and the Expectations Clear?
Does the recruitment process reflect what your business is really like?
Candidates are forming an opinion about the business from their first contact with it.
This starts with the job advert. If the business is friendly, straightforward and informal, an advert written in stiff corporate language will give a very different impression. Equally, describing the business as relaxed and flexible won’t mean much if candidates then go through a slow, impersonal process and hear nothing for weeks.
You don’t need to make everything sound quirky or different, but it’s a great idea to let some of the real business shine through.
Explain why the role exists rather than producing a long list of duties. Give candidates a sense of the team they'd be joining and what matters about the way the business works. If there are particular values that genuinely affect how people behave or decisions are made, show what those look like rather than simply listing them.
With a first or early employee, it’s also worth thinking about how comfortable the person will be with the way a small business actually operates. Technical ability matters but so does whether they’re comfortable with the level of independence, uncertainty and change that can come with joining a small company. Someone who thrives with very clear policies and established processes may be excellent in a highly structured environment but find an early-stage business frustrating. Another person may enjoy having room to shape things rather than being handed a finished job. The recruitment process should help both sides work that out.
Be clear about the job before you start looking for the person
A first employee is often recruited because the owner is overwhelmed. There’s too much work, some activities need to be delegated and hiring somebody feels like the obvious next step. The risk is that the job becomes a collection of everything the owner no longer has time to do. And that makes recruitment much harder because candidates are being assessed against a role that has never really been defined.
It’s worth spending time deciding what difference this person needs to make in the first six or twelve months. What genuinely needs to move away from the owner? What will the employee be able to take responsibility for? Which skills are essential from the beginning and which could reasonably be learned?
That often produces a much more useful person specification than simply creating a long list of desirable experience. It can also stop the business recruiting a more senior or experienced person than it really needs. Equally, it may reveal that the role requires much more judgement and independence than the original job title suggested.
How do you deal with a high volume of applications?
This has become a very practical problem for many employers. A reasonably attractive vacancy can generate a very large response, leaving a small business owner with dozens or even hundreds of applications to review while still running the business.
The answer isn’t necessarily to make the application process harder. Asking candidates to complete several stages before anyone has even looked at their CV can deter good applicants as easily as unsuitable ones. It’s more useful to improve the information at the beginning of the process.
A clear salary range, working pattern, location and expectations around experience can help people decide whether the role is a good fit for them. A few words about the culture, the values that genuinely matter and the people or customers they’re likely to work with can also help candidates decide whether the environment is likely to suit them before they apply.
A small number of carefully chosen screening questions can be useful too, particularly where there’s something specific the business needs to establish early on. If you’re using online recruitment platforms, many already include this functionality. With particularly high volumes it can help to ask candidates to send you a video response to some interesting screening questions and it will help you assess if they can follow instructions closely.
Then, if you haven’t already, decide the selection criteria before opening the applications. That sounds obvious but it really matters when volumes are high. Without a clear basis for comparing candidates, it becomes very easy to be drawn towards the most polished CVs, especially if they have an impressive brand name or somebody whose background simply feels familiar. A short scoring approach against the things that genuinely matter can make reviewing a large number of applications much quicker and more consistent.
Use the interview to understand how somebody actually works
It’s also worth remembering that the application itself may tell employers less than it once did. Candidates now have easy access to AI tools that can help them produce those highly polished CVs and covering letters. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that but it does mean that beautifully written CVs and applications aren’t always a reliable indication of how somebody communicates or works.
For a small business, a very formal interview can feel like overkill and put off the kind of person you’re really keen on finding. The opposite extreme - an enjoyable chat with somebody you happen to like - carries its own risks. So, a little structure helps.
Candidates should broadly be asked about the same things so that there’s a reasonable basis for comparing them. But that doesn’t mean reading identical questions from a script without following up on interesting answers.
The most useful questions often ask candidates to explain what they’ve actually done. If they say they improved a process, what was wrong with it and what did they change? If they managed a difficult customer situation, what did they decide to do and why? If the role requires them to work independently, how have they handled a situation where the answer wasn’t obvious?
This is particularly useful when applications appear to be AI generated. The conversation moves away from how well somebody can describe themselves on paper - or get AI to do it for them - and towards how they approach real situations.
It’s also another opportunity to see whether the person is likely to be comfortable with the way the business actually works. Someone may have all the right experience but prefer a much more structured environment, while another candidate may be at their best when they have space to use their own judgement.
For some jobs, a short practical exercise can help too. It should be relevant to the work rather than an elaborate test for the sake of it. A bookkeeper might reconcile a batch of invoices, somebody in marketing might talk through how they’d approach a brief, or an administrator might be asked how they’d prioritise a realistic set of competing tasks. The aim is to learn something that the CV can’t tell you.
Remember that candidates are assessing the business too
This is easy to forget when there are lots of applicants. The process isn’t only about the business choosing their next team member. The people the business most wants to recruit are also deciding whether they want the job.
This means ongoing communication really matters. Candidates should know roughly what the process will involve and when they’re likely to hear back. If there’s a delay, tell them. If somebody has taken the time to attend an interview and they’re unsuccessful, let them know. It doesn’t require a sophisticated recruitment system, just a bit of organisation.
Importantly, the process tells candidates a lot about how the business is likely to treat them once they become employees. If the advert talks about openness, responsiveness or respect but the recruitment experience feels completely different, that will be noticed. And for a first or early hire this really matters because there may be very little other information available about what the company is like as an employer.
Make the offer carefully once you’ve found the right person
Once the right candidate has been found, most employers understandably want to secure them quickly. But that’s the point at which a little care matters.
An offer can be made verbally and an unconditional offer that is accepted can create a binding contract. If there are checks the business still needs to complete, those conditions should be made clear at the point the offer is made. It’s a good idea to confirm the offer in writing and set out any checks that still need to be satisfied. Making this habitual can help de-risk those first few months.
The specific conditions will vary according to the role and the nature of the business. They might include satisfactory references, confirmation of qualifications, a DBS check where the role requires one or a review of their driving licence. There's little benefit in making conditions unnecessarily complicated, but anything the business genuinely needs to establish before the appointment is confirmed should be dealt with as part of the offer.
And, of course, there are some recruitment basics that still need covering
A strong candidate experience and a good cultural fit don’t replace the legal requirements around recruitment. For a first hire, getting the contract right is fundamental, but there are a few other things worth thinking about before getting anywhere near contracts and Right to Work checks.
Job adverts and selection decisions mustn’t discriminate. Even wording that looks fairly harmless can cause difficulty; GOV.UK specifically warns against phrases such as “recent graduate” or “highly experienced” unless they’re genuinely required for the job. Recruitment decisions also need to avoid both direct and indirect discrimination.
Health and disability questions before an offer are restricted, although employers can ask what reasonable adjustments somebody needs to take part in the recruitment process and there are other specific exceptions. Disabled applicants must be given reasonable adjustments where appropriate.
Right to Work checks need to be completed before your new hire starts work on their first day, using the correct process for the individual concerned and evidence of the check should be retained on file. The rules are changing on 1 October 2026, when the scheme will extend to some worker and individual subcontractor arrangements, so businesses using different types of contract arrangements should make sure they’re working from the latest guidance.
Other checks should be driven by the role. A more detailed DBS check, for example, may be needed for certain types of work and health checks before employment may also be relevant in some circumstances.
Candidate information falls within data protection law too, so CVs, interview notes and other selection information need to be handled and stored appropriately.
None of these requirements need to make recruitment cold or bureaucratic. They provide the framework around a process that should still feel like the business doing the recruiting.
For a first employee, that’s probably the most useful balance to aim for. Be clear about the job, make it possible for candidates to see what the business is really like, have a sensible way of dealing with application volumes and spend enough time getting underneath the CV and understanding the candidate’s strengths and development areas before making a decision.
Then make sure the legal and practical checks are done properly before the person starts.
Disclaimer
This article is for general information and practical guidance. It isn’t legal advice. Recruitment requirements vary depending on the role and circumstances, so specific advice may be needed.
