Hiring For Your Interior Design Business: Going From Solopreneur to Team Leader
Original photography posted at Unsplash by Charles Deluvio.
Original article posted at Design Manager.
As interior designers, we often start our businesses as solopreneurs – wearing all hats at once and working around the clock to pull it off. As our businesses take off, we inevitably reach the point where our workload outpaces our ability to do it all by ourselves. That’s when it's time to consider hiring your first employees.
But making the leap from solopreneur to team leader is a delicate process. Hiring the right employees and having the proper infrastructure to ensure they can succeed can determine your success, and hiring and onboarding new employees is especially challenging during this time when COVID makes it difficult to meet candidates in person. This article will explain when to hire your first employees, how to decide on which positions you need to fill, and how to do so in an increasingly virtual world.
Employees are an investment
Of course, you have to consider the salary and potential bonuses you’ll pay an employee, but before you even get there, the initial and circumstantial costs of hiring an employee can include:
Fees for recruitment
Legal and financial planning
Employee insurance
Payroll tax
Additional office space (although this may not be an issue in the near to intermediate term)
Work supplies, like laptops, monitors, etc.
A Checklist for Hiring Your First Employee(s)
You can start by making a list of everything you feel you have under control at this time, and everything you do not. To get a truly accurate assessment, it may help to get an outsider’s perspective by meeting with a business consultant or operations expert, preferably with knowledge of the interior design industry, to truly see the areas in which you are not adequately meeting your current responsibilities.
Once you have a realistic list of the tasks that need to be handled better or differently than you can, group them into sensible categories.
Administrative Tasks: This includes keeping your calendar organized, and keeping your office stocked with necessary supplies.
Project Management: Are you hitting your deadlines for projects smoothly, or struggling to juggle the various checkpoints along the way to project completion? If it’s the latter, you need help keeping the trains running on time.
Bookkeeping: Interior design companies have unique accounting needs, so these duties include the day-to-day bookkeeping entries and the monthly reconciliations that you need to stay on top of to ensure the financial health of your business.
Design: This is, of course, the soul of your business. However the presentation related tasks, like composing mood boards in Photoshop, drafting plans in AutoCad, and sourcing material samples from vendors can be handled by design assistants while you focus on the bigger creative picture.
Where and How To Find Good Help
There are three avenues to identify the level of knowledge and experience you expect from a candidate based on the position and compensation you are able to offer, and then to actually go out and recruit these candidates:
Job Sites: Research the major job listing websites, like LinkedIn, Indeed, and creative-centric sites like Dezeen Jobs to see what other companies are offering; then, post your job listing here. If you are seeking an entry-level worker, post on local university job boards or contact the schools to find out how you can participate in their job fairs.
Recruiters: Hire a recruiter that specializes in staffing for interior design companies, who will find and vet candidates for you. This expertise comes with a price tag: Recruiters are typically paid 20% of the annual income of the position you are seeking to fill.
Your Network: If a recruiter is not in your budget, but posting to job sites is bringing in too many candidates or not the right type of candidates, there is a third approach that is both targeted and low cost: leveraging your network. Send the job description to your trusted vendors and fellow interior designers and post it to industry trade organization websites, like the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID).
Deciding who to hire
Multiple interviews: meeting a candidate more than once can help you really get a feel for a candidate.
Get a second opinion: Get other perspectives by bringing in a trusted person, like a frequent work collaborator or vendor, to one of the video interviews to get their opinion.
Get references: Ask for at least three references, and be sure to call each one and ask thoughtful questions about your candidate’s past work experience, attitude, and professionalism.
Background checks: Pay to run a background check to make sure your candidate does not have any problematic legal history.
Protect yourself: Because you can never be too safe, once you’re ready to hire, you should consider having the candidate sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement that protects any proprietary information about your company, work process, and even personal life.
Benefits and Drawbacks of Remote Employees
You may also want to consider hiring employees who live out of state and will work remotely full-time.
Benefit: You can pull from a wider pool of talent
Benefit: If you are headquartered in an area with a high cost of living where salary expectations are higher, you can search for remote employees located in areas with a lower cost of living, offering them a salary on par with the local expectation.
Drawback: Each of your employees will affect the overall culture of the company, even if they work remotely. You will have a harder time analyzing how a remote worker interacts with others and how well their personality matches the company culture you want to create — an important part of protecting your brand.
Drawback: While touched on above, there are several tax and legal implications that you should discuss with your account and lawyer. They may have to refer you to specialists who can accurately guide you through the compliance measures you will have to prepare for.