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How to Hire Your First Employees: What to Look For

Education · April 22, 2026 · Daily Junction Editorial Team · 5 min

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Your first hires shape the culture and capability of everything that follows. Here is how to define the role, weigh attitude against skill, run a fair process, and meet the UK legal basics.

Hiring your first employee is one of the biggest steps a small business takes. You are no longer just buying a service or a contractor's hours — you are bringing someone inside, setting a precedent for everyone who follows, and taking on legal responsibilities as an employer. Get the first few hires right and they become the foundation of your culture. Get them wrong and the cost, in money and morale, is steep. Here is how to approach it.

Start with the problem, not the job title

Before you write a single line of an advert, get specific about why you are hiring. "We need a marketing person" is a wish, not a role. The useful version is: what problem will disappear once this person is in the building?

Write down the three or four outcomes you actually need — "turn our enquiries into booked jobs", "get our finances off spreadsheets", "ship the product roadmap on time". Those outcomes tell you what the role really is, which in turn tells you what to look for and how to test for it. A clear, one-page plan for the role is far more useful than a long, generic job description copied from the internet.

This matters even more for a first hire because the role is often broad. Early employees wear several hats, so define the core responsibility clearly and be honest that the edges will shift.

Attitude and aptitude usually beat a perfect CV

For established teams with narrow, specialist openings, specific skills can be decisive. For first hires in a small business, the balance tips the other way. The role will evolve, you cannot afford a bad culture fit, and one person is a large fraction of your whole team.

So weight three things heavily:

• Attitude. Reliability, ownership, honesty and how someone behaves when things go wrong. These are very hard to train.
• Aptitude. The ability and appetite to learn quickly. A fast learner with the right mindset often outperforms a credentialed candidate who has stopped growing.
• Fit with how you work. Not "people like us", but alignment with how the business actually operates — pace, autonomy, communication style.

Specific skills still matter where the job needs them on day one. But many can be taught; character and curiosity rarely can. London consultancy CM Beyer describes a similar emphasis in its account of what it looks for when hiring — prizing curiosity, judgement and integrity alongside raw capability.

A useful test: would you rather inherit a brilliant CV attached to a difficult person, or a good-enough CV attached to someone you trust completely? In a team of two or three, the answer is almost always the second.

Run a structured, consistent process

Unstructured interviews — a chat, a gut feeling, a quick decision — are both unfair and unreliable. They reward people who interview well and people who remind us of ourselves, neither of which predicts performance. A structured process is more predictive and easier to defend.

A simple, fair process looks like this:

1. Write a clear advert. State the core outcomes, the must-haves, the nice-to-haves and a salary or range. Transparency attracts better-matched candidates and respects their time.
2. Screen against the criteria you set, not against a vague sense of "impressiveness".
3. Ask every candidate the same core questions. Consistency is what makes a comparison meaningful.
4. Use a realistic task or scenario. A short, paid or time-limited piece of relevant work tells you far more than hypothetical answers. Ask how they would handle a real situation you have faced.
5. Probe past behaviour. "Tell me about a time you…" questions surface what someone actually did, not what they think you want to hear.
6. Take references seriously. A quick call with a former manager often confirms — or quietly contradicts — your impression.

Score against your criteria as you go, then compare. The goal is a decision you can explain, not just one that feels right.

The UK legal basics

Becoming an employer brings duties. This is general information, not legal advice, and the official details live on GOV.UK — but the essentials every new UK employer should know are:

• Right to work. You must check that the person can legally work in the UK before they start, and keep a record of the check.
• Pay. You must pay at least the National Minimum Wage or National Living Wage for the person's age.
• Written statement of terms. Employees (and most workers) are entitled to a written statement of the main employment terms on or before their first day.
• PAYE. If you pay an employee above the relevant threshold, you generally need to register as an employer with HM Revenue and Customs and run payroll, deducting tax and National Insurance. Confirming pay correctly also matters to your hire — our guide to reading a payslip and P60 explains what those deductions mean.
• Pension. Under automatic enrolment, eligible staff must be put into a workplace pension and you must contribute.
• Employers' liability insurance. Most employers are legally required to hold it, with limited exceptions.

Getting these right from the first hire avoids painful corrections later, and signals to staff that you run a proper, trustworthy business.

Setting up to keep good people

Hiring is only half the job; keeping people is the other half. A first hire who leaves in six months is an expensive lesson. From the start:

• Onboard deliberately. Even an informal plan for the first weeks — who they meet, what "good" looks like, early wins — pays off.
• Be clear about expectations and progression. People stay where they understand how to succeed and grow.
• Build the habits of a healthy team early. Clear, regular communication scales badly if you bolt it on later. Good practice around running meetings people do not dread is easier to establish with two people than with twenty.

The culture of a company is mostly the sum of who is in it and how they treat each other. Your first hires set that tone, which is exactly why the decision deserves real care.

The bottom line

Hire your first employees by defining the problem you need solved, weighting attitude and aptitude heavily over a perfect CV, and running a consistent, structured process you can justify. Meet your UK legal duties — right to work, pay, a written statement, pension and insurance — from day one. The people you choose now will shape everything the business becomes, so choose deliberately.

Key takeaways

• Define the role around the problem you need solved, not a generic job title, before you advertise.
• Hire for attitude and aptitude when the role is new; specific skills can often be taught, mindset rarely.
• A structured, consistent process with the same questions for every candidate is fairer and more predictive.
• UK employers must check the right to work, provide a written statement of employment particulars, and meet pay, pension and insurance duties.

Sources

• GOV.UK: Employing staff for the first time
• Acas (Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service)

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