Growing your business, making your first hire/intern

[Dabidoe]

Has anyone taken the leap and made their first hire for their business?

I run a video production company which is doing OK but I've hit my breaking point as a "solopreneur" and I need some help shooting some videos. I don't have any big projects in the pipeline at the moment but have a lot of personal projects I'd like to work on and feel that hiring someone/looking for an intern would help me stay motivated and complete tasks.

I don't want to exploit intern labor but realistically can't afford a fulltime salary and would rather offer studio time usage, share gig $ and more.

Anyone have any experience in this have any advice on hiring/growing beyond the "one man band"?

[flowboy]

I have, with reasonable satisfaction.

Here's some tips I learnt:

1. Post multiple ads on upwork. Use different variations of categories, keywords and description. To catch more fish
2. Devise tests for the applicants to do. What they say means nothing. The tests have to be as close to the actual work as possible.
3. Have calls with the 5-10 who passed the test. On the call, have them do a live demo of what they can do. That could mean using remote software like TeamViewer so they can do it on your computer and you can see how fast they are.
   It's best to have all these calls in one day.
4. Prefer people who are fast and understand things quickly
5. Hire the one who is efficient at the job, NOT the one you feel a personal connection with (I made this mistake)
6. Let the other ones down easy and keep a good relationship. You might need them as backup.
7. Figure out a deal that works for you and them. This could mean pay by commission, per task, or offering studio time for example. Prefer performance incentive over paying by the hour, certainly before they've proven themselves
8. Sell the vision. They should want to grow with your company and want to get a full time, better position when you can afford it (which means you need to convince them of your future growth potential)
9. If one gives you trouble, drop them fast and get one of the other 5-10 finalists, before somebody else snaps them up.

[Dabidoe]

Great advice thanks!