I received a beautiful spiral-bound step-by-step guide to hand lettering for beginners as a gift for Christmas this past year. While I’m not brand new to the art of calligraphy, my experience has been in the traditional (aka old school) style rather than today’s more modern lettering style.

Although I have some experience, the techniques used aren’t exactly the same. Many things are similar, yet many are also very different.

As I cracked open the cover of this beautiful book and flipped through the pages, I came across a quote that perfectly set the tone for what lay ahead,

“We are all beginners in the beginning.”

Over the past month, I’ve continued to come back to and think about this quote often. Not just in my hand lettering practice, but as it relates to hiring employees.

You might be getting ready to embark on hiring for the first time, so you’re a true beginner. Or you might have some experience hiring contractors, but know that hiring employees is a different experience that requires different skills.

In either case, hiring can bring up a lot of doubt, fear, and worry, and thinking of tons of questions, such as:

• “Is hiring an employee right for me?”

• “I don’t know who to hire first!”

• “I have no idea where to start!”

• “What if I hire the wrong person? “ and

• “What if my business starts struggling and I can’t pay my new employee?”

And so many more.

I know because I’ve experienced these emotions and had the same thoughts, both when working in corporate HR as well as when hiring for my own business.

And I help women navigate these every day in their growing businesses.

For almost 15 years now, I’ve been hiring employees and I can still remember those early days when my palms were sweaty and my heart was racing, scared to death to make the wrong move.

In the beginning, I made plenty of mistakes, missed red flags, didn’t trust my gut instinct when I should have, and yes, even hired the wrong people.

But we’re all beginners in the beginning, so I kept going, kept learning, and kept improving. And you know what? I got better, and then I got really good, and then I became an expert! 

In fact, at my last corporate recruiting position, I had a 98% success rate when hiring and I had reduced management-level turnover by more than half – all because of practice, experience, and making mistakes.

Here’s a fun fact: Did you know that adults learn better from experience, even if they make mistakes?

As much as you might want to scour the internet and read every article available on hiring, the learning isn’t going to stick until you start getting hands-on experience with the hiring process – mistake-making and all!

In 1968, Malcolm Knowles came up with the andragogic approach, which he described as the “art and science of helping adults learn.” There are four main principles to his approach, that further explain why it’s so important to get hands-on experience when learning something new (like hiring employees!) as an adult. They are:

• Adults learn better from experience (even if they make mistakes).

• Adults favor a pragmatic approach and must be able to apply learning to solve a specific problem.

• Adults are most interested in learning things that have immediate relevance.

• Adults need to be involved in the planning and evaluation of their instruction.

Whether you have some experience or no experience at all when it comes to hiring, I want you to remember that quote I mentioned above, that we’re all beginners in the beginning.

The fastest way to get better at doing something is to just start doing the thing you want to be better at!

If you’ve been worried about all that comes with hiring your first employee and afraid to take that first step, we’re here to help at SproutHR. Grab our FREE Hiring Roadmap to get clear on how to hire your first (or next) employee with confidence and ease!

Authored by Ashley Cox, PHR, SHRM-CP