# Your first hire: what to settle before you write the job A decision framework for a founder's first hire: the work, the working arrangement, the money, the equity question and how you will judge the result. Canonical URL: https://worldenterprise.org/insights/your-first-hire-what-to-settle-before-you-write-the-job/ Last updated: 2026-10-10 Publisher: World Enterprise, run by World Enterprise Group Incorporated *General information, not legal or financial advice. Written October 10, 2026. Employment rules differ by country and state, so check the details with a qualified adviser licensed where the person will work.* The first hire changes a company more than the second or the tenth. Before it, every decision is yours alone and every mistake is cheap to undo. After it, someone else's income, time and plans depend on what you decided. Most first-time founders do the visible work first: they write a job post, open an account on a job board and start talking to people. The decisions that make that work easier are made earlier, and they are rarely written down. This article is a framework for those earlier decisions. It does not recommend a type of hire, a salary or a structure. It lists what to settle, what each choice changes and which questions belong with a lawyer or accountant, so that the job description you write later describes something you have actually decided. ## Start with the work, not the role A role is a bundle of tasks that happens to have a title. Before you pick a title, write down the work: what is not getting done today, why it matters to the company this quarter, and what would be different if it were done. Three to five sentences is enough. Then separate the work into three piles. The first is work only you can do, such as the decisions about what the company sells and to whom. The second is work someone else could do, given a clear description. The third is work that does not need doing at all, which is often the largest pile. Hiring usually answers the second pile. Hiring to avoid the third means paying someone to do something that could simply be dropped. Write one sentence for what a good result looks like in plain terms, such as "invoices go out on time and nobody asks me about them." That sentence is the beginning of your evaluation later, and it is also the test of whether the work is clear enough to hand over. ## Settle the working arrangement The next decision is how the person will work with you. Four questions cover most of it. Table: Four arrangement questions and what each one changes | Question | Options to weigh | What it changes | | --- | --- | --- | | Employee or contractor? | An employee, an independent contractor, or a team supplied by another company | Who controls the work, what you owe by law, and what happens if the relationship ends | | Full time or part time? | A set number of hours, a defined project, or work as needed | How much work you need to have ready, and how you pay | | Where will they work? | Your own country, another country, a shared time zone or an offset one | Which rules apply, how much live overlap you have, and how you communicate | | Who manages them day to day? | You, a co-founder, or no one yet | How much of your week this hire will take | The first question is not a free choice, because agencies look at how the work happens rather than what the paperwork says. [Contractors and employees: the classification tests](https://worldenterprise.org/insights/contractors-and-employees-the-classification-tests/) describes the tests in four public sources. The third question matters if the person will sit in another country, and [hiring across borders](https://worldenterprise.org/insights/hiring-across-borders-employees-contractors-and-employers-of-record/) sets out what to ask there. The fourth question is the one founders skip. A first hire needs your attention: setting goals, answering questions and giving feedback. If you cannot name the hours you will spend on that each week, you have not yet finished deciding whether to hire. ## Settle the money, including what sits beside the pay Decide what you can sustain, not what you can afford this month. A first hire is a commitment that continues after the excitement of the first week. Write the figure as a range, and write the date after which you would have to revisit it. Whether that range suits the market for the role is a question for the people who know the market, not something this article can answer. Pay is not the only cost. In the United States, the Internal Revenue Service's page on hiring employees names obligations that arrive with the first employee. An employer must verify the identity and employment authorization of individuals hired for employment in the United States. The US citizenship agency says all US employers must properly complete Form I-9 for every individual they hire for employment in the United States. The IRS page also says you are required to get each employee's name and Social Security number and to enter them on Form W-2, and that you should have a Form W-4, Employee's Withholding Certificate, on file for each employee. Those are US items, and they are a sample, not a checklist. Other countries have their own registrations, payroll rules and statements of terms. If you hire a contractor, a different set of questions applies. The point here is narrower: the budget line for a first hire should include the administration around the person, whether that is a payroll provider, an accountant's time or a lawyer's review of the paperwork. ## Decide your position on equity before anyone asks Candidates for early roles sometimes ask about ownership. It is far easier to have thought about it in advance than to improvise during an interview. You do not have to offer equity. You do need to know whether you might, what you would want to ask counsel before you did, and how it would fit with what you have already promised to co-founders and investors. [Stock options for early employees](https://worldenterprise.org/insights/stock-options-for-early-employees-what-an-option-is-and-what-to-ask/) explains what an option is and lists questions for your own lawyer. This article does not say whether you should offer any. ## Decide how you will judge the result Write down, before the person starts, what you will look at after a few weeks and after a few months. Keep each item observable: something produced, a question answered without your help, a task that no longer lands on your desk. Avoid promising yourself or the candidate any particular result by any particular date. A plan for evaluation is a way to have an honest conversation, not a schedule that the work must meet. Also decide what you will do if it is not working. Founders often leave this until the day they need it. Your lawyer can tell you what the rules and the paperwork allow where you operate. Your own preparation is a short note on what signs would make you want to change something, and what you would try first. **The order of the first-hire decisions.** The decisions depend on each other, so the order saves rework. 1. **Work.** Decide what the person will do and what done looks like. 2. **Arrangement.** Settle hours, location and how the person is engaged. 3. **Money.** Settle pay and anything that sits beside it, with an accountant. 4. **Judgment.** Decide how you will review the result and when. ## A one-page record to produce When these decisions are made, put them on one page. It becomes the source for the job description, the interview questions and the offer. > **What the page should hold** > > The work in three to five sentences. The result you will look for. The working arrangement. The pay range and its review date. Your position on equity. The hours you will give to managing this person each week. The questions you want to ask counsel or an accountant. With that page in hand, the writing is straightforward. [Writing a job description people can answer](https://worldenterprise.org/insights/writing-a-job-description-people-can-answer/) turns it into a post, and [structured interviews for a small team](https://worldenterprise.org/insights/structured-interviews-for-a-small-team/) turns the result you wrote down into questions to ask every candidate. For the later steps, [offer letters](https://worldenterprise.org/insights/offer-letters-what-they-should-state/) and [onboarding](https://worldenterprise.org/insights/onboarding-a-new-team-member-what-to-prepare-before-day-one/) follow the same decisions. If the person will work remotely, [an operating rhythm for a remote offshore team](https://worldenterprise.org/insights/an-operating-rhythm-for-a-remote-offshore-team/) describes habits that carry across time zones, and the [glossary](https://worldenterprise.org/glossary/) defines terms used in the rest of the desk. ## Where this fits in a long effort A first hire shapes the company for years, so the record of what was agreed is worth keeping. The [job description article](https://worldenterprise.org/insights/writing-a-job-description-people-can-answer/) covers the next step, and the [onboarding article](https://worldenterprise.org/insights/onboarding-a-new-team-member-what-to-prepare-before-day-one/) covers what follows. WE's [way of working](https://worldenterprise.org/how-we-work/) treats a first hire as the start of a long relationship and not a quick fix, and the [shutdown data article](https://worldenterprise.org/insights/shutdown-data-and-what-survivors-do-differently/) shows how long the early years of a company run. SBA resource partners, listed in the [ecosystem directory](https://worldenterprise.org/ecosystem/), counsel founders on first hires, and founder communities are a good place to hear how others judged their first hire. ## What this article cannot tell you This article cannot tell you whether to hire, whom to hire, what to pay or what structure to use. It uses two US federal sources, the Internal Revenue Service and the US citizenship agency, read on October 10, 2026, and the employer duties it mentions are examples from one country. It does not cover state or local requirements, other countries, benefits, insurance or the rules for a company with employees in more than one place. It says nothing about company size, funding stage or the cost of any particular labor market. Before you commit, confirm the rules that apply to you with a qualified professional. ## Sources - Hiring employees. Internal Revenue Service. - Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.