There’s a piece of advice doing the rounds that’s going to cost founders dearly, as it lacks understanding about what a build actually needs. The really worrying thing is that it’s from a source that’s supposedly credible and so has a real chance of being listened to and it certainly has the potential to steer founders who are already carrying a lot, in completely the wrong direction.
So I’m going to say something about it.
The advice goes like this: your first HR hire just needs to be hands-on, Senior Advisor / HR Manager level. A doer. Someone mid level who’ll write the policies, set up the systems, handle the day-to-day. Save the senior, strategic people for later, when you’re bigger.
It sounds sensible. It’s completely wrong.
And it’s exactly how growing businesses end up having to tear down and rebuild their entire people function two years later, at three times the cost.
Let me first tell you why I have the right to speak to this. It’s because I’ve done the thing this advice is about, several times over.
Most recently, I built a People and Culture function from scratch in a business that scaled from 25 people to nearly 200, growing 517% to become the UK’s number one fastest-growing company, and the function clearly stood the test of time. So this isn’t theory for me. It’s real, lived experience
Here’s what that advice misunderstands.
Building a people function from nothing is not solely an administrative or operational task, and that’s what you’d get if you followed the “advice” that’s doing the rounds.
It is the single most strategic thing you will do for your business in its growth phase.
Every decision you make in those early foundations, how you structure contracts, how you design your onboarding, how you build your management capability, how you set your culture in place, either scales with you or collapses under you. And you don’t know which until you’re at 150 people wondering why everything’s breaking.
The person who writes those foundations needs to know what’s coming.
They need to build for the business you’re becoming, not just the business you are today. That takes strategic judgement, foresight, and the experience of having seen what happens at every stage of growth. It is the opposite of a junior/mid-level job.
So let me be clear about the level you actually need.
You need someone at Head of HR or HR Director level. Not an administrator, not a junior generalist, not a manager, not someone learning on your time.
The right person at that level understands something the cheaper option simply cannot:
That building a function properly means blending the strategic and the operational, at the same time, in the same week, often in the same hour.
They’ll write the contracts themselves and design the structure it sits within. They’ll handle the live ER case and build the framework that prevents the next one. They’ll make sure your policies and processes are actually underpinned by your culture and your values and design them to uphold this, preventing the holes that’ll make your culture break later. They’ll be thinking three steps ahead, while rolling their sleeves up today.
Are people like that rare?
Yes. Senior people who are genuinely happy to build from the ground up, rather than sit above a function directing others, are not on every corner. But they exist. I am one of them, and I know others.
And that level, that blend, is exactly what a scaling business needs at the start. Not later. At the start.
Because here’s what happens if you hire someone who can only do the hands-on part. They build foundations that work beautifully at 30 people and quietly fall apart at 130, because they didn’t have the strategic lens to build for scale. The contracts need redoing. The structure needs unpicking. The culture’s drifted because nobody was thinking ahead. And you’re now paying a senior person to rebuild what should have been built right the first time, plus the cost of everything that went wrong in between.
That’s not cheaper. It’s the most expensive way to do it.
And here’s a question worth asking whenever you’re handed advice about who to hire: who benefits from it?
Advice to hire at a level more junior than actually needed often flows, intentionally or not, from people who have junior/mid level candidates to place. I’m not pointing fingers, plenty of people genuinely believe what suits them. But as a founder, it’s always worth asking whether the guidance you’re being given serves your business, or someone else’s.
The cheapest hire is rarely the one that’s best for you. Sometimes it’s just the one that’s easiest for someone else to sell.
The businesses that scale well are the ones that get senior, strategic people expertise in early, in someone who’s also genuinely happy to roll up their sleeves and do the operational building. Someone who’s been through the growth before and knows where the bodies are buried. Someone who builds the foundation right the first time, so you never have to tear it up.
That’s not a luxury you earn once you’re big. It’s the thing that helps you get big without breaking.
So if you’re a founder weighing up your first people hire, please don’t be talked into reaching for the cheaper, junior or mid level option and calling it prudent. Hire at Head of HR or Director level. Find the person who can build and who knows exactly what they’re building toward.
The level you bring in at the start determines whether your foundations carry you or fail you, because the foundations are everything.
Until next time
Jacquie
P.S. If you’re a founder reading this and quietly wondering whether you’ve left it too late, you almost certainly haven’t. The best time to build the foundation right was at the start. The second best time is now.