How do you hire and train across unrelated trades?

What do the trades have in common?

Almost nothing, and that is the point. Elena Flores is a part-time editor for the video channel. Mira Chen produces a weekly interview podcast. Dev Patel is a fulfillment contractor who ships tees and caps. Rosa Bell cleans and turns over three cabins. June Ellis is a booking agent for keynotes. Sam Reyes manages a roastery and café with nine staff, including Noor Haddad and the rest of the café team.

An editor and a cabin cleaner do not need the same training. Pretending otherwise produces a generic onboarding that helps neither. So the approach separates two things that are usually mixed together: the craft and the business.

Who do you hire?

Someone who already has the craft. Cairn Holdings does not teach editing, roasting or cleaning to first-timers. Each business is too small to carry an apprentice, and the owner is not an expert in most of the trades anyway. The hire is a person who could do the job for someone else tomorrow.

What the hire usually does not have is the shape of this business. How the mailbox works. What the policy says. Which decisions are theirs.

What does the interview cover?

Two halves. The first half is the craft, and it is short, because a portfolio or a reference answers it. The second half is a written scenario from the business itself, taken from something that actually happened.

For Switchback, the scenario is a refund request that arrives after the 30-day return window. For Ridgeline, it is a guest asking to arrive before the 4pm check-in on a turnover day. For Trailhead, it is a guest's team proposing a recording date that overlaps a keynote. For Cairn Creative, it is a sponsor asking to renew at last year's rate when this year's card says $12,000.

The right answer in every case is the same shape: know what the policy says, apply it as written, and know when to bring it to the owner. A candidate who invents a generous exception on the spot is kind, but they will be kind with someone else's policy.

What does training actually consist of?

Three things, in this order.

1. The mailbox. Each business has one address and the new person reads it. Training starts with a week of reading real mail alongside the previous person or the owner, and drafting replies that are reviewed before they are sent.
2. The written policies. Every business has a small set of documents that answer most questions: the Switchback return policy, the Ridgeline check-in and turnover note, the Summit Sessions booking terms, the Trailhead guest and episode notes. The new person reads all of them, and the documents, not memory, are what they cite in replies.
3. The line. Where their authority ends. Rosa can confirm a cabin is ready; she cannot approve an early check-in. June can propose a keynote hold; Avery confirms every travel and speaking commitment personally. Dev can process a return inside the window; anything outside it goes to the owner.

The line is the part most small businesses skip, and it is the part that prevents most of the trouble.

How is the café different?

Basecamp Roasters is the only Cairn business with a team large enough to need real procedures, and it has them. Sam Reyes checks the roster before opening and assigns one staff member to inventory, one to the espresso station and another to the service counter. Fridge temperatures are confirmed and recorded. If a teammate is absent, Sam updates the roster and names an alternate before the first customer arrives.

Café training is built from those procedures. A new café hire learns the opening checklist, the milk-alternative procedure and the rule that any safety discrepancy goes to Sam before service resumes. It is the same pattern as the other businesses, mailbox, policies, line, but with a manager in the loop and more written down.

How do you keep training current across ten businesses?

By keeping the documents current, because the documents are the training. When the rate card changes once a year, the training for Cairn Creative changes with it. When the café issues a second version of a procedure, the first version has to be marked as superseded, or two current-looking documents will sit on the training board and staff will have to guess. That is the situation at Basecamp Roasters right now: two milk-alternative procedures are both current, the ruling is on Sam's list, and until it is made the training says to pause and ask.

What does not work?

• A single company handbook. Ten trades do not fit in one.
• Training the craft. Hire it instead.
• Verbal policy. If the return window lives in someone's head, it changes every time it is repeated.
• Skipping the line. The generous exception a new hire grants today becomes the precedent a customer cites next month.

Q&A

The questions people ask about hiring for unrelated businesses are answered below.

Last updated 30 September 2026.