033: Tactic Tuesdays: Hiring Freelancers & VA's (Part 2)

Ever wondered how to snag that perfect first-time hire or if agency outsourcing is the golden ticket? Matt and I unpack the complex world of hiring, sharing the gold we've mined from our experience with VA Philippines. From confronting hiring stigmas to honing the art of management, our latest episode is a treasure trove of insights for entrepreneurs looking to build a dream team that's agile and evolves with their business. Discover the value of adaptability and creative thinking in candidates, and why sometimes, the best hire isn't about a flawless beginning, but about finding those gems who can shine in various facets of your company.

As we navigate the crossroads of nurturing in-house talent versus the allure of agency expertise, we share candid tales of loyalty, growth, and the strategic choices that mold a brand's future. This episode peels back layers on the long-term benefits of cultivating a team in tune with your brand's heartbeat, juxtaposed against the high turnover rates you might face when pulling talent from agencies. From discussing retention strategies like revenue-based bonuses to the nitty-gritty of managing complex tasks like Amazon PPC in-house, we've got the map that could lead you to your very own loyal crew.

Join us as we reveal our refined hiring funnel—a process that's as seamless as it is effective. Starting with crafting magnetic job descriptions to detailed applicant screenings, we lay out a blueprint to help you identify and secure the crème de la crème of the candidate world. Learn how we save resources, time, and ensure that only the most promising prospects reach the interview dock. Plus, we share our secret sauce for interview questions that help us spot the shining stars among hopefuls. So grab your headphones, and let's embark on this expedition to uncover the secrets to assembling a stellar team that not only meets but exceeds your brand's horizon.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

So there's a couple of things there that I think is really important, matt. I mean. The first one is is that if you don't have experience, kind of hiring people and being able to assess talent, I think going through an agency like that is fantastic. And you said it was VAA. Are they just VAAcom?

Speaker 2: 0:20

You're muted. I think it's VAA Philippinescom. Yeah, I'll find out, we can put it in the show notes, but yeah, I think it's vaafilippinescom. Yeah, I'll find out, we can put it in the show notes, but yeah, I think it's vaafilippinescom.

Speaker 1: 0:28

Yeah. So I mean, again, know your strengths. If you've never done this is the first person that you're bringing on, whether it be for a VA or something else. I think that's where having an agency can be really helpful, and in fact, that's my first executive assistant. What I did was I went through an agency can be really helpful, and in fact, that's my first executive assistant.

Speaker 1: 0:45

What I did was I went through an agency a pretty expensive agency, frankly and a lot of that was because I'd never had an executive assistant before and there was a ton that I learned out of that and it kind of gave a lot of structure, because one of the other things that I've learned in hiring is is that I rarely get it right the first time in the sense that, yeah, I'll have that person for, you know, six months, a year or longer, but what their job look like, you know especially if it's the first time I've hired for that position when they started, or what I kind of expectations, what I thought they would be doing versus what they're actually doing.

Speaker 1: 1:20

Like there's definitely a change that happens and I would just say, you know, for folks that are listening is, I feel like there's this strong stigma out there of like, okay, well, if I hire this person and if they quit or I have to fire them, like that's a total failure and you know now I'm a bad business owner or you know bad person or whatever. The reality of it is is that you know, hiring and managing people is like any other skill, at least for me. I learned, you know, I try to learn from other people's failures. But I also have to have, you know, my own hands-on experience. And the first couple of times on that I mean, I was not probably a fantastic boss as far as you know, being able to provide good feedback and direction and all the rest of it. But you learn that stuff over time and that's okay. That your first hire, you know, isn't necessarily going to be or may not be that home run that you were hoping for.

Speaker 3: 2:11

Well, I think I mean realistically, I think, as as entrepreneurs like hopefully most of us at this point especially you know if, if you've gained any level of success in that area is that you recognize that failure is a part of success. Like I mean, if you haven't failed at anything then you haven't learned anything, and if you haven't learned anything then you're never going to be successful. So you know, it's just like anything else. You know that hiring process, I think, is a process of, you know, learning from those failures. I also think that there's an aspect of recognizing too that the one thing that and I think this is probably one of the biggest reasons why our hires have been successful, let's say, Like, I didn't run everything through the perfect process, I didn't even have any processes, you know. But I think the biggest reason, I think that, realistically, besides a few small time freelancers that really weren't, you know, we weren't hiring them on as full timers or anything Some of those didn't work out, but but all of the employee hires that we've done have, and I think most of it's because I've always placed a lot of emphasis on just simply bringing on good people, you know, because, at the end of the day, coming back to what you said, john, you know like it's not uncommon that you hire somebody on thinking that this is what they're going to do and either their job description changes in some way, you add some things to their plate that they didn't have, some things end up being shifted to somebody else, or maybe you can just move them into a completely different position. But the question is, if they are good people that have an ability to think and reason and be creative and find solutions, then chances are there is a position that you could move them into within your business where they would benefit your business. I don't, certainly that's not always the case. Maybe you don't have room for that. You know there's all sorts of reasons why that might not be true. But the one thing I can say is, if you bring on somebody who just is an all around, you know good individual, a solid individual with integrity and that can think, chances are. You know good individual, a solid individual with integrity and that can think, chances are. You know a failure in that department with that hiring is not likely to be I have to fire them because they're not doing well in this position. It may just simply be that's not the right position. But I think I can shift them into another area where they will be successful, and having a conversation with them about if you could do it. What you know, you know our business now. You know our brand, you know how we operate, you know what we do, who our customers are, all that stuff Right.

Speaker 3: 4:54

If you weren't doing the job that we hired you for and you were doing something else, what would you want to do? What would you be good at? What would what would you know? What? Would you wake up every day and say, boy, I'm glad this is my job. Right. Could you make that position? Could you make that work? I mean, he's great.

Speaker 3: 5:10

I also wanted to say that, on the agency front, I think there's two things. One, I've never used VAA. I'm sure they're great. I mean, they've been working out well for Matt and you know, I think they probably work out well for a lot of companies. The one thing that I would caution individuals about is and this is true, I think, for every aspect of your business.

Speaker 3: 5:56

There is an argument to be made for using a good agency for just about anything, whether that's PPC, whether that's for hiring VAs, whether that's for social media, whether it's you know, take your pick of the various things that you need to do within your business on a daily basis. There's probably a good agency out there that you could hire through, and if you find that right agency that's good at what they do, then you can hire somebody on who's likely going to be a really good fit for what you want, or hire an agency to do it or whatever, and you save yourself a lot of time and headache. But there's also a lot of agencies out there that aren't very good at what they do. There's also another thing that I think is worth paying attention to, and that is when you use an agency to do what you could otherwise do in-house. By hiring the right person, the one thing you lose and that you miss out on is the educational opportunity of walking through that process and learning what that looks like. So, for instance, hiring somebody through VAA for a particular position within your company, you do miss out on part of that learning process of what does it look like to actually have proper HR processes in place and you know what.

Speaker 3: 7:16

How should I fill out a role profile? How should I decide what the skill set is that this person should have? How do I verify references, what? How should I interview you know? Like? What questions should I ask? What things should I care about? You don't learn a lot of those things if you go straight to. You know, let's use an agency. And hear me, I'm not saying don't do that. I'm just saying there's a balance to that. You know, and take both into consideration, because I think you know there's there's pluses and minuses on both sides.

Speaker 3: 7:48

The one thing that I would say is with our team, I have some people who have been with me for a long time. You know I've got, you know, our customer service agent. She's been with me for seven years and she plans on continuing with us into the new brand even after we exit this brand. My inventory and logistics person she's been with us for going on five years. She plans on moving to the new brand. She's amazing. Been with us for going on five years. She plans on moving to the new brand. She's amazing. You know. The other two people that we have on our team are they haven't been with me as long, but they're both terrific and they also intend on moving with me to the new brand, which means that when I start this new brand because I intend on running it much the same way that I run the current brand. They all know me. They know we're going to take the very same processes that we use for this business and apply them to the new brand.

Speaker 3: 8:38

So if you can bring on good people and you do treat them well, I think there is.

Speaker 3: 8:47

I would buck a little bit against the perspective that it's unlikely that you can keep them on your team and have them move forward with you and that there's going to be the turnover. I'm not saying that doesn't happen. Maybe it's a little different with an agency than you know like like John, you know your business is more of an agency side. Maybe that's a different ballgame. To say, a brand you know an Amazon brand One of the things that I'm doing that maybe is part of that. I mean I think they think I'm a good boss, but also, like there's equity, like we pay bonuses based on revenue growth you know, they all know that when we have an exit, a percentage of that is every single person on our team is going to receive a percentage of that exit ways of building that into your team and hopefully bringing them with you and having them stay with you longer, whereas you know alternatives may not work out as well, you know, depending on your situation, I guess. I guess I'm just playing devil's advocate.

Speaker 1: 9:44

let's say yeah, I mean, I think those are some great points. First of all, around, you know, learning versus having somebody else, you know, a done for you solution. I think you have to be strategic in the sense of which items that you pick. I mean, I think about Amazon, ppc, that changes, you know, significantly. Can a brand handle that? Sure, but it's going to take a lot more time and attention just because the amount of changes versus maybe some of these more strategic skills like hiring.

Speaker 1: 10:11

So, for example, I mean, when it comes to hiring, you know this is something that I put a significant amount of time in as far as hiring and onboarding and part of that, and so it has I feel like I've developed, you know, we've developed a pretty good process where I don't even actually do about half of it myself anymore because I've taught somebody else how to do it. But in that process, like we have a very and I do want to share this for listeners because I think it's I think it's a pretty simple but pretty effective process, which is, you know we kind of talked about job description and knowing what you want that person to do. That's kind of step one, and understanding that you may not get it right at the first swing that may take you know hiring somebody and it not working out, in order to figure out what it is that you really want or what your expectations really are. But then after that, you know creating that job description which you know. Mike, like you mentioned, ChatGPT is great for that. So if you don't know what you know kind of a good job description or what your posting should look like, there's, you know, plenty of examples out there and ChatGPT can help you kind of tailor it to your company. I would say you know, include what your company's kind of you know mission statements or core values are, because I think people really resonate with that and both attract and also repel the people that you want to work with or don't want to work with. But then, beyond that, I mean our process has been pretty successful because you know we don't interview everybody. In fact it's only, you know, probably the top five to 10% that we actually end up interviewing.

Speaker 1: 11:41

And so what we do is we start out with really simple, you know interaction, which is somebody says that they're interested. For example, you know most recent position we were hiring off of Upwork. So we started out with starts out the way a really, and we do the same thing on Indeed. It starts out with a really super easy interaction, which is hey, what interested you in this position? And out of that I'm not looking for a quote, unquote, right answer. I'm looking for how fast do they respond, because if they don't send me a message back for a week, well, they're probably not really all that interested, or they're really distracted or you know whatever. And then what do they write in the answer? Is it one sentence? Is it, you know, a 10 page life story? Is it well-written? Especially in the age of chat GPT, like you know, three to five well-written sentences tells me a lot about you know that person and how much effort they put into it, and those types of things.

Speaker 3: 12:37

And it either tells you. It either tells you how good of a writer they are and how well thought out they are, or it tells you how well they can use chat GPT, both of which are useful on your team.

Speaker 1: 12:47

I was going to say I'm fine with either answer. And it's funny, probably 70% of the people that apply fail that test because either they don't reply or the reply that they send. The reply that they send back is Ted. I don't know how to describe it other than terrible.

Speaker 2: 13:06

It's such an easy way to weed people out without having to even talk to them. It's such an easy way, I mean it's it's a low effort way of doing it.

Speaker 1: 13:12

And then after that, you know, we come up with a small test because we want to be fair to the people that you know we're considering for this too. Like I don't want to give them a, you know, a 10 hour project to do for free, cause I wouldn't, you know, probably do that for somebody for free, but 15 minutes I think it's very reasonable to ask somebody to do, you know, a project that would take 15,. You know, think about something that would be easy, that would relate to that position, that would take them, you know, 15, 30 minutes max in order to do and again, to me that's always it's not did they do it right? It's does the result that they gave me back based on what I asked? Is it logical, you know, did whether they got to the right answers or it's you know what I wanted, or whatever it's? Is it within the realm of logic, based on the result that I gave? Or I mean the, the project that I gave?

Speaker 1: 14:14

And the interesting thing out of there is, again, a lot of people disqualify themselves because they don't want to do it. Fine, if you're not willing to spend 15 minutes on something, then why would I spend 30 minutes interviewing you? Or the result that they get back is you can tell very easily that they didn't read the directions or they put, you know, very, very little effort into it. And then it's only after those first initial steps do we actually do any sort of interview with them. And that process you know going through those multiple steps, like you said, matt, it makes it for essentially a much more efficient process than if we tried to interview everybody.

Speaker 3: 14:55

Oh yeah, and, reasonably speaking, I think one of the things that that does for you is, if you have a process in place for, in a somewhat, at least semi-automated way, in a somewhat, you know, at least semi-automated way to weed out most of your candidates until you whittled them down to those that you want to interview, what it does for you is, I think it frees you up a little bit to be willing to throw a wider net so that you can actually bring in a larger number of candidates. Because, you know, if I know I've got to interview everybody because I don't really have a good process in place and so I need this kind of face-to-face, eye-to-eye thing to try and figure out whether they're a good fit or not, then I might only talk to 10 people because I don't have time to interview more than 10 people. If, on the other hand, I know I'm going to weed out, you know, 80 to 90% of the candidates before I ever speak to them with an, with a process that doesn't take an, you know, a super large amount of time, then I might throw a net out to get a hundred or 200 people, you know because and the more people, as long as you write your your job offering properly. They know what the role looks like. You know you've really laid out. You know, like what are the skill sets I'm looking for. Making sure they know I'm going to check your references. You know we're going to. You know we're going to do this by the book, let's say you know.

Speaker 3: 16:29

So don't think that you're just going to skate in and come under the radar like lay out, a quality hire will want a company that does that. You know that that's who they're bringing in because they want to know they're working with a good team. And a company that doesn't do that, it just means that you're probably not coming into a team that you're going to want to work with. So you know, if you can throw that net out and pull in 200 candidates and whittle that down to you know maybe 15 interviews or 10 interviews or something you know like, then you have a much better chance of getting you know higher quality candidates just because there's a larger net.

Speaker 1: 17:09

What I think you learn a lot more than just like. It's really hard, especially you know Upwork and Indeed and a lot of these other platforms. I feel like so you do your job posting, at least for us. We try to be very competitive with pay, try to be, you know, very flexible and to be good people to work with, and so it's very common for us to get 100, 200, 300 applications and it's like okay if you it's hard to sift through them based on resumes, because they all start to sound alike. You know pretty quickly. And what I found is is that the that interaction gives you a at least gives me a much better sense of the quality of the individual, and not even necessarily I mean some of its quality, but also just hey, is it a good fit? It's not necessarily that they're a bad person, they're just not a good fit for what we're looking for.

Speaker 3: 18:06

Yeah, I think too it's probably worth you know, like for any individuals listening who haven't really used you know Upwork or Indeed or anything you know too much previously.

Speaker 3: 18:16

It's probably good to point out as much as this ought to be obvious, but you might not think about it when you're reading Upwork profiles or Indeed profiles or things like that. You know and you're trying to evaluate what you know what a candidate looks like, remember that most of them are using Chet, gpt to craft their resume and their profile. Like they're saying, okay, you know, if I wanted to be hired for such and such a job or this type of job, how would I describe myself to give myself the best opportunity you know at actually getting that job Right? So, as you said, john, you know a lot of people's resumes and you know and, and you know freelancer profiles and stuff are are beginning to sound very much the same from one candidate to another because chat GPT wrote it, you know, and so you know you really do need to walk through that process of you know vetting them in different ways, you know, and trying to weed that process out. And then you know, at some point having that face-to-face, you know, with a short list of candidates.

Speaker 1: 19:19

but yeah, all right. Well, I feel like we've covered a lot. So, for listeners, I feel like there's been a lot of tips in here on how do we hire that right team member, whether it be an executive assistant or bringing on somebody else onto your team. As we wrap up here, matt, what's maybe one kind of action item that you would give the listeners, based on your experience?

Speaker 2: 19:42

Yeah, well, I think the biggest one for me and I'm speaking more for myself and I know that there's a lot of other people out there. If you have failed in the past, don't always be so quick to blame the person that you hired. Look in the mirror and ask yourself was I ready for this person? Do I like Mike was talking about before? Am I ready to hand over these tasks? Me personally, let alone. Is that person going to know what to do once they get in? So I think looking at yourself and making sure that you're ready to be able to hand over those tasks, I think is step one of even before you go out and start looking. So, yeah, I think, look in the mirror. Don't always think that it was the person that you hired, because it might not have been.

Speaker 3: 20:24

One other little tidbit before we drop off that I just thought about because it's one of the things that we're doing with this executive assistant position. If you're concerned that you're going to hire somebody but you can't give them full-time, you'd like to hire a full-time, quality individual, let's say, who wants that kind of full-time position. Try and think through what are some of the things that you would be doing in your business that would help build revenue that you currently aren't doing, but they're low-hanging fruit so that you could fill those extra hours with. So, for instance, with our executive assistant position, we essentially we want to move into the pool pro market more heavily than we are now with our products. So this executive assistant position, one of the skills that we're requiring of that individual, is that they have, you know, some experience with you know, lead generation and nurturing and whatnot, and when they're to fill their 40 hours, essentially, we're just going to have them filling our pipeline with pool pro businesses that are out there so that we can, you know, be contacting them and try to bring them in as as new customers for our product line. They can work as many hours as you know like, even if they only had five hours doing the other things that we want them to do.

Speaker 3: 21:37

Well, okay, Now I've got 35 hours of lead gen, right? I mean, if there's probably something in your business that you could fill their time with, you just have to figure out what that is. And if you can figure it out, then you can hire a full-time position. Just make sure, whatever that thing is, it's worth the money that you're going to pay for that full-time. Is it bringing in enough revenue to cover that? If it is, then it's worth it.

Speaker 1: 22:00

Yeah, and I would say these two things just based on our discussion, that I would leave with listeners two tips. One is that set aside enough time for onboarding. So we've talked a lot about hiring in this tactic session, but I would say that onboarding is just as important. So once you find that dime in the rough, make sure that, whether it's you or somebody on your team, somebody's got to show them the ropes. So make sure that you set aside time for that, because that's going to make them so much more successful and productive if they have good onboarding.

Speaker 1: 22:28

And then the other thing I would say is is that if you're you know doing this yourself and hiring that person, I would really encourage people to try out that you know at least one step in kind of weeding out those candidates and just asking them a simple question we like to use. You know what interests you most in this position, because you'd be surprised at how that kind of whittles you down to your top 20 or 30% of your candidates just with that one question. Oh, that's great man, all right. Well, I think that's a great place to stop for today, but I think this is. You know, we'll probably have more on this discussion, especially, as you know, we continue to build our team. So thank you all for listening and we'll see you next time.