Tips for Hiring Local Employees? (24)
So I've been doing great with my virtual assistants, I currently have about 3 of them working each week however I feel like its time to get some office space and hire some actual employees. Its quite hard to get your point across and really train someone well enough to be an asset for you, most of my virtual assistants do very basic tasks and need a lot of direction and guidance which can be a pain, I also feel like they can be gone anyday.. So with that said, what kind of approach would you take when hiring someone for this type of business? Craigslist and local unversities works great, I've gotten quite the response so far but I'm not sure what angle I should take with this.
Should I act as a startup, should I offer a hourly rate? If so what would you suggest for an hourly rate? I'm somewhat against offering any percentages / commissions due to all the marketing they would be doing is strictly campaigns that I give them which would include the offer, landers, etc.
What type of people to go after? Straight for coders or html guys, or should I work with regular marketing students with little web experience. Each have their negs / positives when it comes down to how much time I need to spend to teach them and also their hourly rates. However on one hand I have less of a chance of someone who I teach from the ground up running away with anything valuable as more than likely he wouldnt know how to replicate other niches / campaigns.
Should I act as a very successful, baller internet marketer or act as a low key computer nerd? Just brainstorming some ideas / thoughts, hopefully this thread can help others in this situation as well!
Thanks!
where are you located? in a western country?
heres a simple system we use - find a site like bestjobs.ph where u can mass contact alot of people, hire 10 and fire 9 every week.
the task is not important, if they are good, they will tell you what u need to do after listening to your needs, which you are probably not very sure of either.
if they are willing to take the risk to work online at a low pay, chances are your reputation is not very important because they already overcame the fear of doing something totally different than a regular 9-5 job.
You may find otherwise, but I am pretty sure that the "baller" positioning is not the way to go if you want to attract amazingly talented people ...
Depends on the country you are in. If you are in Belgium or Spain, I can definitely help you out with office space, accountant, legal, etc. Just hit me up on skype to discuss this.
most of our staff started as interns.. you keep the good ones afterwards and you can train them from the start.
Here are some tipics whose fired more people in his last 8 years than many will in a lifetime!! <kidding>
-Make sure you don't flaunt it, this creates greed even in those who say they are not greedy.
-Make sure you break up your systems into mini parts and you give them to different people.
-Make sure you hire people who don't like the same music, same movies, same kind of dress, etc - doing this helps you keep an extra layer of professionalism, because they won't want to be come best buddies.
Ie Rock Stars vs Rappers. Techno People vs Classical Music Lovers.
-Make sure you ask people what their salary expectations are. If they are in line with what you want to pay, or close then you should continue. If they are sky high, then forgetaboutit and move to next.
-Ask them what they believe the job is about and entails.
-Ask them what their goals are for the next year, for the next 5 years.
-Ask them about their past experiences, what they liked about the previous company they worked at what they didnt like about it. This will help shed a lot of additional light on their personalities.
-Ask them questions like if they were to be faced with problem x, what steps would they take to solve it.
those are some tips and ideas that came to mind right now...
start with someone you know that have the desire to work with you (under you) and teach him the stuff, it might take some time but you will earn a worker that appreciate the leanings and will be committed to you.
after you finish the training and managed to get him to work on his own with small direction you can do this again or now hire someone with experience.
you can use FB and Linkedin to post position for free using the viral features you can have a really wide reach.
think about commission again as this is one of the most important tools to keep your workers committed to their job 24/7
from experience working on commission makes you open the PC even after work hours as everything you do reflect on your salary.
you can start with a small percentage and create goals steps that if he makes a certain amount he gets X percentage and above $XXX he gets X+Y commission,
any way the most important thing in hiring the right person that share the same goals and commitment as you do!
Another great tool is to meet with the career reps of the top-tier universities in your town or that are close to your town (within 60miles/100km), they will post your job ad for free on their internal career site so that all young graduates but also experienced students such as MBA or executive education people get access to your offer. Its really hitting two birds with one stone because the jobs are being placed for free and all the applicants have a very good educational background. This is ideal for recruiting people where you dont require them to have previous online/affiliate experience.
On the other hand, if you are looking for someone with +2 years of experience in the affiliate marketing field, the best way to go is to work with a headhunter such as michael page, robert walters, adecco, randstad, etc.
You usually pay them between 15 and 22% on the total first year salary of the person you'll hire tru them (fix + bonus)
Im located in the US / Florida. Thanks for the tips so far! I have lots of training material saved, ebooks, video courses etc that through the years i've backed up since I knew it will be helpful. Im leaning towards finding general internet savvy workers and teaching them.. If I go the intern route and teach them, how long usually before they get paid or do you pay them from the beginning? I'd rather start there then with experienced affiliate marketing people since that just seems it would lead to problems faster and also bigger risk.
Managing remote workers is very inconsistent and tedious. Sure it can work for some time but eventually you will see that inhouse is the only way to go if you really want to scale and have less things to manage.
Hit me up on Facebook and we can do a call. I can hook a player up.
Originally Posted by vidivo
Afterwards, if the interns decide that the role is still right for them and we think they are right for us, we make them a full time offer.
This way, by the time they start, they add value from day 1, they know exactly what they are getting themselves into, and we don't have to deal with unteaching "experienced" people who actually don't know what they are doing but who get all defensive and offended when they come face to face with this fact.
hey cmdeal,
are most of your interns straight out of school? 0 work experience?
Originally Posted by hlyghst
Originally Posted by cmdeal
What kind of full time offer if you dont mind sharing and do you have them sign a contract with you? Commission based or just hourly rate? 9am to 5pm sort of thing? Just trying to wrap my head around this. Thanks!
I don't have any first hand experience with local employees, so I'll keep my mouth shut there.
Concerning virtual assistants - have you ever met them in person? My visit in the Philippines really changed my mindset. They're just as scared of you being gone from one day to the next, than you are that they will. Meeting them in person can build a lot more trust, and going over longer-term plans together.
I'm not sure how I'll act in your situation myself, because I can see at some point it's going to require local employees for me as well. One option I'm seriously considering is opening an office in the Philippines and hiring people to work there.
Depends on your own lifestyle choices of course. For me personally having an office and hiring in Germany (where I am from) would not make much sense as it's all way to expensive without the same increase in value for the extra price tag.
Also I consider doing a once a year, one week meetup with the whole VA team, to go over long-term planning and do some stuff together. Only online has a lot of downsides.
Originally Posted by vidivo
You need to afraid them!
tell them its hard work, give them hard screening task on tight schedule, its that simple!
Originally Posted by delash
Originally Posted by kepe95
Everyone wants to obvously save money and make more, but I've thought about this as well... yes its cheaper to hire remote workers overseas, but the potential and training that you can get from them cannot match someone locally, as easily I should say. Sure you can spend hours and hours of talking to them on skype and doing video training etc, but its still not the same as if you taught them in a class like cmdeal is doing.
Also depending on how much / what level you plan on being at, one phillipino worker will cost you about 500 bucks a month. A US / German worker will cost you about 1500-2000. Is that extra 1k really going to break your bank? With an actual process and workers present you should be hitting 50k-100k in profit relatively easy each month so it wont do much to your bottom line but will give you a lot more security and growth options. What if you want to hire another employee, you can easily throw them in with your local workers and they can help him out and get him up to speed. Yet with remote workers you are stuck training and teaching him again unless you have someone that can do this...
Also good luck training a phillipino to think like an american or german in terms of coming up with their own banners / ad copy / ad angles. This part is almost impossible to teach to a foreigner compared to a local person.
Originally Posted by cmdeal
In the interview stage you need to afraid them and put pressure on them - beccause you need to screen very hard, you don't accept new members to the family very easy.
After you got someone in, you need to grow him and give him the tools & enviorment to grow
^ you could also 'screen very hard' just by talking and testing them... no need to immediately scare them away.
Unless you are trying to build a team of Navy Seals, instead of office employees 
^For example if you talking with developer you need to say server may crush, hackers may hack our services, you might need to work weekends for months
If we found bug in middle of night, you might need to work during the night.. you might need to do QA..
you will need to write patchs, lots of quick and dirty, maybe you will need to write in programming languages that you hate/ not familiar.. maybe you will need to maintiain other people code..
Plus you need to give relevant practical hard test on limited time
I hired around 200 Va and around 10 local employees during my life, (the longest VA is with me for two years..)
When I started to afraid them I notice big jump of my business performance..
maybe I am not using the right word, but the idea is to screen agressively as you can!
(if you will screen in the same way your girlfried/future wife, you will thanks me many times..)
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