Are you feeling anxious when it comes to hiring key roles for your business?
In Episode 72 of the Bean Ninjas Podcast, CEO Meryl Johnston talks to Barbara Turley about hiring key roles for a scaling business.
Are you feeling anxious when it comes to hiring key roles for your business? Learn how to take the stress out of hiring from Barbara Turley @virtualhubltd #scaleup #outsourcing Click To TweetThe challenges of hiring key roles
One of the most challenging tasks is finding the right employees.
Barbara started by targeting Filipinos and getting the most out of them (even though she had never been to The Philippines when she started).
Meryl’s idea was to hire the best people no matter where they are.
Barbara has hired hundreds of employees from the Philippines, and Meryl has hired multiple people across the globe.
Related: Finding High-Quality Eastern European Freelancers with Noel Andrews of JobRack
Something to consider when hiring is the difference between hiring onshore staff and offshore staff. You need to pay attention to work traditions and cultures.
For instance, people from America, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have similar work traditions and expectations.
People from the Philippines, Asia, Eastern Europe, etc. have slightly different cultures.
So navigating those differences when deciding who to hire is critical.
Related: Behind the scenes of managing 150 Philippines Virtual Assistants with Barbara Turley
It’s not easy to develop an understanding of all different cultures, holidays, job expectations. It takes time to get acquainted with the traditions of our remote force.
Being clear about the job description and employee expectations is important. Before you start looking figure out which role you want to fill.
Some people tend to take a role and run with it, but that comes with a sense of lacking or ignoring processes. Having an initiative employee can be great but it’s easy to lose control of the process when someone ‘wings it’.
Let’s say you’ve been putting time into creating a process, you’re going to need employees that’re going to adapt to the process and follow it. In this case, you don’t need someone coming in and changing the process or ignoring it.
Related: How to Write Roles & Responsibilities on a Job Description
Meryl’s advice for first department hires is being clear on whether you’re hiring a strategist or someone who’s going to be doing the doing.
People that are good with strategies are good at solving big problems, they can help define how the department should run. They install all the processes while others follow the processes and pay attention to detail.
As Barbara says, problem solvers are a personality type, they can’t help themselves but to customize your offer to solve the problem of a customer. In most businesses, this is exactly what you need.
“Someone who’s going to think completely outside the box and focus on the need of the customer to deliver a solution that works for them.”
Although, it’s not profitable having someone adapt and customize a productized service.
Customers can get different deals, and although this is a solution to their problem it might not be in the offer. This can cause mistakes and problems with other customers.
“Problems occur from hiring an amazing person that’s just a wrong fit for what you do.”
You need to know if you’re in the need for a go-getter, if not hire someone who’s not focused on developing or changing. Hiring the wrong person is bad for your work environment and for their caged potential.
Hiring an intrapreneur
An intrapreneur has all the benefits of an entrepreneur, except they’re an employee of your company.
Usually, this is a person that has some entrepreneurial traits, they ran their business before and they’ll want to do that in the future.
They’re great problem solvers, great strategist, risk-takers and they have lots of ideas! Marketing is a great area for someone like that.
If your intrapreneur was an entrepreneur they would have had their own business and they’ll know how to attract customers without a huge ad budget.
When your target market is the same as the target market of the entrepreneur’s business (before they join your team), then you speak the same language. This person understands the pain points, they’re agile and not someone who’s going to let costs run too far by cutting the things that aren’t working.
Being an entrepreneur is hard, sometimes you just want to have a break from that and earn a consistent income. Hire an intrapreneur part-time, so that you can benefit from their experience and so they can still work on their own business while having a stable base, a stable income.
“Forget about the money bit and enjoy your expertise for a little while. Concentrate on the creative side.”
Related: From Entrepreneur to Intrapreneur: How & Why Anfernee Chansamooth joined Bean Ninjas
Here’s a video explaining different roles in a business:
When does it make sense to hire an entrepreneur for your business? Listen to Meryl Johnston & Barbara Turley @virtualhubltd share their thoughts. #hiring #outsourcing #smallbusiness Click To TweetHiring strategies
The secret to successful hiring is understanding the key roles in your organization.
Instead of having one person full time you can expand on multiple remote roles. Like having a strategist once a month, a project manager, having multiple writers.
Related: Pros and Cons of Hiring Full-time, Part-time and Freelance Employees
Key is to hire part-time experts. This eliminates the cost of paying them for an entire work month.
Develop processes and then have somebody pop up as a check-up; to make sure that the business is running as estimated.
While the process is still in the making, get your employees to learn; train them during the process so they’ll know how to handle it.
The project manager is the key role. As Barbara says you need a project manager to keep everything moving, otherwise you’d have to be your own project manager, which would be a nightmare.
Instead of looking for one person who can do everything, find the creative and the doer.
So how do you separate these roles? How experienced must your project manager be for you to delegate some of the tasks?
People tend to be frustrated when running their business especially with the wrong hires, but it’s not the person you hired, it’s not their fault, it’s the fact that you’re not clear on the parts of the role that need to be done. It’s really hard to hire someone who does it all.
It’s also critical to have the right systems and documented processes and training prepared in your business. That way, when you bring someone new into your team, the hiring and onboarding is smooth and consistent.
Related: A different approach to building business systems with Justine Pattantyus
Hiring remote workers
Hiring remote workers comes with pros and cons.
Here’s an infographic explaining the benefits of remote workers:
(Source: go-gulf.ae)
Productivity in remote teams is facilitated by having the right systems and tools in place. https://t.co/zIvfwgpXwG pic.twitter.com/2hKb605rAD
— The Virtual Hub Ltd (@virtualhubltd) October 1, 2019
Listen in to learn more about hiring key roles.
Meryl and Barbara Turley discuss:
- Different cultures
- Having a clear job description
- The difference between strategists and doers
- Entrepreneurial traits
- Hiring strategies
Resources mentioned in this episode
- The Virtual Hub
- Barbara Turley (LinkedIn)
- Built to Sell
