Virtual Assistants Recruitment System with Linh Podetti

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Welcome back to the Business Systems Summit. I'm your host David Jenyns, and in this session we're going to be chatting with Linh Podetti. Linh is the co-founder of Outsourcing Angel, who I'm very happy to say is one of our sponsors for the summit. They're an offshore recruitment agency that specializes in VAs from the Philippines, and then basically pairing them up with companies based in Australia, the US, Canada, Europe, lots of different places. Now I've been a huge advocate of building virtual teams for many years now, because it's all about finding the best quality team members you can at the best rate. Now, we've got team members all over the world, many of whom are based in the Philippines. But what I love most about what Outsourcing Angel is doing is it's all about, for them, building a great culture within the organization, which is often very overlooked when people think about offshoring. Sadly, some people see VAs as almost like commodities and low-cost labor that you basically give work to them that you just don't want to do. The fact is, when you can build up a solid team of VAs and they become part of your team and you marry that together with good systems and processes, it can be an absolute game changer for businesses. Most businesses, they operate on that knife's edge when it comes to financial controls and things like that, and getting great cost team members just gives you extra margin for error. It just makes everything work so much easier. They really just become an extension, and that's what Outsourcing Angel does so well. Linh's going to actually share with us her system for recruiting VAs, and I think this is powerful when you consider that this effectively is her secret sauce. This is what they do at Outsourcing Angels, and she's going to peel back the curtain and show us how she finds these A-player virtual assistants. But before I get ahead of myself, I need to welcome Linh to the call. So thank you, Linh.

Thank you so much for having me, Dave. Yeah, you really described it really well. I love that you saw the benefit in virtual staff, and I know you've got long-term staff yourself and you've been able to enjoy that benefit.

Yeah, the magic is when someone works with you over a long period of time and then they just get you and they understand your systems and processes. So I know finding these people for some people can be a challenge, and some people get burnt when offshoring, and oftentimes it's just because they haven't approached it the right way. You are a systems thinker and you already shared some of the systems and processes before we started recording. I know there's a lot to cover, but let's dive into how you find these A-players and more specifically even just to start, what is the problem that you see this particular system solve and then let's go through it step by step.

Sure, so like yourself and like many others, I also only stumbled across outsourcing and offshoring and had no idea how to do it, but when it comes to cost-effective and you know, 'cause my backstory is that I built a website with an Australian company, but then they screwed me up and they built it on a proprietary platform and basically I threw away $3,000 or $4,000 and didn't even have a website. With less money, I was forced to try outsourcing. And the first platform that I ever tried, which I continue to use to this day is Upwork. It used to be called oDesk, right? And so, you know, it was like, wow, so you know, as soon as you post the job, there's so many people apply for it. Literally like a minute, you're like, I'm wondering, how did they even read my job post? So that is the scary part in that, you know, it does feel a bit daunting going. It's almost you're walking into this big forest and you don't know where to look. But so I made a lot of mistakes like everyone else, just don't know where to look, don't know, even my job brief wasn't right. And so the system that I'm trying to solve here, I'm sharing here is the right way to actually be able to find someone to work remotely for you. And maybe it might be ad hoc project-based for you at first, but ideally, the ideal way that I like to work with virtual team now is more permanent long-term. Because as you know, whether you hire, even if you hire local people, right, you want that time for them to learn about you and then eventually they know you inside out. Why wouldn't you want to keep them forever? Why would you want to give them away to other people? Yeah, that's in short what the system is all about.

Perfect. Well, let's dive in. What's the first step? So actually, what do you call this? Virtual team recruitment system, is that?

Yeah, I like that word, yeah, virtual team, yep.

And what's the first step you go through when hiring?

Okay, so it starts with a job brief, right? When I first started, I was like, build me a website for my business. Imagine a job brief like that, you know, you're gonna find anybody, anything, and people obviously just want to win a job and make money. And so it really starts with the right job brief. If you don't know what you're shopping for, you're gonna get whatever. So in terms of a job brief, you need to think about like, what tasks What are you wanting to delegate? What tasks do you need help in your business? And then what skill set? Are there certain hard skills like they— let's say when it comes to technical stuff, you really want to know that they can work with certain platforms or have built certain software before. So the hard skills, but as well as the soft skills. So I would even write in like, I want someone reliable, hardworking, and it comes to even the time you want them to work. I know sometimes you do ad hoc project-based, then you can't really expect them to be on time on the— that's the thing, that's what I love about the long-term people too, 'cause you're able to choose the time when they're always there with you. So yeah, letting them know what time you want them to work, and must-haves and preferred, 'cause sometimes you have such high expectations that you're never gonna find that person. You go, I want them to— 'cause sometimes when people don't know what VAs or virtual team is, they think they're this thing that's gonna solve everything in their business, and they're like, I want someone that can do my Facebook ads, build me a website, do graphics.

I want a superhuman.

Yeah, I want everything. And it doesn't work that way. It's just same, apply to the same thing as you would apply looking for a local person. Think about what are the must-have skills that you need for this role, because you can still build it up later on with them. Assuming that you're looking for a lot like in a permanent staff. Yeah, it's not like you don't have to stick with the skill set they have at the beginning. You can always upskill them. And yeah, so there's a must-have and like a preferred skill that you would have, and that's what you need to look for in that job brief.

So the job brief or the job description, this is just something that would fit on an A4 bit of paper and you touch on many of these different points that we're talking about?

Depending on what platform you're using, you're right. Upwork is just one of the many platforms that you can use. I find that it has higher quality people, but then again, they're probably not all would want to work permanent full-time. They might be just more project-based. If you're really looking for Filipino staff, for example, there are so many Websites like onlinejobs.ph and Pinoy something something. I don't actually do too much recruitment nowadays anymore. But freelance, elance. So really depending on those systems, they have their own format that you would want to upload. And I don't normally would have to upload a document. It's more of pasting it inside their form. And they would ask questions like what skills, what software, stuff like that. But yeah, it's good for you to know in advance when you fill it out. It's just all about filling it out.

Perfect. And then we move to the next step, the second stage in the process.

Yep. Okay, cool. So when you're using any of this software, you gotta also know where to look for— every software is going to be— every platform is a bit different. And let's talk about Upwork. You need to then look at the star ratings because it's like an eBay for services. So you gotta look at the star rating, you gotta look at the reviews and just checking whether they even put some effort in the COVID story, etc. Now the next part, my little secret that I have is that, you know, when you're looking through all these resumes online, everyone's gonna write it differently and some people don't put as much effort or you're not actually getting to ask the questions that you really want to ask as part of the vetting of the VA, of the person. So we actually created our own form from the beginning many, many years ago, I created a form on Wufoo which I ask things that are important to me, especially things that I would even ask at an interview. So I'll have it all there so that you don't so you don't have to go through it at the interview. But what happens is, so questions like marital status, why do I ask that? It's like, I like to know, are you married with kids? Are you, you know, what's your home life like, right? That's important. Computer speed, internet, things that I can ask that's going to make my, that's important to my decision. So why I have this form is that as part of recruitment, you want to be able to use Wufoo, go into the backend and scan through everything in the same format. Format and manner. You can keyword search and like maybe you've been recruiting over time and you remember someone that had— you just want to search if there was a web dev guy that was in your thing and it pulls up the profiles of it and then just being able to match apple to apple versus imagine you're receiving like Word document resumes normally locally. You just can't compare because some people don't put a lot of effort or they're not as good at resume writing as what others would be. It doesn't mean that they're not good. So having that form really is like the biggest advantage for us so that we can scan through, vet through much faster.

I love this step and we do the same thing. What's so great about it is particularly if you're hiring someone, let's say for a long-term position, just the act of them filling it out or not filling it out is a great sort of way for you to vet because it's, you know, if it's a 15-minute questionnaire that they have to fill out, and if they're not even going to take the time to do that, then they're most definitely not the right fit for you.

Yeah, I agree. Some people just more like, oh, read my resume, you know, attach it, and didn't really fill anything out. And you can just see that kind of— what kind of quality that person would be like.

Yeah. And because we use— end up using SurveyMonkey, very similar, and we'll export it out into a spreadsheet, and then I give it to my mum and I give her some minimum criteria to basically filter for first.

Yeah, I love it.

Basically saying, okay, here are the 5 or 6 criteria that we want, and then she gives us a shortlist, and then that shortlist, we then end up giving them a trial task. But actually, this is— I get ahead of myself.

That's good.

So let's say we've got clear on the brief, we've posted it where it needs to be, we've got a job application process where we're getting the to fill out a Woofuu form for you to collect some data, then what happens next?

Yeah, so this is the initial vetting process that you assign to your mom. We have a team of VAs that are, you know, we obviously give them the criteria of what we want, depending on the job type and if they're— because we ask things like if they're available part-time or project-based or whatever too. So, you know, giving those just basic criteria for them to vet out for us. Then they also do an interview just to make sure that they're not any crazy person and you know, they're good enough for them to go to the next part, which is a panel interview. So with a panel interview, it's like you want them to be interviewed by a more advanced person that knows your business well. In my case, the HR manager, as well as even the office manager, because we want to find someone that's going to fit in with the culture, that is not here just for the money, not just saying yes, yes, yes, just so they can get a job. We also want it to— it's really like just looking for your soulmate, because in our business, We're not just recruiting for ourselves, we're recruiting for people, for other clients. So it's our reputation on the line. So we take this panel interview a lot more serious for them. Yeah.

What I love about this is it's almost like if you think about it, at each stage, it's a filtering process. They move down and, and you're getting smaller, smaller number of candidates, higher and higher quality. So are there any particular things through the interview process that you like to ask or any questions that come to mind?

Yeah, I'll be sharing with you guys a downloadable onboarding document, which will also have all the interview questions. But yes, common things like you would interview a local person, you know, like, why do you want to work for my company? What have you enjoyed most in your previous jobs? I really feel like it's more about the personality, like really asking— it's not really just even the question, it's how they're answering the question that you really need to look out for. And you know, to be honest, at the beginning, I was a recruiter, right? Because I was the outsourcing expert, I know how to recruit. It really didn't I doubted myself that I was able to systemize this. I was thinking, how the hell would I be able to actually pass this knowledge on to someone else to do the interview? Because I have the sixth sense about people, right? I know how to read people. I've got this feeling about people. But really, anything from what I've been able to do, I realized that everything can be systemized and delegated. So yeah, so nowadays, obviously I don't do recruitment anymore. But yeah, you can learn to sort of, the more you interview people, the more you can see things, right? Beyond the questions and the answers that you're actually talking about.

Yeah, and I think that's funny when you get started in business, you think, I had a big thing around, because I used to have the digital agency.

Yes, we all do, actually I had one too.

All good entrepreneurs get started. But it did feel like, yeah, I thought for some reason that I had this secret sauce and I was the only one who could copywrite to a certain level, or I knew the insights around whether it was SEO or even making of the content. And then there's a point in business where you just start to let go once you hire good team members and you go, maybe I wasn't that good. I even have one lady who's— she's almost— she's the yin to my yang. She's our CEO. She runs the digital agency now and I don't get involved in the day-to-day anymore. And I realized how bad of a people manager I was. I actually used to think I was a good people manager until I saw what a good people manager was.

Oh my God, I totally agree with you. I thought I was the best at all these areas or I enjoyed it until you step away from it and you don't have to do it anymore is when you discover what you truly like as well, because when you're a business owner, you have to wear so many hats that you thought you like those hats, but you didn't really like it, or someone else does a better job than you.

I think that's what I see the real benefit from the combination of great offshore talent plus systems and processes. What it does is it gives the business owner space to step out of the day-to-day operations And then with that space, they can then spot opportunities. They can start to work on areas that they have their unique ability and they can strategically move the business forward, which is really where the business owner can add the most value.

Yeah. And even if they can afford local people, I find that it works really well with local and offshore because, you know, local people, you pay them a lot of money to— you want them to spend time on that high value work and strategies. I have a marketing manager. I don't want her sitting there scheduling my post and writing my post. I just want her to oversee things and come up with a strategy so that our business can actually grow based on those important tasks that she does versus doing the menial stuff that you can get someone for $11 to do.

That's right. And they can also love that job and that's part of their skilling up. Like when you're just getting started out, that's part of the learning process. So yeah, I definitely think when you get local and offshore talent as well, that mix, there's a little bit of a misconception when people talk about offshoring that you're going to move all of the jobs offshore and you're not going to hire locally. But I actually found with half of our team offshore and half local, it's created more positions locally because we're able to perform better.

Yes.

And it means we're able to grow and have success, which equals more jobs. More jobs, not the reverse of, well, everything's just going offshore.

Yeah. And your local people all of a sudden become leaders and having that team support, they feel like not everything's on their shoulder. It's like they have support now.

So yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So I'm preaching to the converted.

We're both passionate about this because we know it's such a win-win for everyone.

It's a game changer. It is. When we think about that process, so you go through some interviews and you have a couple of different interviews, the initial Screening interview, you've got the panel interview. Yeah, some more of the process now when you're getting through to the point of making a decision.

Yeah, so the other thing I wanted to add is if you really wanted to, you should do a test task. So let's say even if you've got a content writer, you might want them to write one paragraph for you. If it's a web dev or something, then yeah, feel free to really test them before you hire them rather than just basing it on the interview performance. So yeah, in terms of the selection, or on our case, Because we recruit for our clients, we don't just recruit them straight away. We obviously would have the clients, we propose it for the clients to pick the interview one or two VAs for them to choose from. So that's in terms of the selection process, it's quite quick. When you're working online, you can hire really, really fast. As soon as you're happy with them, you send them an agreement, they sign it, and if you really wanted them to start tomorrow, They can, there's not much of a big hurdle that you need to jump through. So in our case, on behalf of the client, we get them to sign an agreement form to just really outline what confidentiality, all the usual stuff of the work contracts. And then we also orient onto our company too. They will obviously, we also tell clients to also orient them onto their business. 'Cause in a sense, our VAs are coming on having to learn about the two businesses. But the orientation is very important. It's like you don't just throw them in on Monday and go, "Work for me." They just feel like, "Where am I going?" You just throw them into a swimming pool. So it's good to just go through your company background, how does their job really fit in with the whole organization, what's the culture like, what are your core values that you want that you live by. If you have company future goals that you want to share so they can just feel motivated and inspired. If your business has some sort of social impact, that's even better, right? So they can just see that, you know, they're not just working to make money for you, but like, they'll be more of a part of a mission with you. And obviously your expectation, like everyone's got different expectations, you know, if you're the more of a micromanager, let's say, you might have higher standards of how much communication you want. Maybe you're the type that wants less communication, and you need to tell them. They won't know that. You might go, "Look, I don't want to hear from you all day. Just tell me whatever." I don't recommend that though. At the beginning, you need to be more communication than later. But yeah, just setting up those expectations. And on our case, communication channels. So we use Slack. So obviously that's important to let them know straight away how they can communicate with us or their clients. And using Jibble is a little app that goes with Slack. Do you guys use Slack? Slack as well?

No, we're still Skype, believe it or not. Skype and Asana.

Okay, so I used to be good at operations and stuff until I hired an operations manager and he's just going, it's almost he made me feel like we're living in the dinosaur age, you know? It's like Skype, right? And I was just like, I don't get Slack, but anyway, as soon as he came in and took, just converted us into Slack, just trying the free version first. It was so, you know, we're already online savvy, so really that wasn't a good excuse to not go on. But I really recommend it in terms of it's almost like everything in one, an organization of data and everything. And then all these cool apps, so Jibble is some sort of like app that goes with it that we can track the timesheet. So we want to make sure the VAs are productive and getting paid for what they're really working, you know, so we sort of police them. Behalf of client. We want to make sure that the clients are getting their money's worth, not just paying full time and not getting their value. So we're like a little bit of a police checking for them on their behalf. But yeah, back to Slack. I mean, we can install something called Karma Bot. So all these bots that are cool where that gives rewards. So a VA could sort of call out another VA and say, "Thank you so much, Jenna, for doing great work, and here's 1 Karma point, 2 Karma points." And these point system accumulates and then we reward the VAs. So this system becomes this fun workplace that we get to sort of hang out in.

Gamified a little bit there.

Gamified, yeah. So the Slack app itself has all these things that you can plug in, right? Yeah, so as part of onboarding, people wanna know when are they gonna get paid, that's really important. And I think the reason for my success in business, I think it's really about paying people on time. Just because they're virtual doesn't mean that you can be anymore promising them next week or whatever week, you know, it's like treating it like anybody else working for you and just pay them on time.

Yeah, I find the onboarding is such an important process that it's very often overlooked, yet it sets the tone and almost like just sets you up for success with the team member because you're setting expectations. We love embedding in Things like our values and making it clear that this systems thinking is part of the way that we do things. We always look for the systems solution, and then we lead by example by showing that as far as having a system of onboarding and giving them a chance to orientate themselves and not just throwing them in the deep end. It just increases the likelihood of their success, helps them to understand right up front that they're in the right place now and that we're unique and different because most businesses don't have this in place and team members really value working for you when they realize, hang on, there's something unique and special here.

Yeah, they want to be part of your mission, whatever it is that you're solving, what problems you're solving in the world. If you could get them to understand that their work contributes to that, that's what keeps them motivated. You don't want them to just be good at doing their tasks. Because that won't be sustainable.

Yeah, I think as part of that as well, I know because you sent me all of the documentation and processes beforehand. You're one of those dream clients that all the documentation is done. Most of these sessions we're recording it and then we're creating the documentation from the recording. You've got the documentation.

I'm glad I can help.

But yeah, as part of that as well, you've got like a bit of a a process as well for an onboarding checklist. Like you're giving them all of this information, but then you start to plan out what they'll go through in those first few days. Can you tell us a bit about that?

Yeah, so we've created an onboarding guide for clients because not every client has an onboarding system and process. And we want, because at the end of the day, it's not really about just finding the right match VA. We want to make sure that they will work effectively together ongoing. So as part of the onboarding VA checklist, we've literally broken it down to every stages before the interview, what do you as a client need to be prepared for, and then even at the interview. So this is where I was saying all the questions that you should be asking, and of course you can ask your own other questions, but this is a guide. And then what to do before the VA starts, then it's the training, like what training you need to do. Like we're not going to— if you're looking, if you're hiring, obviously this system for you to do it yourself. So overall, you need to know, like you need to also train them. You can't hire a VA and go, just do this for me. And when I say training, of course you're gonna find someone that knows the skill set that you need, but it's how do you want them to do it, right? 'Cause someone might know something, but they've worked for someone else in a different way before, so just training them the way you want it is important. And then how do you wanna communicate, whether it's a daily report, which is what we recommend to have for the clients to get them, I mean the VAs to send a daily report. We also broke it down to what to do on the first day, First week, first month, and the first 3 months. So, I mean, yeah, do you want me to go through each of those?

No, no, no. I reckon— I know we're going to provide quite a few links underneath this session where people will be able to download the supporting documents. I think the takeaway from this particular session, obviously you need to get very clear on your recruitment and onboarding, and hopefully someone recognizes the benefits of working with offshore team members and potentially even having a few aha moments as to maybe why, if they had tried it in the past and it hadn't succeeded, there might be some insight here as to why that's happened. And this might re-excite them and get them to have another look at it, because I can tell you as a business owner, this is something that if you're not doing this, you are leaving such a huge opportunity on the table. This is a no-brainer for any business owner to be building up these sorts of teams.

Yeah, I was just chatting to a friend who owns a business that helps local people find work. And it was interesting to hear the stats from him. I said to him, so apart from millennials, I'm talking about just anybody in this day and age, how long do they actually stay in a company? And he says, usually 2 to 3 years and they'll change. And I'm like, everyone? Like, not like, because I was just thinking maybe only the younger people want to change jobs. And he's like, No, it's just local people unless you have a really great business with, you know, and I was like, wow, because working with offshore team, it's like their goal is to have their job as long as possible. They don't want to lose their job versus, you know, I guess the local people's mentality are more about I want to keep changing jobs. So yeah, and I think that if you could help the local people to feel more engaged in your company by having offshore team to support them, I think that could increase the the chance of them staying.

Yeah, well, it's definitely something that we've found with particularly our team members based in the Philippines, and it must be in that culture to want to find a good job, stick with it, really work at it, become very good at it. Like we've found with the right recruitment system, just as you've outlined, because like anywhere, there are going to be bad team members out there. The whole point of the recruitment process is to then find the gold. But once you find the goal, that work ethic and everything, it's in their culture. So you can get some really great results.

Yes, I agree. Even recruiting locally, you can't guarantee that the person that did so well in the interview turned out to be good, but we won't know until it really, really works. So same as offshore. So don't get turned off, just keep going.

I think in the tail end here, like I'm going to put some links obviously across to outsourcing Angel, and you guys being a sponsor as well, you get a little bit of a shout out a couple of times. Are there any final things you wanted to touch on about either the process we've gone through or where we might point people to find out a little bit more about what you guys are doing?

Yes. So basically I have a full roadmap ebook which will cover everything from like what to outsource, how to outsource, and systems and process and everything that we mentioned here. It's a thicker ebook, still quick to read, but if you download that, you'll have everything including the onboarding checklist. And also a lot of our clients are thinking, even though it's just the concept is that they're just overseas, yet people sort of get frozen in what can they do for me. And to me, I'm like, everything and anything, as long as it's online. And so we do have a 50 Tasks a VA Ideas for the 50 Tasks that a VA Can Do ebook as well that you can download because I think that will just give them some ideas. But other than that, in terms of our specialty, we help you hire more VAs that are specialized in marketing and admin type digital marketing work.

One thing I might add to that, because it's also a very common problem I see when people recruit offshore and let's say it's more cost effective than if they're recruiting locally, they just think we'll just give them busy work and not necessarily things that are strategically moving the business forward because they're just thinking 'Oh, you know, it's low-cost dollar per hour work anyway. I might as well get them to do something.' Once you're very clear on the mission that your business is here to achieve or is working towards, and then you're clear on the products and services, and you're clear on the target audience and the problems that you're solving for that target audience, and then you use something like Linh's document to see all of the things that a VA can do. The key is to get clear on what you think needs to be done to help you achieve that mission, then find the tasks that plug into that. So rather than— I see some people, they look at the 101 different things that you can get a VA to do and they go, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah." But it's— yes, they can do it, but you want to make sure that it's going to have the impact on the business as well.

Yeah, I agree with you. I really like that. I think it's really about auditing your own business. What are the goals and projects that's happening? And then even let's say you are doing social media, it's not social media is such a big thing, you know, what within it is where the VA can really support. Like myself, you've seen a lot of my videos out. Without my virtual team, there is no way I could pump out all these videos. But it's so good to have a team because if I shot one long video for YouTube, their task is to like break it into smaller ones. And edit it for LinkedIn, edit it for IGTV and Instagram, and then write it into an article. And it's like, you know, but those are the tasks that does help to generate me more leads. But, you know, even with one task, there's so many subtasks that without a team, I don't know how I will survive.

Yeah, yeah. Now I'm most definitely the same. As we said, or as I said earlier, preaching to the converted, and I've got a feeling Unless I say we're near the end of the call, I think we might go for another hour or two. Thank you, Linh, for your time, insights, so freely sharing those systems and processes. We'll make sure that we put all the links and people can head over and check out that ebook that you were talking about as well. And you can obviously find out a lot more at Outsourcing Angel as well. That's the best place to send them?

Yes, yes, yes, OutsourcingAngel.com. We've got everything there for you and in the profile, I guess we'll put all these lead magnets links and things. Yeah, yeah, perfect.

All right, thanks again for your time.

All right, bye. You've just been listening to the System Hub podcast. Remember, we've documented this system for you so you can literally swipe and deploy it within your business. Head to www.systemhub.com/podcast to download it now.