Hiring Your First Employee - FDDTC #1

What's up, guys? That's my new podcast intro. Welcome to the podcast that doesn't yet have a name. It will one day have a name, but it doesn't yet. I also forgot to mention that this is Devin Zander, but that's fine. We're gonna get this. Don't worry. Today I have our chief technology officer at SCUP, Austin Roshink, with me. Say hello to the people, Mr. Roshink.

Hello to the people.

And today, what we're going to discuss is how you can double your output at work. So essentially, if you want to get more results, obviously you need more output into, you know, whatever it is you're doing or, I guess, input either way. And the simplest way to do that is essentially to hire an employee. If you look at it, you know, in the right way, essentially what you're doing is doubling the amount of work you can get done in a single day. If you have an employee, obviously it takes a little bit of work. You have to train them and things like that. But if you can hire a good employee, you can easily double the amount of results that you're getting in your business. So today, what Austin and I wanted to discuss with you is the three things that we look for in an employee before we make a hire. Now, this just allows us to get it right the first time and, you know, get an employee that really fits with our business. It's a pleasure to have them as an employee. And, of course, they get a lot of work done and make our company more money, which is what I think everybody wants. Right. It's a business podcast, so we want a happier team, happier customers, and, of course, more money in the bank account. Sound good to you, Austin?

Yes, sounds great.

So I think what we can do is we'll just go, like, one at a time. So I'll list number one for me, and then you list number one for you, and then we'll go back and forth. So the number one thing that I look for in an employee is actually, before anything else, culture fit. Nobody wants to work with someone that they butt heads with, right? Like, if I hire someone who has a completely different personality, they totally get things done. They're going to argue with things I say, then it's just going to be a disaster. It's going to be a terrible experience for everybody involved, and it's going to end up costing money instead of making us money, which is the complete opposite of what we want. So before you even look for your first potential employee, I think something important to do is to map out what you look for in someone, I guess, like characteristics or values they hold true. So, you know, at our company Scuff, we look for people who are hardworking solutions experts, good team players, they're data driven, things like that. And essentially what we do is we look for, you know, traits that we have. And if we're living out these traits and this is how we work, obviously, you know, we want people with those same traits. That way we can just mesh right together and get a lot of really good work done and get some results in the business. So that is my number one big tip, Austin.

Yeah, I think that is, you know, that's definitely a prerequisite. So I definitely agree with that. However, you know, I think on a slightly similar vein, I'd like to say that it's important for people to have a good moral compass, you know, so you don't want to hire somebody who up front, they sound great and then within a week of joining, they're not responsive or they're, you know, not communicating, not, not giving, you know, updates or actually turning in work or results. So that's obviously, you know, deceptive from the get go. But, you know, there are these type of people that they don't value that, you know, those basic things that are really, you know, what make a person a good person. You know, simple things like communication. So I think that feeds right into the culture fit because obviously, you know, you're, you're, you know, the owner of your company and you want your employees to, you know, be these certain things that you look for in a good person, right? So, so if they don't have these values, then they're not going to be a good fit. And that goes right back into the culture fit that Devin was talking about.

Totally true. You want people who get shit done. If they don't get shit done and they're charging you, you're pretty screwed. Okay? So it's important. This is why having a good interview process is important. But we'll get to that. I think that we'll just cover interview process as number three. We can do that together. That'd be interesting. But number two, and this one is super, it sounds obnoxious, it sounds stupid. But, you know, we're all here running online businesses, at least most of us are. So when we hire employees, they're going to be remote, right? And when you're hiring someone, please make sure you get on a call with them, make them turn on their webcam. I know this sounds weird, okay, but we've encountered people with fake profiles that are trying to, like, boost their rate and things like that. You know, we hire up off of upwork. I think we've spent around a million dollars on upwork. It works really well. You know, it gets a bad rap. But as long as you follow kind of what we're sharing with you today and take a few steps, you can get outstanding employees. But whenever we're doing an interview process, we make sure that we are getting on webcam calls with these people to interview them. And. And let's be honest, if you're not willing to get, like, on a call with an employee, I don't think you're ready to have an employee yet. You need to get on calls like, this is your business. You need to take care of it. And you gotta get on call with these people and make sure you can trust them with your business. And then, yeah, just getting on webcam, you can learn a lot more about a person when you're, you know, having a video chat with them than you'd be able to through a voice chat. And obviously on a voice chat or video chat, you're gonna get a lot more through than you would through a text conversation. So this is just super important. Get on a video chat, make sure they are who they say they are. Make sure you jive well. Okay. If they have an animal like a dog, make sure they share their dog with you. You don't want people to hog the dog. Okay, I'm. I'm kidding. But, you know, maybe if you're into dogs, you can look at their dog. That's. Whatever. Neither here nor there. But that's tip number two for me is just get on those video calls. Don't let someone take advantage of you. There are weird bad people out there, and that shouldn't take away from the good people. But you just got to make sure that you're getting on call and that this is the right person for you and your company. Austin. I'll pass it to you, sir.

Yeah, so I totally agree with everything that Devin just said. I think that is the start of building a trustful relationship. Because like he said, odds are you're going to be hiring remote. You know, it's not. It's. It's hard to find somebody local that's going to fit your needs. So if you're hiring a remote, then that trust is just not there initially. So exactly what Devin said. You can add on to that by. I think it's really good to set expectations up front, milestones, especially if it's going to be like, you know, somebody that works for you for like a month to set up some processes or something like that. You know, you want to have those expectations set in stone. So that way it's like, all right, in three days I want this done. In five days I want this done, and by next Friday I want this done. And if those things are getting done, then you don't, you don't waste a month, you know, of worth of revenue or money rather on these per. These people that are going to waste your time, right? So after a month you're like, holy shit, where did my money go? I have nothing to show for it. You can get those quick feedback loops where you're like, okay, well this person's going to be a waste of my time or not, you know, and then that's going to just help you long term to save you money and weed out the, the bad hires. You know, we've had a number of bad hires here at scup and you know, we've gone ahead and cut them loose pretty quickly simply because they didn't do the simple stuff right up front. And I think, you know, the very, the easiest thing you can do is to kind of give them a quick assignment before you like fully hire them. And, and anyone that's passionate and wants to work for you, they're more than happy to do, like to do a quick task that's, you know, takes about a day to do, maybe a little bit less. And they're willing to do that like for free, basically. You know, many companies now are, they do an assessment up front just to know if you're competent. Right. So it's, it's not uncommon to hear of, you know, weeding out the, the baddies essentially from the get go. So yeah, just building that trust relationship and then setting expectations as going going forward.

So yeah, yeah, I think Austin really makes a good point there too about setting those initial milestones. So make no mistake, like if somebody, if you hire someone and they're tagging you along for a month and you end up with nothing that's on you. Like, like you could have stopped that at any time. You should be aware of what's going on in your business and set quick milestones, get quick little projects out the door, make sure that this person can do good work and on time and from that, you know, you'll understand, hey, are these guys worth keeping or should I cut them loose right away? And that'll save you a lot of money because you definitely don't Want to waste money? Like Austin said, we'll typically have a test project which we'll pay very little for. A lot of times freelancers will do it for free. It all kind of depends on the opportunity that they have within your company and what job they're applying for. But we get really quick test projects done to make sure they're a good fit. Okay, so my third and final tip. Oh man. Is essentially to ensure that you have a good hiring process and also that you're not hiring someone like same day. I think in online marketing so many people are like, I need quick results, I need to hire someone now, I need them now. Oh, I can't wait. Right, but you can definitely wait. And when you hire someone essentially, let's say the same day you make a post, your job post, right. What you're doing is you're limiting your pool significantly. Typically when we hire someone and it depends on the job, right? So if it's a programmer, it's going to take one to three months to hire someone. There's times where we've searched months and I think our most recent hire was a theme developer. Do you remember how long it took us to find Paula? I don't think that was that long.

Six weeks.

So our last theme developer we took about six weeks to hire. We didn't rush and because of that we've got one of the best employees we've ever had at our company. She's excellent, she's a self starter, she gets things done and I think it's a very fair price. Now we could have hired someone that was more expensive and would have, they applied earlier and we would have got the same amount of results. Right? So instead of paying the price we pay now, we could have paid a lot more, got the same results, but we stuck to our guns. We waited out, we did interviews and we found someone that we really liked and we took our time. Now, not all jobs are going to be that way. Sometimes you need quick code changes and you can hire them the same day. But if you're going for a long term employee that's going to be on salary, take your time. There's no rush to the finish line. Okay? Quality is going to beat quantity every time. And quantity in this scenario I guess is the amount of time you're willing to give or wait to hire someone. If you're willing to wait a little bit longer, I think you'll be very pleased with the results. You'll typically save money and you'll get a much higher tier employee. Now I also just want to add to this. When it comes to the hiring process, make sure you're doing a good job. Don't just throw a job out there and take whatever comes at you. Really look for a good employee. Make sure you get on calls with them, do a few follow up calls if you're interested in them, and then you can have someone who can really grow your business and make you a lot of money while also maintaining a good working relationship and culture. I just think that's so important. That's my final tip right there. And Austin, I know we said that we were going to kind of meld on that together. I don't know if you have another tip there, if you want to just add to what I just said, but I'll pass it to you, sir.

Yeah, so everything what Devin said, amazing. I know I sound like a broken record, but yeah, I think the takeaway there is like, if you're hiring someone that you want to be on your team for an extended time, whether it be two months or two years, you really need to look for that culture fit. You know, you need to spend the time and make sure that the person is right for the team and not just the skill set. If you need somebody to make a one day, you know, task or you know, complete some code changes, whatever it is, then, you know, you know, hit those, those milestones hard. Make sure that you know exactly what they're doing, what you expect from them and that they're going to deliver. Because in that short amount of time, you can't, you can't, you know, validate that person, verify that person or vet that person as you, if you will. So, yeah, if you want a long term hire, you have to make sure they're a good fit and that takes time. Yeah, that's about it.

Okay, everybody, thank you for joining us on our first podcast episode. I hope you enjoy. I know that this is a little different from what you would normally see on our blog or our websites. Facebook groups email us all that kind of stuff. And the idea here is really to just help you build a more well rounded business that will last you longer and of course make you more money while also getting you happier, better customers. So anyways, we're going to discuss a lot of different things. We're just kind of messing around in this first episode. We just thought, you know, let's get it done, let's get it out there. We don't have a name for the podcast. I do have some laugh tracks and stuff like that.

So.

Yeah, but that's about it. I'll see you guys soon. We don't have a schedule or anything, but you know, we'll be making episodes and you can expect better scripted episodes as well as more educational episodes. And we'll also take suggestions, all those kinds of things. Anyways, thank you for listening. I hope you guys enjoy. I'll see you on the next episode. This is Devin Zander. This was the no Name podcast and I hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for your time as well, Austin. I am sure that people appreciate to hear from you.

Yes, glad you all tuned in to listen and we are signing off.

See you guys. Brutus says bye. Take it easy.