Podcast episode (Secret Sauce of Outsourcing, Ep. 391) where John Jonas argues you should hire an Online Filipino Specialist (OFS) before over-preparing; minimal pre-hiring preparation is needed beyond writing the job post and identifying a first task. He recommends creating training after hiring using screen-recorded walkthroughs (e.g., Snagit) and iterative feedback on real work rather than exhaustive pre-hire documentation.
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Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at outsourcing to the Philippines. This is episode 391, what to prepare before hiring your OFS. So I don't get asked this question a ton, but I do see people's minds turning towards this, like, oh, I'm not organized, so therefore I'm not hiring someone yet. Or, what do I need to prepare before I hire someone? Or I'm about to hire someone, what do I need to get ready for them? And so the answer to that question is. This is the wrong question. What should you prepare? Nothing. And I know this. This sounds backward, and I know it's not what you want to hear, but what should I prepare before hiring an ofs? Nothing. You should hire the OFS first. And I know some of you are going to be like, oh, my gosh, John, that's such bad advice. Because then what if you don't have time? Like, yeah, I get that some of us are like worrywarts and you need to be prepared before you do anything. And I'm the opposite, where I'm like, ready, fire, aim. We want to get something launched and into the world so that we can get users using it and find out what the actual issues are before we spend a whole bunch of time, like, going through every little detail of, like, oh, we should change this or that, and, like, those things actually don't matter. But. And that's what I'm getting at here, is what should you prepare before you hire someone? Well, it doesn't matter what you prepare because you don't have someone for it. So what should you prepare? Well, the job post. Like, write your job post. That's the first crucial step. It gets the ball rolling, and it's actually the most challenging part. Even though it's pretty easy, everything else after that just kind of flows. So if you haven't done it yet, just go post a job right now. Then everyone seems to think you have to have, like, all this training done before you hire the person, and you don't. And I talked about this in the last episode, but it's way better. Not only is it easier, but it's much better and more effective to create training after you've hired someone and train them through feedback on the work that you're getting done. So you create some initial training. It's not like, super duper comprehensive because you're going to leave things out and then once they start doing the work, then you're going to find out what they understand and what you understand and the difference there. And you're going to find out what exactly it is that you need to give people, what training you need to give, what feedback you need to give, how to tweak their thinking to get things the way that you want it done. Training like this is so easy today when you can screen record. So I use Snagit for this. I've talked about this in the past. I use Snagit. I drag it open, it sits on my. It's on my computer. Drag it open. It's going to record that window of my desktop. And now it's going to record my mouse, my screen, my voice. It can record me. So I'm going to, I'm just going to record, I'm going to talk through exactly what it is that I want. Hey, I want you to get into this system right here. Here's how you get in. Here's the login page. I'm going to send you the username and password. You, you're going to log in. When you log in, you're going to see this screen. You're going to take this piece of data and you're going to take it over here, and here's this spreadsheet and you're going to put it here. But you're also going to analyze exactly what's going on here. And here's how I think through that, blah, blah, blah, you're going to just talking through this. And with Snagit, when you're done, you click stop and you click upload and it uploads it to a server for you and it gives you the URL. You don't have to deal with FTP or files or servers or any of that. You just stop and upload and that's it. And then you paste that URL into the email and to the person that you're working with. Creating this training is so, so easy, so much easier than it used to be, where you had to like write pages and pages and pages of stuff to try and describe it. Now you can describe it while they're seeing exactly what you're doing. Which that brings me to, like, one thing you actually can prepare before you hire someone, which is the first task. And not that you need to prepare all the training for it, but if you know what that task is that you're gonna have them do, this makes the hiring so, so much easier and better. If you go into this, yes, you can hire for a role, that's great. And if you know the role that you want already done, then great. Hire someone for that role. But if you don't post a job for the task and just try and get that task done, then create training and start working with the person once you've hired them. I know it sounds backward, but it works. I've seen it thousands of times. So what should you prepare before you hire your ofs? Nothing. It's a trick question. Post a job and hire the ofs. Then you'll know exactly what to prepare and how to prepare and exactly what training to give. It's so much easier if you do this in the other order versus like the traditional order that people like to repeat and regurgitate because it sounds good. Oh, prepare everything ahead of time and then you do your interviews. And like that sounds really nice, but in practice doesn't work nearly as well as going the other way. It.
