Paul Staten on Hiring and Managing Large OFS Teams

I came across this webinar that John Jonas put out and he was talking about how you could hire a VA in the Philippines and he's gonna save you time. And I was like, I need time.

What's up, guys? This is John Jonas and today we have a really cool case study for you. And it's cool because Paul has like 90 or 100 Filipino VAs working for him, which is super different than most of our customers, than most people we have. So he started SE Works, which is a full service Internet marketing company in 2013. When he started, he was working 80 hours a week like most of us, doing everything. Keyword research, content creation, pay per click. He was, he was doing everything. Since then he's grown to over 35 local people and he's based in Salt Lake City, Utah, which is super close to me actually. And he has 90 specialists in the Philippines. This is going to be really cool. In his case study, Paul shares his method of finding really good workers, which obviously he's really good at it. He's done it 90, I don't know, a hundred times. So let's get on to it.

Hey, It's Chelaine with OnlineJobs.ph and today we have Paul Staten from SEOWorks. That's W E R K Z, right?

Yep, that's right.

Paul, thanks for being with us.

Thank you.

Okay, so we want to HEAR More about seoworks.

We started May of 2013, so it's been a little over eight years now. And before this I worked in marketing and advertising. I actually worked at the yellow pages for a while, which was fun and moved to a pay per click company doing Internet marketing. And then we fulfilled for an SEO company and I come to find out that they were not the best SEO company. They kind of charged people and didn't do much. So it really was this inspiration of, well, we could do better. We can be an awesome SEO company. So that's really what we said set out to do. So my co owner and I, we quit our jobs, we dove in. So we were founded on these three principles. Be transparent, get results, and earn loyalty. Being transparent, you know, we don't believe that SEO is a black box, that you don't, you know, our clients don't know what's going on. So all of our proposals and our workload is very transparent and getting results. We want to point to roi, return on investment as soon as possible because that's where we earn loyalty. And that's our third principle. And we don't have any long term contracts. All of our agreements are month to month. So we've been able to, with those three principles, build our company to what it is today. And we grew from, you know, just us two quitting our jobs and going for it to 35 people in our office in Riverton, Utah in Salt Lake City and, and then in the Philippines, we have a little over 90 people down there.

So wait, wait, wait. 9, 0. 90.

90. Yep. So yeah, so it's been, it's been an awesome ride. But that's SEO works in a nutshell. So we've been able to grow to what we are today and thanks to, you know, a webinar that John Jonas did a long, long time ago.

So how long did it take to accumulate 90 workers and train and get them into a functional point?

When I started Seoworks, I was working my 80 hour work weeks, right? Like I was just working all day long every day and doing everything. The keyword research, the reports, the emails, the correspondence, the PPC campaigns, just everything. I was, I was doing everything except for the web dev, which my partner handled. And I came across this webinar that John Jonas put out and he was talking about how you could hire a VA in the Philippines and he's going to save you time. And I was like, I need time. So, so I signed up, I did a post on there for. I kind of brainstormed and said okay, what, what could a Filipino do for me? What, what could I offload? Keyword research, doing reports, creating draf for me, some listing management tasks. So some of those things were things that I listed. And I still remember I posted that job. I got a bunch of applicants. I ended up hiring this Filipino, his name was Mario and he worked for me at that point and he saved me 10 to 15 hours a week and he cost me $320 a month. And I thought, okay, this is awesome. Like this is a great partnership because Mario is very excited. And this was eight years ago. So we, we hire Filipinos for much more now, you know, on a monthly basis. But we were starting out, we had no capital, no investment company coming to help us build our company. So really everything that we were taking to pay for a Filipino is out of our own pocket. So anyway, that was the beautiful start of us with utilizing onlinejobs. Ph and it worked.

What is your process? You've obviously hired a lot of Filipino vas. Is it primarily on onlinejobs?

Ph When I first did that, I started hiring my own Filipinos. I hired a PPC manager that is still with me. Today she is, I think, my oldest employee that I have at seoworks. And then I started hiring different people for different things. Eventually I did form a partnership with a software company down in the Philippines and they started taking care of having people in an office and some of the hiring and all that that has to take care of, you know, taxes and anyway, all. All those things they helped out with down there. So that's really where we were able to continue to scale a team that is content writing, link building. Some of the devs are on that team. But I still actually utilize onlinejobs ph to this day to hire very specialized workers to do very specific things. I just hired another one that is specifically helping with a reputation management project just recently, like within the past month. And we just hired two months ago another developer that is specifically helping with QA tasks on websites and went through a wonderful interview process for that. Before that we just hired another one that was, you know, doing blogs specifically. So I guess. Okay, so to dive into that question of how we utilize onlinejobs ph and how I've had some really good success with that because I've also gone through all of the, you know, the times where you have, you think you have a good connection and then they just ghost you or, you know, it's like I thought they were so good or you hire them and then they're just, they kind of don't do the work that you expect and then, you know, you kind of fall out. Anyway, been through all of that. My, my most efficient process that I've used to hire with onlinejobs ph is I'll create a job posting, try to have the job really mapped out. Like these are the tasks that need to get done. ABCD this is the, you know, expected time that I think it's going to take someone to do this, get it posted. And thankfully there's a lot of users on onlinejobs ph so post the job. Thankfully there's a lot of users there. So you get a lot of applications, a lot of applicants. And my process for hiring is first I will get them on Skype and I will have a chat conversation and I have some very specific questions that I have come up with that I feel like give me the answers to some of the questions as far as what kind of worker they are, how they like to be managed. Because in with these types of relationships a lot of times, and I feel like I'm probably in the same boat with 99% of users on online jobs ph that they really want somebody that can they can just assign the tasks to and then they will take it and run with it and just self.

Starters, just do it.

Self starters, self, you know, very efficient, lots of autonomy. So some of the questions that I've come up with are just kind of point to that and I think give me a good hint. The other reason I start out with a chat first is to gauge their English because if, and there are different jobs that I've hired for some I don't care at all with how their English is and others I do, their applications will always have perfect English because they've been able to, you know, have a friend look over it, have a translator look over it. Their resumes are going to be perfect English all the time. That chat is very important to have. And you can gauge their written English, which in my opinion is more important than the spoken. It's a typing chat on purpose because I'm a very busy person, as I'm sure all listeners here are as well. And I don't have a ton of time to do all of these, you know, Skype chats. And I'm a very, I try to be a very nice guy. So I have a hard time saying, oh, I'm so sorry, you know, it's, it's not gonna work out. But if I'm doing these chats and I can gauge their responses, I can quickly qualify or disqualify and get through that process. And if I just dedicate an hour of my time in the morning, usually around like 6am is when you'll have really good response times from, you know, some of these workers. And anyway, I'll have multiple chats open, have all these questions going, copy, paste, copy paste, copy paste. And just kind of watch their responses and then have like a little oh, thanks so much for that. That's great. Boom, copy paste. Here's your next question. So that helps me narrow down to the people that I do want to have calls with. And then I'll hopefully have two or three that I have a call with that you know, I can jive well with and then I agree and move forward.

Amazing. Can you tell us what are the qualities that you found that make the best vas.

So qualities? I mean, obviously we touched on them earlier. Self starters, self sufficient, very, very good with autonomy, very good with task management. You know, just organized. And one other thing that, that I feel is very important is, is not afraid to ask questions. In some of my questions, I, I make sure and ask, you know, what if there's a task that you don't completely understand what do you do? Because some of them will answer and say, well, I Google it, and then I try to figure it out. And others will say, why. I really will ask you how you want it done. And you really do want. You want that because the better you can have that interaction. And you do have to dedicate time at first. You have to dedicate the time to help train. But once you have them trained, they're so good and they will just perform the, the. When you hire them at first, here's their performance level, and then you start that training process and they just get better and better and better, and then they're just perfect. And they're so loyal and they just never want to rock the boat. And they're so polite, nice and good. Anyway, so can you tell us about your training process? Yeah. So the training process will be centered around the individual job that they're hired for. So occasionally, for example, if I hire somebody that's on the dev side, I'll hand them over to my dev team and then we'll kind of go through that, those tasks. Personally, if I'm training them, I am always recording videos. Recording videos for the Filipinos is just, it's so perfect because they, they. Not all the time will understand 100%, actually, just. Just to relate this story that we just hired someone and when I got on the call and. And I was training her on the call, there were these, these like, pauses and. And she wasn't quite getting it. And. And I was like asking questions like, did I, did I explain that a good way? Like, did that, did that come through okay to how. How to do this? And anyway, come to find out, she actually had a hearing impediment. So I. So she was having a really hard time understanding me and hearing me and so recording videos for her. And anyway, it's been phenomenal. So I would suggest recording videos instead of thinking to yourself, okay, I'll just walk them through it. Recording a video where they can go back and rewatch it, rewatch it, rewatch it until they get it perfect with whatever task you want them to do. Very, very useful. So, yeah, so that's been really useful for me.

What does it look like managing that magnitude of Filipino vas or remote workers in general?

So with me, I have two instances, right. One is the software company we partnered with and they that way. Right. But specifically applying to online jobs at ph and how we manage individually, I often will assign them to one of our internal people, whether that's one of our Filipinos in the Philippines or one of our team members that's here local. So yeah, they'll, they'll just be in charge of them individually and be able to take care of the job that they were assigned to are hired to do.

So how many people do you have working with you locally? You managed, you've. Eric, you mentioned you've got a co. Co owner.

So we have 35 people in our office here locally. PPC managers in the Philippines that report to the PPC manager. We have SEO technicians and link builders that report directly to our SEO team. We have content people that are, that are reporting directly to my content manager. We have the development or the developer that is working on the QA tasks that reports directly to our lead developer. And all of those that I just mentioned were hired through onlinejobs ph.

With the broad spectrum of positions that you have filled through onlinejobs pH, is there anything you've found over the years, positions that you feel like Filipino workers really fill in a great capacity?

We have had a good amount of really good people that do a lot of things. So that is such a hard question to answer because I feel like we have an amazing pay per click manager for that. That's one that has been with me for seven years. We have an amazing Facebook ads manager that we hired last year. We have developers that are amazing. We have content people that are amazing. We have SEO technicians that are amazing. Man, if I don't know, I just, I don't know that there's a specific one that I would say they're, you know, content. Like they're really good with content or something like that. Just because whenever I'm posting a job with, you know, online jobs at ph, I'm looking for a very specific talent and there's just always a good fit for that specific talent. So we sure love to hear that. I wish I had a better answer. I feel like, I feel like no, like I've just found really good. And maybe if I think of the inverse of the question, like what have you found? They don't do well, doesn't work out.

Let's try that. Or anything that you've done or that you've hired for where things haven't worked out the way that you'd hoped.

I think.

And even better if you can't come up with an answer for it.

Right.

That's great news.

First thing that comes to my mind is content. But that's mainly because, and I don't want to generalize and say like, well, we just have had some flaky applicants, right? Like we give them assignments and then they just don't show up or they, they realize I really don't want to do this, so they just ghost us or something like, like that. We've had some of those experiences, but, but then it's just like, quick, all right, let's find somebody that does, you know, type of thing. I feel like we've, we've filled the jobs that we have needed with some really great talent for all the spectrum, all the things that we're, we're, we've hired for.

So what do you, if you could kind of guesstimate what your hiring success rate is with online jobs application, with.

The process that I've kind of come up with now, that has worked much, much better than what it's been in the past. I mean, I would even say we're successful 75% of the time. I mean, I would almost say every job that we post, we eventually find someone that can fill that position, which would be 100% success rate. Right. But I'm, I'm discounting, I'm saying, okay, well, there are some that we've hired and then do disappear and, and don't, you know, don't work out. But I mean, it's, it's probably greater than 75%, you know, three out of four postings that we have or hirings that we do stick around and, and do well.

So would you be willing to share any of those questions that you've come up with?

One of the first questions I ask is what do you enjoy most about working as a developer or working as a content manager or working as a pay per click manager. And so then they get into what they like about that position and you can really tell a lot of times if they do like it or if they are just applying to try and get a job. Right. Another question that I ask is how do you think your previous manager would describe you? Or so, because usually it's somebody that doesn't, isn't currently working, Right. Otherwise you can say how your manager describes you. Right. And they'll often give an answer like, oh, I'm very committed. I'm very, you know, do this. But they'll, they'll usually highlight something that you can have some insight into how they think their manager perceives them. And remember, this isn't a glorified light. Obviously they're answering very positively like, my old manager thought I was lazy, right? No, no, it's gonna be some good.

Well, but then you get to highlight their strengths. You get to see what they feel their strengths are.

Right. Their strengths are. My follow up question to that is, how would your best friend describe you? And I feel like it's important because a lot of times they'll talk about, oh, you know, I'm funny and witty, or, or they say something like loyal, I'm loyal to a fault, or different things like that. Sometimes they'll describe themselves exactly how the manager describes. Like they use the same answer, which is very odd. But anyway, it's very telling. I like that question as well. And then I also ask what they enjoy doing outside of work, just to get kind of an insight as to who they are, what's important to them. Is it family? Is it their hobbies, is it movies? Is it, you know, I also ask how they like to be managed as an employee.

That's a great question.

Yeah. So they often will respond and talk about how, you know, they want certain instruction, a certain way if they need recorded videos. And then I also ask about, you know, if they're willing to work part US hours so some overlap into the US work time because our, our people are just, you know, normal nine to five office workers. So I need them to touch base with their teammates, you know, usually very late at night for them or if they prefer, very early in the morning and late afternoon for us. So I always just get, get that answer out of the way so I know when we can depend on them schedule wise. So those are really the main, the main questions that I ask.

Is there anything that hasn't worked for you that you want to share? Something you learned from that?

I don't know. It's, we've, we've got it down to such a machine now.

Science.

It's like this is the way we interview. This is how. And they've all just kind of fit into the process. You know, we Pay on the 1st and the 15th, we pay via PayPal, we do. You know, you get the, you got a work report to your manager every day and it's just worked extremely well. So I guess the absence of those things has not worked well.

There we go.

I don't know. I don't know if that's a good.

No, it's a perfect theme. It follows the whole rest of the interview. Let's flip it around and make it a little more interesting.

Right.

Well, thank you so much for your time. What is the best way for our viewers to get in touch with you or learn more about your business?

Yeah. So seoworks.com again, you spelled it earlier, but s-o w e r k z.com is where you can find our website. We are a full service Internet marketing company, but we specialize in SEO and you know, that's what we claim to be the best in the world at. So yeah, that's probably the best way to contact us.

But yeah, if you have any questions for us or if there's anything we can do for you between now and then, just feel free to let us know.