Why You Should NEVER Do a Video Interview When Hiring a VA!

Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at outsourcing to the Philippines. This is episode 416, how to find a great VA in the Philippines. So I'm going to take a different approach with this podcast episode and I'm going to go into detail on how to find someone great for your business, how to find someone trustworthy and honest and hard working. And I'm not going to go into all the details because I cover all the details@1vaaway.com but I'm going to go through my process of how I do this and how you can do this and I'm going to give you some tips along the way of things that I do and don't do. And this was specifically prompted by someone telling me an alternative to doing a video interview, which seems to be the first thing that people, most people jump to when they you start getting applicants to your job and you're like, oh, let's schedule a zoom interview and it's the wrong thing to do. So but let's, let's take a step back and talk through this. So you're looking to hire a va. And I don't want to call it a VA anymore. I want to call it an ofs. Someone who is very specialized at something they do. Someone who's a special who specialized and experienced at lead generation or working in real estate marketing, or someone who has worked for an insurance agent or someone who can do graphic design and they're really good at it, or a customer service representative. I mean this list can go on and on and on. We can name 50 different types of people that you can find. Right? Someone who's really good at go high level. Whatever it is. Right? Does not matter. The process is the same for all of these. So the first thing that I do is I go to onlinejobs ph and I search, I'm going to search the database and see what exists. Do these skills that I'm looking for exist? And I'm going to look, as soon as I search I'm going to start looking at profile and I'm looking at a couple things. Number one, what skills exist and in what form? Like is this really the skills that I'm looking for and what other skills exist with it in addition to just my primary skills? So I'm looking for someone who has been a real estate assistant. Do they also know go high level? Someone who is a graphic designer, can they also do logo design? Or someone who is an executive assistant. Have they Done travel planning or have they done website design or have they done email marketing? I'm just looking to see what things are putting, being put together here. And then the second thing that I'm looking at when I'm doing this is what are the salary ranges, how much are people asking to make within my parameters? And usually what you're going to find is that on the low end like someone who's inexperienced is cheap and someone who is very experience is expensive and cheap and expensive are not the wrong words but like on the lower end of the salary range of like $3 an hour and they're a total beginner and they don't really have an experience up to like 15 to $20 an hour on the super duper high end. So I'm looking for those two things now the next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to post a job. When posting a job there's a bunch of things I'm going to do. But let me give you a tip ahead of time. So you've just looked at a bunch of profiles. If you sign up for a free account at onlinejobs page, you can bookmark profiles or pin profiles so that you can easily find the ones that you're interested in later. For me, the more specialized the person is that I'm looking for, the less I depend on the job post. I find that a job post looking for a really high end accountant like a CFO is not, is probably not going to come through an application. Most people like that already have a job and they're not actively applying for jobs. And so the more specialized the person is, the less I'm going to depend on the job post and the more I'm going to actively go out and, and contact the people that I'm finding on onlinejobs.ph so I'll contact and I'll contact 10, 20, 30 and say hey, I'm looking for someone to do XYZ. Are you interested? And I'm not going to go into a ton of detail there. I'm just going to send out a are you interested? Email to a bunch of people. Now in doing this, the wrong way to go about this is to go back to online jobs and say oh, I'm looking for a really high level cfo. There's the person that I want. So I'm going to search through a bunch of profiles and read a whole bunch of profiles and that's the one that's the wrong way to go about this rather than finding the one up front, because that person probably already has a job. And if you just approach that one person, chances are really high that they're going to say, yep, not interested, sorry. So having a profile on onlinejobs ph is not an indication of willingness to work. So that's kind of like you putting your profile out on Indeed.com you do it once and it's going to be there forever. People on onlinejobs ph are the same way. Rather than contacting the one, you're going to contact a bunch of people and then you're going to recruit based on who's available. It's the same thing if you post a job. So when you post your job, you're going to get a whole bunch of applicants. You're going to recruit from who's actively available, right? So if you're not recruiting someone super highly specialized, which like a programmer is not super highly specialized, if I'm looking for a PHP programmer, I'm going to post a job and I'm going to see who applies. Now, in posting that job, I'm going to do two specific things. One of those is I'm going to require them to have a subject line that is specific to my my job post. And I talk about this over and over again and talk about specifically one voa. Second thing I'm going to do is I'm going to ask them to use a specific number of apply points. And on onlinejobs page you can read about applied points, but I'm going to ask for a specific number. That number is going to be higher than 4, probably lower than 13. Go read about apply points. But this is a super duper effective way of weeding out people who are unqualified for your job post. Anybody who applies with one apply point is unqualified or I'm not interested in looking that application. Super duper effective. This is just recent because we, it hasn't been that long since we implemented applied points and this is a very, very effective way at weeding out lower quality. Okay, so now you've contacted a bunch of people or you have gotten a bunch of applicants. It doesn't matter which way you did it or if you did both. I'll often do both. It's the same thing for me. At this point, the next step is not to schedule a video interview. Filipinos don't want to do the video interview. They're scared of doing the video interview. Not that you won't get some people to do it. And I know some of you are going to respond, you're Gonna find my email address and say, john, you're wrong about the video interview. And that's fine. If you think I'm wrong, that's fine. Scheduling the video interview is not the right thing to do. Next of 10 good candidates you try to schedule video interviews. Five of them won't even schedule with you. Of the five who do, three of them won't show up. And you're gonna be like, oh, these Filipinos are so stupid. They don't even show up when they schedule an interview. Well, that's because you scheduled a video interview when they don't trust you and chances are high that they're gonna lose face. It's just not the right way to recruit a great va. So rather than doing that, I'm going to email them. I'm going to do a whole bunch of email interviews. And in that, in these emails, I'm going to ask a bunch of questions. And this the reason I do this. There's a couple things. One, when I work with someone virtually, it's not a face to face interview conversation. I always work through email or basecamp or it's almost always text communication for me. And so when I interview someone, I want to interview them the way I'm going to work with them. And that text communication turns out it weeds out people really, really well. So I'm going to ask 2, 3, 4 questions across 5 or 10 interviews. Each time that I send an email, it takes me 15 to 30 seconds. Each time that you do a video interview, it takes you 15 to 30 minutes if they show up. It's just so much more efficient to send these emails and to weed people out without having to spend 15 minutes on the phone with them. If I get one email back from someone that's like, oh, that's just wrong, then like, okay, I can drop them out of the recruiting process. Super simple. I also find that people that are taking lots of jobs don't want to go through my interview process. I find better people by doing this interview process than by doing a video interviews. Now I'm going to read something to you. I got this comment after I talked about don't do video interviews one time. Here's what someone said to me. Good points, but it also depends on what kind of job you like the OFS to do. I didn't hire my person to be 100% behind the scenes. I wanted someone that could eventually join me on video calls with clients. Great. In this case, let's get some videos from people. So here's what he said. When I first posted the job, I got dozens of candidates. It was so hard to narrow it down. Following your advice, I sent a detailed questionnaire. One key difference, I asked them to record a one minute video in front of the camera talking about their favorite food. Super sweet. I love it. The vast majority sent a video. Some confident, some a bit nervous, some videos too short, some too long, but overall they did great. And the one that rose to the top? Friendly demeanor, clear enunciation, good sense of humor with gentle assertiveness. She was the first person I asked for a video interview. And before we were done, I knew she was the right person for a job. Hired on the spot. That was a year ago. Now, he says most of our communication is written, but we have a meeting on video every other month or so. We spend a few minutes catching up on family life, share some laughs, then dive into business. Okay, so, and this is such a great way of doing this, if you're going to do video, start with a video. Not an interview, not a live video. Have them use their cell phone, have them use tiny Take. Have them do something to record a video that sends it to them so that they can redo it over and over again if they want. One of the things that this does well is it eliminates AI responses. So AI has become a clear part of applications today. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. And having them do a video can give you a really good idea of. Are there responses sent via AI? One of the things that I do to weed out AI people is I tell them or I ask them, have you used AI in any of your responses? And to that question, they don't know, should I say yes or should I say no? I've almost always gotten a yes I did or no I didn't. But in this one I did or I've had Grammarly clean up my messages for me, like, okay, cool, I just want to know. And you may accept AI stuff, you may not. I hate it personally, but it's good to know whether or not it is. And some people you just don't know, did you use AI in your responses? They don't know if you want them to use AI or not. So in this process, I'm doing two things. I'm looking, number one, I'm paying attention to the details. So like if I ask three questions and they only answer two of them, well, the chances of me giving them three tasks and then only answering or doing two of the tasks is really high after I hire them. And that doesn't work for me or how long does it take you to respond to my emails? If it takes you three days, well, that doesn't really respond. That doesn't really work for me. In a virtual relationship. I want quick responses and someone who's quick to respond in the interview process is probably going to be quick to respond after I hire them. Another thing that I do is I look at DISC profiles and if you don't know what DISC is, look it up. Disc. I want to look at the role that I'm, that I'm hiring for and what is an appropriate personality type for that role. And DISC is really, really good at giving me the correct personality type. And if you want more information about that onlinejobs ph Disc will give you a really good interview. I did with an expert who has taught Tony Robbins and taught Russell Brunson and taught a bunch of people about how DISC work. At this point, you probably have weeded it down. You probably have a really good idea of who is good and who is not. You've dropped people out of the process. Scammers, or not necessarily even scammers. We see very, very few scammers. But people who aren't, who are looking for a quick job or quick hit have dropped themselves out of the process. If you follow this process, which again, I go into way more detail about this, like exactly what questions I ask and what order do I do things at 1vaoa.com. But just giving you the general overview here, you're going to find that at this point you've probably narrowed it down and narrowed it down really well. And at this point I'm willing to give someone a test. So like, hey, I want, I have three people left. Hey, I want you to do this test, write this content for me or go whatever this, design this thing for me. Usually I'm going to pay people for this test task. I'm not paying a lot. I may pay 5 or 10 or 20 or $50 for this test, depending on how long it's going to take. Filipinos are very scared about doing a bunch of work and not getting paid. So. So that's something to be very cautious about or at least something to be aware about. They're very cautious and if you try and get them to do work without paying them, they're going to be leery and you probably lose a really good recruit because they don't want to get ripped off. So once I've done this, I'm looking for not necessarily who does the best work, but who I work the Best with. So in this test task, I want to know, are they willing to ask me questions or do we go back and forth really well and produce a good product in the end, rather than do they do it really, really well the first time without me being involved? Because typically that's not the way that I work. That's not the way most people in the Philippines work, at least from my experience. So I'm looking, I'm not necessarily looking for who's the best graphic designer, but who do I work the best with? Because hopefully we're going to work together for a really, really long time. And like, the graphic designers that I currently work with have worked for me for three years and 10 years, like a really long time. Or like my content writers, a couple of them have worked for me with me since like 2009, 2010, 2008. Yeah, and they're really, really good. So now a couple of tips, because my way isn't the only way of doing this. There are other ways. But here are a couple tips. So in onlinejobs ph, if you want to filter candidates so like, you have a bunch of applicants and you want to rank people or sort them into different buckets, use the tags. The tags in Onlinejobs ph were designed to be super flexible so that you can say good, better, best. Like this is the best applicant. Just t it with best. You tag a bunch of people with best and you tag some with better. You tag some with good. Don't tag bad ones, just get rid of bad ones. Don't look at bad applications. Or if you want to say, like you're looking for a real estate person and you can add a short sale tag or a lead generation tag and like this person has short sale and lead generation. Add both those tags and later on you can go back and look and see who had what. And then you can say, like, what are my most important qualities? And so that's, that's one way of sorting and filtering applicants. You can also make notes on individual applicants at onlinejobs ph. So in the inbox, you look at certain people. You've tagged them, you've sorted them. You can look at people by job posts. You have multiple job posts going on. You can look at just this job post and the applicants for this job post, and then you can look at the tags that you've given them. You can add individual notes so you're tracking your interview process with them. You can do all of the, all of the asking questions via onlinejobs pH, it doesn't have to be in your personal email. It could be the online jobs email inbox. Okay, so another way that people do this is they'll create a Google form and when someone applies, they'll send them to the Google form and say, fill this out and you ask a bunch of questions on that Google form. Now, I've never done this, but I've seen quite a few people do this and some people swear by it. Puts them all into a spreadsheet and you can sort and search and rank and whatever. That's great. These last two things, though, let me give you a word of caution. So, like, you're sorting and ranking applicants based off of their whatever they say and. Or whatever the responses there were in all of this. People often go about this thinking they're hiring. You're looking for someone who's really talented at. You're looking for someone who's really talented at Kajabi or whatever specific piece of software you're using. And so you go out and you're looking to hire a skill. And the reality is that you're hiring a person, not hiring a skill. And if you just hire for a skill, you may find, and I found this too many times myself when I got lazy in my recruiting, that I don't like this person, I don't like working with this person. We're just not compatible and they're not the right person for the job because I tried to hire a skill instead of hiring a person. And it turns out that it's actually easier to hire the person than it is to hire the skill. And it works much, much better in the long run. So back to the person who sent me the tip about the videos earlier. What he says about it is the one that rose to the top. Friendly demeanor, clear enunciation, good sense of humor with gentle assertiveness. They just hit it off. This was a person and you're hiring a person. So whatever recruiting method you use, don't forget that you're hiring a person and that person has a family and that person has problems in their life and that person has needs and wants and desires. And it's not a skill that is just going to do the work, whatever you say. And if you can't do it right, then get out of my life. If that's your approach to this, well, it's probably not going to work that well. So at this point, you're ready to start negotiating. You can negotiate salary at onlinejobs.ph. you can see what they're asking for, if what they're asking for is way out of your budget. Don't be afraid to negotiate, negotiate that salary. I'm not saying that you should underpay people, but I'm saying that negotiation is normal in Philippines culture. You can negotiate or you can dictate how you want to do paid time off or any benefits you want or don't want to add in any of this. There is no situation in which you can make this person an employee, not an independent contractor. They are an independent contractor. The only situation in which they can become an employee legally. So I'm talking about legal compliance here. At this point they are an independent contractor. The only way they are, they can become an employee is if you set up a business presence in the Philippines which is exceptionally difficult. The Philippines government does not want you to do it and they will not allow you to classify someone as an employee unless you have that physical presence in the Philippines. So for your government, the US or Canada or the UK or any other place that I've ever seen across the world, there is no situation in which you can make this person anything more than an independent contractor. Now you can pay them benefits, you can give them paid time off, you can dictate their hours, you can do anything you want. Doesn't matter. The Philippines government does not allow you to call them an employee. And with our people, we give them, we pay their insurance, we pay health insurance, we give them a computer stipend, we give them paid time off, we give them all kinds of stuff. We pay their sss and we pay their poggy big and we pay. I don't even remember what else. And if you want to know more about benefits that you can give at onlinejobs, phbenefits I lay it out in detail. You don't have to do any of it. Do not get hung up because you might have to give benefits. You do not have to. It took me years before I did any of that. So the first and most important thing is to hire someone because that's where it's life changing to you and is life changing to them without any benefits at all. It's life changing to them and it's life changing to you. So now you've gotten to the point where you've negotiated whatever. Now it's like time to say when can you start? And they'll this is the craziest part. I can start tomorrow. What's my first task? And then you're like oh my gosh, I just hired someone and I have to, I have to actually step away from my business. Stop being the grunt worker and be the CEO, because now I have to make assignments and I have to bring someone into the business, which is so amazing. When you start to transition from being the grunt worker, from being the wearer of all hats to being the CEO of your business, you start getting other people to do the work for you. Stuff really changes. So like I talked about in the beginning, in the middle, I lay out this process in really good detail at 1vaoa.com. If you go through the process at 1vaoa from start to finish, you should have someone hired with two hours of total time of your time. That two hours might take you a week in five minute increments or 15 minute increments. Whatever it is, it could take you a couple days. It could take you. I mean, I had someone email me recently that said, I literally just hired someone in eight minutes. Like they posted their job and someone immediately replied and he could tell this person was amazing. He got on an interview with them, which they got on, which is amazing. And he hired them on the spot. He said, this is amazing. I can tell right now that this person is going to be fantastic. It took him eight minutes. You can hire someone really quickly at 1 VAOA. It should not take you hours and hours and hours of time. It should be fast. I designed my whole recruiting process to be the most efficient thing for me because I don't want to spend the time recruiting. That's the most daunting thing that I do. I don't like it. I understand it's required, it's important, so I do it. I hope this process is helpful to you.