How We Do Hiring at MarketBeat

Hey guys, Matt Paulson here. The topic of hiring has come up a lot in the startups Sioux Falls community lately, and this probably shouldn't be a surprise to anyone given our city's historically low unemployment rate. I think it's somewhere between 2 and 3% right now. So a lot of companies need workers and a lot of those workers don't exist or need to be hired from elsewhere. And it's just a challenge for every business owner right now. My friend Chofsuke Eed, local business owner, excuse me, a local boutique owner in Sioux Falls. She recently published a series of podcast episodes about hiring and how her company is hiring. And that kept me kind of thinking, you know, how do we do hiring at Markaby? Where do these people come from? And how did I even hire them in the first place? So, you know, MarketBeat, right now we have seven employees. We have a handful of independent contractors that work from both MarketBeat and startups. Who follows? You know, we are not a big company by any means, but I kind of developed it, a pretty simple strategy that's worked well for our small business and I thought it would be worth sharing in this video. I especially think it's worth sharing because nobody has ever quit or gotten fired from either MarketBeat or Goku photo contest or Stardew Falls or really anything else that I'm involved with. And I think that's something to be proud of. So the strategy is this. One, be actively engaged in the community, meet a lot of different people, volunteer at nonprofits, go to community meetups, that kind of stuff. Two, of the people that you've met, you hire the ones that you like. And three, offer a salary and benefits package that they can't refuse. Pretty simple. But allow me to elaborate in a little bit of detail. So 2013, I was an entrepreneur. I just had quit my day job. I was tired of kind of being the lone wolf entrepreneur operating out of my house with a lot of human interaction during the day. So I got involved. At the time I had a part time employee and I knew I would need to build my team over the next several years. So I got involved with a variety of different nonprofits and community groups such as 1 Million Cups and Downtown Rotary and Sioux Fall Seminary and the Zio Center. I started going to networking events that the Chamber put on as well as other technology and startup meetup groups in our city. I also started working at downtown coffee shops, a co working space that used to exist called the Bakery, and then eventually a small downtown office of my own. So by Just being an active member of the community, showing up to stuff. I just ended up meeting a lot of different people. By being so engaged and involved in the community. I mean, it wasn't uncommon. For a while. I'd go to five or ten different events a week and you kind of start to see a lot of the same people. You get to know people, you know their strengths, you know their weaknesses, you know their work habits, you know what they can do, what they can't do. And eventually I kind of came across some people that I thought, you know, hey, I think I might enjoy working with this person, you know, on a permanent basis. So when that kind of happened, first time it was myself and then a part time customer service person, Stevie Shea still works at the company the time and we both kind of knew we needed to grow. So I met my second employee, Rebecca McKeever, at the co working space called the Bakery. Back in the day. I saw her at work, I hired her to do a couple of freelance projects and eventually I hired her to work full time at MarketBeat. So even before we talked about a job, she'd already done a couple projects for me. I had seen her be involved at the Bakery and I saw her do a couple other freelance projects as well. I met my fourth employee, Will Bushy, at a technology meetup group called South Dakota Geeks. Several years back. I met my fifth employee, Ryan Kwam, at an informal gathering of technology enthusiasts that meets on Thursdays at Queen City Bakery. Both Ryan and Will worked for a company called Bright Planet that went out of business at the end of last year. So kind of when their jobs ended, there was an opportunity there and I offered them both positions. I met my sixth employee, Maureen Olm, at One Million Cups. So she was previously a One Million Cups organizer in like 2015, 2016. So I knew what her capabilities and strengths were from that volunteer role. So when it came time for me to hire an executive assistant earlier this year, you know, Maureen was their first person that I thought of. So I also met Becky Squire and Miranda Huskey, who are both kind of freelancers and volunteers for startups who follows. They met them through 1 million compasses with, well, so I don't really have any special job posting websites or Facebook groups or anything that I used to advertise positions at MarketBeat. In fact, I'm not sure. I don't think I've ever like posted a job posting and hired somebody. So I don't write lengthy job descriptions or dream about the attributes of a perfect candidate. Don't have any unique interview questions that I ask or have a fancy interview process that involves mockpoint interviews. Really. I just think of people in the Sioux Falls community that I know and like and I think would be good at the job. And then I just ask friends, family and business acquaintances for potential candidates as well. So once I kind of think there's somebody I want to hire, I just go have a conversation with them, have coffee with them, gauge their interest, see if there's a fit. And I usually actually don't really need to even do an interview because I already kind of know who they are and what they're about. I'm also not afraid to train people. When Rebecca McKeever started, I hired her more for her work ethic and her personality than I did her skill set. She wanted to become a software developer, but it was pretty light on those skills, so I sent her through a code bootcamp program so she could learn how to be a developer. When I think of people that I want to hire, it's often more for just who they are and what they're about, what their ethics and morals are and what their priorities are in addition to hard skills. So if I find somebody that I want to hire who also they're interested in working at MarketBeat, I tend to make them an employment offer that's better what they're getting now and probably better than what they could get from most other companies in town. So our company historically has had a 70% profit margin. So we just have the luxury of paying above market salaries and not worrying about it all that much. We can afford to pay higher salaries than other companies that are competing for the same types of candidates. In our community, we also let our employees work from home. That's a benefit that they value greatly. They want to work downtown at a coffee shop or at the Zero center, or get an office. I don't really care where my employees work as long as they're getting their work done. And there is a lot of trust involved with that. But we hire people that are self starters and good self managers. So we're not. We just find people we can trust and then we trust them. We also pay for health insurance. We have a good 401 plan. I think our employees end up getting about 8% of their salary matched. So it's a really good deal for them. We have charitable matching plan and there's a lot of free lattes and coffee given out at Queen City as well. So it would just be unlikely that somebody ever leaves MarketBeat for another company because of pay and benefits. We can just do more than a lot of other companies can. So how MarketBeat? How we hire people? Not gonna work for every company. Especially if you need more than a dozen employees, it's hard to hire that many people that you meet. Our hiring strategy isn't elaborate or complicated, but it has worked pretty well for us. I meet a lot of people I like. I offer them, you know, money to provide for their families and get them a healthy work environment. My employees have told me that they like their jobs and the work they do and we've just never had a mishire because, you know, I've known everybody that's worked for MarketBeat for at least three years before I've hired them. So that's our hiring strategy. And this is Micah. Micah, do you want to say hi for the video? Hi. And that is the video. Thanks for watching. Bye.