Episode 22 – How to Effectively Hire People to Suit Your Business Needs

Introduction    00:00:03    Marketing, explosive growth, and revolutionary secrets that can catapult your business to new heights. You’re now listening to The Underground Marketer Podcast with your host Tudor Dumitrescu, the one podcast devoted to showing new businesses how to market themselves for high growth.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:00:24    Welcome to the underground marketer. This is the place where we deliver the real truth about marketing and explore big ideas that can help new businesses thrive and grow into big ones. 

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:00:35    I’m your host, Tudor. And today I want to discuss hiring and more precisely my own process that I go through. When I think about hiring people, and I want to share it with you, and I want to discuss some of the most common issues that business owners encounter when they go out and try to hire people. And hopefully, the goal is that by the end of this podcast, you’ll have a much clear idea about the difficulties you can encounter when hiring so that you can be prepared to face them as well as the strategies that you can use in order to actually make it work for you and achieve your business goals, whatever they are. So to start with the biggest thing that will influence your decision here, apart from the hiring process itself is who exactly you want to hire.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:01:30    So you need to have a very clear idea of the position that the person is going to fulfill and of the requirements that you will have from them. These two things are going to help you determine if you’re going to go out and hire, for example, a freelancer, or you’re going to outsource, or you’re going to hire a permanent employee. These things are all different, right? So if you work with a freelancer or an independent contractor, there’s a slightly different procedure that you would have to follow and slightly different problem problems that you might encounter versus working with, um, a full-time employee. So the biggest thing is I always warn people to be careful about hiring a full-time employee and make sure that this is actually appropriate for them. And here’s what I mean. So in many places, once you hire a full-time employee, you do all the paperwork and so on and so forth.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:02:33    You are required to number one, pay taxes for them. And number two, there are certain conditions about that deal with how you can fire them and in under what conditions if you need to pay them anything, if you fire them, if you need to give them a certain advance, notice these differ from place to place from country to country. But it’s very important that you are aware of them because if you have such restrictions and you up hiring somebody and it doesn’t work out, then it’s very expensive to fire them, get rid of them and bring somebody else new. So that’s why every time I have to hire a permanent employee, I think very carefully about the decision I consider the work that they will have to do. And if they actually need to be in a full-time position on the job, you know, to basically do that kind of work, because if they don’t need to be in that position, then very often it’s much better to hire a freelancer or an independent contractor, or even outsource the job or the components that are required to a third party.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:03:47    So let’s say that you determine that you dealing with a kind of job that’s going to require daily input. They need to be present somewhere daily. That’s the sort of situation where you should contemplate seriously hiring them. Full-time and obviously when you hire them full-time you have complete access to their time. So they will be available, of course, during their work schedule, whenever you need them, make sure that you always have worked for them and they will have consistent work because you don’t want to end up with a situation where you need them at the moment, let’s say for one month, but then after one month, you no longer need them. Because as I said, firing them or getting rid of them may be difficult. You know, I don’t know where you’re from. In some places, this is much easier than in others, but just be aware of it, be aware of the consideration.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:04:39    Also, the other thing I do when I hire somebody who is going to be a permanent employee, is that I spend a lot more time investigating the person, interviewing the person and making sure that they are right for the job precisely for the reason I gave before. You know, I don’t want to be in a situation where I’ve already hired them and they end up not being right for the job. So it all starts with first thing, get really clear about the job and the requirements and determine what kind of person or with best fulfill that role. You know, if it’s a full-time employee contractor, maybe a third party, uh, that you outsource to whoever, you know, determine who’s going to be fit for that role. And why, you know, just ask yourself what the requirements are. Do they need to be on the job all the time?  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:05:34    Will they always have work? Do they work on a per-project basis? And whatever the answers to those questions are, use them to make the right choice for you. Once you’ve done that, I’m going to now take you through the theory of three different scenarios, and I’ll start with full-time employment because that typically is the hardest one to get, right? So generally looking over people’s CVS and so on is important as an, I really use it as just as a tool to, you know, eliminate people who are not a good fit, you know, in general, doesn’t help me decide who is actually a good fit and who I will hire, but it helps me decide who is worth interviewing and also hiring. I like to think about it as a process of elimination. I remember this metaphor from, um, sculpting a long time ago. I don’t remember who said it, maybe it was Michelangelo.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:06:31    And he said that the actual statue it’s already inside the block of marble. And my job as a sculptor is simply to remove the excess stone inside the block of marble and let the statue show itself. So the process of elimination and finding the right person each month is much the same. And for full-time employment, I always start, I look at the CV, I make sure that they have the required qualifications. They have some experience that’s relevant and that’s it, you know, and based on that, I decided I am going to interview these people and I’m not going to bother with these other people. You know, they’re going to be basically a waste of my time. Once you speak the pile of people that you are going to be interviewing, you need to actually prepare for the interview before you’re actually going to do it.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:07:21    So how do you do that? Well, it really depends for the kind of function that you’re going to hire. It’s very effective to give people tests if at all possible. And if the time permits for it to check their skills, you know, and to see that they can actually perform in those situations where you need them to perform, this is not possible, of course, for all jobs, you know, but for example, if you’re hiring, let’s say a website developer, and you can give them some coding challenge, you know, maybe you don’t know coding, but maybe you can search online on Google for a coding challenge or just pick a coding puzzle and give it to them, you know, and then observe how they go about solving it. This, if at all possible should be one stage of the interview where you actually assess the actual skills that the person has and you see them in action.

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:08:15    And that glimpse that you get from somebody actually doing work can be very valuable in actually assessing if they’re competent because, and this is fascinating to me, a lot of people from their CV, they can look very competent, you know, and they can experience the experience that they show up with. You know, the previous companies that hired them and so on, they can be quite prestigious, but when you actually see them working, they don’t really live up to that reputation. You know? So what tends to happen is that somehow or other, they got into that position at the company. And for whatever reason, they held onto it for some time, obviously, they didn’t actually learn the skills that they should have. So I would start with a test, you know, the same thing. If you have a graphic designer, you can ask for a very quick design of something.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:09:07    If you are a marketing agency and you’re hiring somebody for a marketing project, for example, you can share with them a past brief that your agents, you worked on and ask them how they would approach the situation, basically anything that will enable you to see their thinking and to see how they would act before you hire them. That’s super useful. The other thing that I will say here in the interview process is that you have to assess not just for a fit with your budget or with the salary that you can pay them. I would say that that’s actually the least important thing. The most important thing is that they fit into your organization and they fit in with your working style. And that’s a bit more complicated to assess, but basically, it involves looking at the applicants’ personality, you know, and trying to determine how he would fit with the other people he’s going to work with and how he would fit with you, of course, and with your values and where you want to take your organization.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:10:10    And that’s very important. And I know that, you know, we’re educated from birth pretty much to be nice, no matter what, personally, I don’t have to find that effective in interviewing. You know, you have to be brutally honest with a person. You have to be brutally honest about what your standards are, what your values are, what you’re looking for. And you also need to be brutally honest in assessing people, because very often in these interviews, especially if you land on some person who is desperate, for whatever reason to get a job, you’re going to have people who are going to lie to you. And they’re not going to tell you the truth. You know, you, you ask them, do you have experience with X? Y is that they say yes, even though they’ve never worked with it before, but they get a sense from the way you ask them that if they say no, the interview is over right in the, they want to get the job at all costs.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:11:03    So they will lie to you if they’re not doing this necessarily because they’re bad people, they’re just doing this because emotions take them over. And the desperation, the need for the job just blinds them to other issues. So each your job to be able to determine these things. What I like to do is I like to use this technique where instead of telling people or trying people to sell people on the job, you know, trying to convince them why they should work for me, I do the opposite. You know, I try to convince them why they shouldn’t work on the job and why the job is not going to be nice. And the way I like to do this is by I call this the, the worst day on the job exercise. So I like to tell them about their job as if it was on their worst day, what’s going to happen, what they’re going to have to go through, and what challenges will come up. 

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:11:59    And I like to tell them that, look, this is what this job actually will involve. You know, it’s not all roses and it’s not going on all these super awesome there’s these difficulties that are going to come up from time to time. And I’m going to describe that to them. And then basically I will be quiet and watch out, listen out for their reaction. And I’ve discovered that there are generally around three different reactions that people can give. When you try to sell them out of taking the job, number one, they can be very enthusiastic and say that, yeah, I want the job. This sounds wonderful. Whatever. Obviously, if somebody does that, they are desperate. You know, that’s how you distinguish when a candidate is desperate, they want the job at all costs. They don’t even care about the difficulties. Right? Then you have the exact opposite reaction.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:12:56    You know, somebody who listens and then it’s like, oh yeah, this job doesn’t sound like it’s for me. You know, maybe they say it’s very stressful. It’s not what I imagined. I want more time working from my desk or whatever it is. If they react like that, then again, they’re not a suitable candidate because they will not enjoy it. They obviously do not try very much from the challenge or they, it simply doesn’t fit with their personality type. And then of course you have the third reaction, which is the one that you want. And if a candidate gives you this reaction, then give them serious consideration going forward. And this reaction is basically they acknowledged the challenges, you know? So they would say something like, oh, this sounds challenging. And here’s how I would approach it or something of that nature. So they appreciate the challenges, but they’re already brainstorming for solutions and they can see themselves as overcoming those challenges and making it work.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:13:55    And this is the kind of response that you want from the get-go, especially if you’re hiring somebody full time because again, the commitment is going to be much bigger for you and they have to be right. So this has proven very useful to me. And it sort of allows you to bypass the lies that people would tell you and sort of seeing what they’re really feeling like. The other advice that I have when I’m interviewing for full-time positions, generally, I’ve always done this in person or at least over the video, because it’s very difficult over a phone call to see the body language of the other person. And the body language is very important because it’s going to reveal details about what the person actually thinks about the job that they’re not going to verbally say you also, so the body or bodies, they have their own knowledge.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:14:49    And the body’s always communicating what we know. And it’s very easy to lie mentally and say something different than what you’re thinking, but it’s a lot more difficult to lie physically also with your body. So if there’s a discrepancy, for example, if, if they say that they, they want the job or they like the salary, they’re okay with the salary. But when they say they pull back or they cross their legs or some sort of body language that indicates to the exact opposite of what they verbally said, then it’s more likely that they’re not being honest about it, or they’re not expressing their full feelings about, and it’s very important for you to notice, you know, because a person might be, let’s say not full-on desperate, but they might be slightly desperate. They might sort of want the job just for the salary, but they don’t really like it.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:15:45    And they don’t really like the salary and the work conditions and whatnot. And if that’s the case, this is going to show up sooner or later, you know, it takes willpower to suppress those things and keep them hidden inside our bodies. And there’s only so much of that, that we can do, you know, sooner or later it’s going to come out, you know, so maybe you hire them and they’re wonderful for the first 3, 4, 5 weeks. And then suddenly, you know, they start coming to work later. Then they leave work sooner than anyone else. They’re no longer as intense yeah. Stick. They just do their job in that seat. They don’t really care about integrating with, um, your environment. There can be a lot of those behaviors, which indicate that they’re not really happy or fulfilled by the job. And therefore they’re not as productive as they could be.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:16:39    And this is the other important point, hiring somebody full-time and making the wrong hire in terms of your culture can be very detrimental because not only will that person not be productive, it’s going to drag everybody else in the collective doubt. And depending on where you’re from, it may be difficult to fix. You know, you have, you may have to pay the money if you fire them without notice or whatnot. So that’s why I’d be very careful. The other thing that you can do, of course, if the law in your place allows you when you’re hiring full-time hire them for a period of probation where you see how they work. You sometimes the law allows you to hire them on a lower salary as well. Again, depending on when you, where you’re from and hire them for a period of probation to maybe four weeks at most, usually they would want a paid probation and that’s fair.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:17:35    Most of the time, hire them on probation and see that they actually deliver the results and that they’re actually integrating into your organization. And again, watch for subtle signs because they know that you are judging them and you’re investigating them in those two or four weeks or however long it is. So they’re going to be, let’s say, on their best behavior. So watch for subtle signs that indicate that they’re not interested in the job and they would not like it. And they’re not a fit for your culture, because if that’s the case, then obviously you don’t want to keep those people around because they would create problems further down the road when they actually become full-time employees. So that’s basically what I look at, you know, so I go from looking at CVS for full-time employees. I go from giving them a test and just talking with them general information about themselves, previous jobs, what they liked these likes and sort of try to get to know their personality.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:18:30    And then I actually moved to interviewing them and using the worst day technique to figure out if they would actually be a fit for the job. And then furthermore, if they would actually be a fit for the culture, if possible, I also like giving them a probation period just to see how they work and then take them in as full-time employees. So that’s basically an overview. Now there are situations when it’s best not to hire a full-time employee. And my philosophy on this is simple. You know, if you don’t need a full-time employee if you don’t need somebody who is going to sit there eight hours every day and do some work consistently, then don’t hire full-time employees. You know, if you work on a per-project basis and you have multiple projects ongoing, and each project is handled by somebody else, it’s often much better to just go after the contractors that you need, develop relationships with contractors, freelancers, and third parties that you can outsource to, and just bring them in on projects as you need them. 

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:19:37    And generally, the way I like to do this is that I have what is known as in my case, as a marketing agency, subcontracting agreements with people. And what this means is that we sign a contract, which is really a framework for working together. You know, it’s not a promise of actually receiving work. It’s just the framework for working together, which basically says these are going to be the conditions. If we’re actually going to work together on a project, and this is how the project would be started, this is how you can refuse the project. This is what you’re going to be responsible for. If you accept the project, these are the conditions, blah, blah, blah, the general level conditions. And then once I have a project for them, I would introduce them with a, what I call inside the contract, a task order to the project.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:20:27    I basically introduced them to what they’re actually going to do in the project, what their responsibilities are going to be, what the timeframe is, and what the payments are. And they can either say yes, in which case they will accept the project. Then they have to take it to full-on completion or else they will pay the damages. Or they say, no, you don’t. This is not for me. And then I can search for somebody else. And this method of working gives you a lot of flexibility. You know, if you don’t need people, full-time, don’t hire them full-time. You know, there’s no point in doing it. You’re just going to waste more money than you need. And you’re going to have a lot more flexibility just by subcontracting and hiring on a per-project basis. Now, how do you actually find these people? Well, for full-time employees, it’s quite easy.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:21:17    You know, you go on job boards like indeed.com and so on you post an announcement. You maybe post in local newspapers. If you need to hire a local paper person and you see, you ask people to submit CVS to you, maybe answer a couple of questions and that’s it. So it’s simple. When it comes to independent contractors, you have to decide she wants a freelancer, which is basically one individual person who is going to do the job, or the project is more extensive. And yeah, you want a group of people, you know, let’s say an agency or anyway, a group of people that you can outsource to, if you want an individual, typically an individual is better. If you have a smaller project and you need a lot of customized input from somebody who can be accountable for it, an agency is better. If you have a lot of more complications and you need to hire, let’s say four or five interviews, visuals, if you had to hire them as an individual, whereas if you hire the agents, you have access to all, obviously, in that case, you want to go for an agency.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:22:20    If it’s a more complex project, otherwise look for a freelancer for looking for agencies, the most effective I found Google, and I’ve also found my personal network. You know, other people I’ve worked with other agencies I’ve worked with and just searching for the type of agency that I need or the type of work that I need. Um, and then obviously I like to look at reviews. I like to speak with the people involved. I like to ask them how they would approach the project. Um, what would be important with them? I like to set terms that are mutually agreeable in terms of how the payment is done. Consequences. If targets are not met and so on. When it comes to hiring a freelancer, the service that I like to use most often for, let’s say medium to longer-term jobs is upwork.com. So Upwork is very effective at finding freelancers.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:23:11    You have to vet them. The system is simple. You know, you just post a job, write it up very effectively. If you hire hiring graphic designers, copywriters, web developers, basically anything that can be done remotely, Upwork is very effective for it. I go on Upwork and I would post a job the way I do this is simple. So I would typically explain what the requirements for the job are, what the skill requirements are, what the payments are upfront. And I would say that it’s non-negotiable and that’s it. If you set the payment is non-negotiable from the beginning and put it upfront, then you make sure that nobody applies or much fewer people apply if they don’t agree with your conditions. You know, so let’s say that you’re looking for a web developer, who’s going to work for 20 bucks an hour. For example, send the conditions clear upfront, and you’re going to increase your chances that only those people are going to apply.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:24:06    And you’re not going to waste your time, interviewing people who are not the right fit. Once this is done, I go through the same procedure that I go with. Full-time candidates. You know, I look at their application, I look at their experience, look at testimonials and feedback, and then I decided they’re worth interviewing or they’re not. And then I started interviewing them in much the same process, except that I often do it over video. And I go through the same process as I do with full-time people, lawyers. Now, if you don’t want to pay somebody by the hour, you know, when would you not want to pay somebody by the hour? Well, if you have, I have a very clearly defined project. Or if you can clearly measure the results of the project, then you can choose to pay the person a fixed fee, you know, maybe a fixed fee for the project and the fixed fee for achieving your targets.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:24:58    And then you don’t pay by the hour, you know, because you sure that you pay this fixed amount and that’s that if your requirements aren’t as clear, you know, let’s say that you hiring a web developer and you sort of know what you want him to do, but maybe things are going to pop up. You know, your customer may be, let’s say that you’re outsourcing, this is going to want to add something new and so on. Then it’s very effective that you just hire per hour, you know? And then you know, that person is going to work based on what you’ve hired them per hour. You can monitor them, you know, opera could take screenshots of their screen and you can see that they’re doing their job. And that’s very important. So that’s basically what I take into consideration when I decide between per hour and per project, both of them are effective based on what your needs are.

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:25:47    The other service you can go to. And this is especially effective. If you go in for something that’s of a very transactional nature, you know, it doesn’t require much involvement. Maybe let’s say, um, that it’s just a small adjustment that you need to a business card or whatever it is. And you just need the adjustment to the design. You can go on Fiverr.com. The difference between 500, our common Upwork in terms of hiring freelancers is that Fiverr is a seller’s market, which means that people post their jobs and post their prices. And you either agree with them or you don’t. Whereas Upwork is a buyer’s market. A buyer’s market is very effective. If you want to set your own conditions. And if you want to say, these are my conditions, this is exactly what I want. And this is exactly what I want to get.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:26:35    And typically, if the complexity goes up, this is exactly what you need. If it’s something very simple and something very transactional, then going on Upwork is going on. Something like Fiverr is going to be much faster, you know, because the jobs are already there. You just selected pay it in one day, you get it back, usually with a project completed. So those are the consideration when it comes to hiring freelancers and independent contractors. One more thing that I learned here is that you can also look for these people through your network, you know, so on your LinkedIn, you can look for people who may be doing web developer, web development, or design or whatever. You’re looking for photography and reach out to them like that for local stuff. You know, you can use the near me, you just type, let’s say photographer near me on Google.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:27:26    And you’re going to get a list of businesses that are near you doing that. Who can help you with that? You know, maybe plumber near me. If you need to subcontract work to a plumber, whatever it is, those are basically the considerations that I, I take. So, um, we’re coming to an end here we are. So, uh, briefly summarize. So first thing and most important when hiring, make sure that you’re very clear about the position and what they’re actually going to do in the job so that you can determine what kind of person you’re going to hire. You hire full-time. Remember that full-time. Amy is good for people who are going to be doing consistent work, which is always the same. And they’re always going to be there. Usually, physically, they don’t work on a per-project basis. They’re going to do a wild, um, a wider sort of tasks.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:28:15    And you need their full input all the time. That’s when you consider full-time, if not, then go straight to either a subcontractor or an a, or a freelance answer. Or if you need something more complex, go for an agent, which has all the people that you’re actually going to need. And you don’t need to go in 10 different places, you know, to hire all the people that are going to need to work on your project. In terms of the actual process. In all cases, review the people, look at their testimonials, look at the feedback that they’ve had from the past, from other people, if at all possible ask for references on interviews. If possible, give people a challenge. You can see how they actually approach the problem and how they would solve it. Uh, use the worst day exercise, especially for people you’re going to employ full time to make sure they’re right for the job.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:29:06    They’re not lying. You watch for their body language whenever you’re interviewing and watch for discrepancies. You know, basically, when their words say something and their body language says something different, those are usually areas that you want to explore in more depth. And finally, I will say that be brutally honest, you know, don’t be afraid of hurting people’s feelings. This is about getting the right fit. If you get the wrong fit, you’re actually going to produce it. So disaster both for yourself and for the other person, they’re going to hate working there. They’re not going to fit in with the rest of your organization. They’re going to drag you down and that’s not good for either of you. So that’s pretty much how I approach hiring and how you should approach it as well and how you can avoid the difficulties that can otherwise come up when you’re trying to hide it. 

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:29:56    So stay tuned for the next episode. And until next time, keep growing your business and providing massive value to the world, because remember you are the reason why we’re all growing richer. Our freedoms are expanding and we’re all living in greater prosperity. Thank you until next time.