If you are ambitious, your online business will require virtual employees at one time. Getting the right employees can sometimes make the difference between failure and success. And so getting the right people that work and deliver exceptional results should be a priority of any mobile marketing person.
Unfortunately, most people start businesses without any experience in human resource skills of recruiting, training and management of a workforce. Here are some tips that will get you in the right direction…
1. Look at your requirements
You will need to assess your business requirements in detail. Look at the tasks that you can outsource. Look at the future requirements and see how more virtual assistants will fit in your business. Think of the skills these new employees will require.
Write a job description that is clear and detailed. It will help you get a better understanding of your requirements and remove any ambiguity on the new assistant.
Once you are clear on this, take the next step which is…
2. Identifying the best-fit employees
This may not come easy or fast. I would rather you take the advice of renowned business management leader Brian Tracy, which is hire slowly, however fire fast. In other words, it is better to get it right the first time than regret later.
So start by using modern technology trends.
Depending on your requirements, you can post your offer on forums that are frequented by people who like to do your kind of tasks. Perhaps you want small business IT support or articles written or someone to handle customers’ emails or the design aspects of your websites. There are many forums for this. In addition, social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter can help you spread word out fast and get a couple of people to choose from.
Don’t forget Upwork and the many online job sites. And here comes the hard part…
3. Personal interviews and background checks
Once you get respondents that match the candidates’ skills, conduct personal interviews. Use Skype or Google Video for conferencing. Talk to the candidates, look at their faces, and ask them the hard questions. See if there is rapport that develops and assess if the candidate is really the one that can do the job well.
Even after the interview, you need to do a background check to see if there are any inconsistencies in the candidate’s claims. Look at the Facebook walls of the candidates; take a check of the LinkedIn profiles. Call or email the people the candidate claims to have worked for. You will discover much more, positive or negative that may not have been revealed before. Even after all this and you feel confident the person is fit for the job, you still need to…
4. Take a trial
Don’t employ permanent workers, however give a probationary period of perhaps one month or three months depending on the type of person that you are looking for. Make this clear to the employee or better still have it in some form of contract.
Some tasks are done on a monthly basis and you need at least three months to see how they are handled. If you are looking for an article writer who does 5 – 10 articles a day, then just one week can tell the writing skills level of the candidate.
The most crucial things you need to check during the probationary period are the style of working, skills and expertise, and training requirements. You also need to discover if the employee has some other skills that are not related to the job, however can help you in the big picture of your business. After the trial period you need something else very important, which is…
5. Set the ground rules
Set clear and firm goals and working culture, standards, ethics, protocols, responsibilities and dispute resolution mechanisms. In other words, you need to let your business operate like a McDonalds franchise; where everything is in writing and every person knows what to do or what to say for each possible situation.
This will help you work on the business rather than working in the business. You see most people go online to escape the 9 to 5 day job.
And when you do not have a process and a business that runs with little or no interventions, then you may end up working even more. And finally…
6. Offer extensive training
The online business world changes fast. In fact, you ought to be running and not crawling. That means your employees need to get training on new ways to use Pinterest to promote your business, or as a lead generating funnel.
They need to know the latest SEO techniques and the newest Google tactics. Well, not all employees will need every form of training, however every employee needs to further his or her education in the area of specialty.
