[00:00:00] Zach Hammer: Welcome to the Real Estate Growth Hacker show. In today’s episode, we’re going to be walking through the entire process for hiring a great VA. We’re going to start right from the beginning and go all the way through to the end of the process that you end up with a fantastic VA who’s going to be able to do great work in your business, whether it’s in real estate or really anywhere else.

[00:00:20] Zach Hammer: It’s a great process. We’re going to dive into it. With me today, I have Charlie Madison, founder, developer, realtor, award-winning. Oh, what is it that you do again? Jiu-jitsu, right?

[00:00:31] Charlie Madison: That’s true. I’ve won a medal or two in jiu-jitsu.

[00:00:34] Zach Hammer: So, we got a qualified person to be speaking here with us, as well. Honestly, this is one of those areas in the Bible, it talks about iron sharpening iron. This is very much. Charlie and I feel come together on this. I’ve learned a lot from Charlie in terms of thinking through this process.

[00:00:48] Zach Hammer: I don’t know if you’ve learned anything from me.

[00:00:50] Charlie Madison: Vice versa. I think that’s fair to say, like we’ve perfected a very good process that works with us. I think that’s the coolest thing. I’ve hired lots of [00:01:00] headhunters. And what I’ve discovered is, I’m a weird individual. I’m quirky. And it takes a certain skill set for someone else to work with me, and for it to be like a peanut butter and jelly. And what’s really cool about this process that both of us have really worked with is that we find really good workers that work with us that really multiplies our productivity that like a headhunter just can’t usually get.

[00:01:31] Zach Hammer: And honestly, I think, that’s a big part of this. To double down on that point, what sort of unlocked hiring, whether it’s VAs, maybe a data entry, or video editing, or graphic design, or really anything, what really unlocked for me actually having success with that process was being okay with the reality that I was hiring somebody that worked well with me as I am. Like you go into this process almost feeling, maybe you do acknowledge some level of humility of saying, I have things to grow on, I could be a better [00:02:00] communicator, I could do this better.

[00:02:01] Zach Hammer: And that’s true. We all have things that you could grow and you should work on those things. But here’s the reality, you are who you are. And it is honestly easier to hire somebody who works well with you as you are than it is to completely change yourself in order to essentially meet people the other part of the way.

[00:02:20] Zach Hammer: Now, do keep working on that. Improve as a human. Keep improving your abilities. But in the meantime, while you’re improving yourself, the reality is that you could find people that work great with who you are right now, and can meet your needs and can adapt to you, and are already a good fit for that.

[00:02:35] Zach Hammer: And when you acknowledge that, and then you start building your hiring process around finding somebody who does already work with you the way that you are, then you end up happier and getting better results. And that’s really powerful. Really, it’s one of the foundational principles to this whole process that we’re building around that idea and that reality. Hopefully, that makes sense.

[00:02:54] Zach Hammer: Now, I want to take a quick aside, and talk a little bit about why, I think this is such a [00:03:00] powerful topic. We’ll go into the how but in terms of why.

[00:03:03] Zach Hammer: We’ve been diving into a lot of AI concepts, about how to leverage AI, how to leverage generative AI, large language models, generating images, using AI for editing, using AI for recruiting. And AI is really powerful and it’s awesome, but it still needs humans.

[00:03:18] Zach Hammer: That’s one of the things that we talk about a lot as well is that, if you really want the best results from AI, you want to pair it together with human intelligence, as well. So, here’s what I found, a VA alone can get so far, and can do a great job on some things, maybe without any other help.

[00:03:36] Zach Hammer: AI alone, we’ve talked about this a lot, can get maybe 80% of the way there on some types of tasks, and it typically needs a human to polish the last part. But man, an AI plus VA combo is amazingly powerful, where work that previously maybe required somebody who had a high degree of cultural familiarity with [00:04:00] whatever you’re needing to do or the subject matter.

[00:04:01] Zach Hammer: Maybe previously, in order to get good results, you needed somebody who grew up in the US, speak in English, right? That was part of what’s necessary to really get the best result. In the Philippines, for instance, they do speak English, maybe as a first language, often as a second language. And they speak it well, but it’s slightly different. There’s maybe a little bit lost through idioms and things like that, where it’s not exactly the same as somebody who maybe grew up in the US or Canada, or even Australia, speaking English the way that you’re used to.

[00:04:31] Zach Hammer: But AI is able to really bridge that gap very effectively where somebody who has learned English, but maybe doesn’t have that sort of native level familiarity with it. It could bridge that gap really well, and bring a level of polish that was really, you either needed a native speaker to bring that polish before, now you may not need that, right? And you may be able to take it even further.

[00:04:51] Zach Hammer: Bringing AI into our businesses in order to leverage this cutting edge technology for growth, profitability, and [00:05:00] scalability, in marketing, as well as back office and everywhere, VAs to me are still really a major component of getting the most out of AI possible. Does that make sense, Charlie?

[00:05:11] Charlie Madison: Yeah, 100%. AI can 10X or 100X your productivity. My favorite quote right now is something like, AI isn’t going to take over the legal profession, but lawyers that know how to use AI are going to take over. AI isn’t going to take over realtors, but realtors that know AI are going to take over.

[00:05:34] Charlie Madison: And so, it’s that thing like, you+AI is the exponential factor, and like AI still requires inputs. So, imagine having a VA that knows how to just put in the input so that something that used to take eight hours can now be done in 10 minutes. But here’s the thing, they’re putting in the inputs, so it frees you up to do your [00:06:00] superpowers, your unique spark of humanity, as you say.

[00:06:02] Zach Hammer: Exactly. And that’s the key. Honestly, what we’re really seeing is, previously, you have your role as a team owner, team leader, maybe you’re running this as a solo agent, wherever you are. You have your role in your expertise. And your expertise is going to be vast and multifaceted, in most cases, right? Through the process of building a successful business, you have had to learn a lot of different skills in order to get where you. And you may not be a full master of all of them, but you’re dangerous and a lot of different things, in a good way, right?

[00:06:31] Zach Hammer: As you grow and you scale, you will often need to bring in skilled, specialized talent, as well. Somebody who is an expert in what they do. Maybe it’s with marketing. Maybe it’s with managing transactions. Maybe it’s negotiating. Maybe it’s the agents themselves that you bring into your team that are independent contractors technically, but still skilled in their own ways.

[00:06:50] Zach Hammer: And then, there’s always in any business, some level of lower-skilled labor where there’s work that needs to be done and you definitely want [00:07:00] somebody intelligent and capable in that process, but they may not need to come into it as an expert already. And there’s processes to follow, stuff like that. And that’s typically where VA is often come into play, but depending on what you’re needing, there are some really high skilled VAs, as well. It could be media buying things like pay-per-click, Facebook ads, web development, those sorts of things. There are high skilled VAs, as well.

[00:07:22] Zach Hammer: When we’re thinking about where this comes into play, AI+humans period is powerful. But the key is, that if you can really hire the right caliber for the job that needs to be done, you can often figure out that right mix to make it as cost-effective as possible.

[00:07:38] Zach Hammer: So, you’re not getting rid of the need for skilled labor. You’re not getting rid of the need for that, but it might be modifying the degree that you need it. Or you might be able to shore up somebody’s weaknesses, and really leverage just the key components that you need. And that’s really where this fits in. So AI again, AI is creating more opportunities than I think it’s killing job opportunities, right?

[00:07:59] Zach Hammer: [00:08:00] That if you have that skill, then even with less skills, otherwise you’re able to do a lot more. And that’s really where this comes in is, with that opportunity, now VAs have become even more powerful than they were before. You can hire somebody and have them be able to do a lot more of a process than maybe they used to be able to do. That’s why, it’s so powerful in this AI generative AI sort of world.

[00:08:22] Zach Hammer: And that’s what brings us to what we’re actually going to be talking about, which is how we go through and hire a VA in order to get somebody in, that works great, that does great work, that’s a good fit for you, your team, your processes.

[00:08:35] Zach Hammer: Again, like Charlie was saying, we’ve done this a lot, at this point. I’ve actually lost track of how many people I’ve hired in terms of going through and doing this process. For me, it’s probably not as much as some people, but I’ve hired over the course of my career hiring VAs. I’ve hired pretty readily, I’d say 20-30 people.

[00:08:56] Zach Hammer: At least, like actually hiring somebody, bringing them in to do some sort of [00:09:00] job, right? And sometimes, that’s more freelance or part-time. Other times, it’s more full-time and whatnot. But yeah, we’ve done this a number of times. I’m not sure what your numbers look like, but I’m sure it’s similar if not more.

[00:09:10] Zach Hammer: So, through that process, we figured out a lot of what doesn’t work, a lot of what does work. And have narrowed down a set of steps that pretty consistently get a great result where we confidently feel like we know, when I need help doing a certain task, know how to go about doing that. And that’s what we’re going to convey today.

[00:09:26] Zach Hammer: Does that sound about right, Charlie?

[00:09:28] Charlie Madison: That, you nailed it.

[00:09:29] Zach Hammer: Perfect. Let’s go ahead and dive into the beginning. So, the first part of this process to me is really foundationally, you want to clearly define what the job role is that you need done. There’s a few things to keep in mind, but one of the biggest ones, you pointed this out, you called it the one thing rule.

[00:09:48] Zach Hammer: You want to describe what you mean by the one-thing rule?

[00:09:51] Charlie Madison: In general, I want to make sure they do one thing. But I’ll give you some examples. My Facebook manager, he manages our [00:10:00] ads. He really has one rule. His whole goal is to be great at managing Facebook ads, and that’s a really technical thing. He can grab files and he can fill out a spreadsheet, but that’s his number one role.

[00:10:15] Charlie Madison: And so, when I hired, all that I cared about there was that, I’ve got a VA that her goal is to really help me systemize our operations. And she may do other things, but that’s the goal. And so, I had to make sure that she worked with the systems that we use, and that she knew them well.

[00:10:37] Charlie Madison: I hire a lot of technical people, in real estate, I had a showing agent. He wasn’t doing everything. All that he did was show homes. And those are some good examples that I’ve got.

[00:10:47] Zach Hammer: Yeah, and I think, there’s a couple of things that you mentioned there that’s key. So, the reality here is that you want to have clarity going into one of these hires. This is the thing that if they do this, It makes everything worthwhile, right? [00:11:00] And, you want to define that clearly, you want that to be reasonable.

[00:11:02] Zach Hammer: You want it to be something that feels like a person could do this, and doesn’t have to be superhuman to be able to do right? That this feels like a reasonable thing to expect of somebody. Now, it doesn’t mean, that’s the only thing that you’re ever going to have them do ever.

[00:11:16] Zach Hammer: You might bring on somebody and find that they have skills in multiple areas, or the one thing that you need them to do leaves them with some downtime, and you can leverage the downtime and have them work on some other things. But you want to have clarity on one thing that they need to do that makes the role successful and makes it worth you hiring them.

[00:11:36] Zach Hammer: Having clarity on that and defining that to one thing is really powerful. And we were talking about this before we turned on the recording that, if you come into this and you expect that you’re going to hire somebody that simultaneously is a coder and a great designer, that person exists. I can just about guarantee it, that person does exist.

[00:11:56] Zach Hammer: But you finding them is going to turn a [00:12:00] task where previously, you would put out a job posting and you ultimately get back, you whittle them down through the process that we’re about to go through, you end up with three good applicants. You’re now going to have to do that process probably 10 to a hundred times, to find the person that has the cross-section, where they are both the great graphic designer and coder. Where now you’ve taken a process, you’ve made it 10-100 times as hard to find that person. You can go through that process to find them if you want to do that. But honestly, it’s going to take you drastically more work and you’re still likely going to have to pay them about the same as you would to just find two people anyway. Because that kind of person is in high demand and highly skilled. So, it doesn’t tend to be the right way to solve it.

[00:12:44] Zach Hammer: It’s stepping over dollars pick up pennies, is the idea that you can get a lot more done just by bringing more people who are unitaskers, that are really great at doing one thing and one thing well, and maybe have a few sideline skills that you could leverage as needed, rather than expecting you’re going to hire the [00:13:00] person that could do a bunch of different things really great.

[00:13:02] Zach Hammer: Now, you do sometimes end up hiring somebody, and you’re surprised by a bonus skill. And that’s great. When you find that, leverage, that’s awesome. But trying to hire that person right off the bat, it just makes the hiring process a lot harder. Does that make sense?

[00:13:19] Charlie Madison: Yeah. A 100%. That person exists, that can do everything. But they’re going to be in demand and you’re going to pay two or three times more. Then if you just had some specialists, and you know what I found usually, like if I’m hiring a programmer, I just need a little bit of graphic design.

[00:13:35] Charlie Madison: If I’m hiring a graphic designer, I just need a little bit of programming. So, I don’t need someone that’s good at full-time. And I’ve noticed for me, anytime that I’m tempted to hire someone that just does it all, sometimes that’s just a really good warning. Am I trying to get out of this business altogether? Am I trying to get out of this project? Like I want someone else to handle it so I can do something else.

[00:13:58] Zach Hammer: Yeah, it’s a big red flag that [00:14:00] maybe, you’re not like the problem is that you don’t like what you do. And not that you’re actually hiring somebody to run a process that’s proven, right? That’s ultimately what you want to do. Perfect.

[00:14:09] Zach Hammer: Okay, so we got our first step is clearly defining the job role. We want to acknowledge the one-thing rule. The other thing is, we talked about this a little bit, having a good idea of, is this reasonable. Is there a good expectation that one person could do this?

[00:14:22] Zach Hammer: So, a few things, there’s a little bit of an art to this, but some of the principles that fit into this is the job more creative or more technical? Cause typically, those are somewhat divergent mental processes. The kind of person who’s going to be a great coder is maybe not the person that’s going to be able to do creative illustrations, right?

[00:14:46] Zach Hammer: Maybe sometimes, but they’re often divergent, right? But the person who runs Facebook ads might have and need a skill set in like managing the spreadsheets that go along with it. So, there are potentially [00:15:00] related skills that do fit together, and that you could expect somebody would be familiar with these related things.

[00:15:05] Zach Hammer: But you want to think about them that way. Does this feel like a related task or does it feel like a divergent task? And creative versus technical is often, for me, one of the big ways to differentiate between that. Further, even if it is creative, there’s lots of different types of creative, right?

[00:15:20] Zach Hammer: Writers are not the same as graphic designers are not the same as video editors. And just because somebody is a coder, doesn’t mean that they’re specifically familiar with the PHP that your website is coded in, right? They might be a coder that’s very used to working with AI models, or maybe they have that sort of mindset, but they deploy it with automation tools like N8N or Zapier or Make.

[00:15:43] Zach Hammer: And so, it’s still a technical sort of mindset, but there’s specificity in how that technical mindset comes through. Think about that as well, the more skills that you need the person to have, likely either the harder it is to find them, or the more likely you just need separate roles, and you’re trying to pack too much into one person.

[00:15:59] Zach Hammer: You [00:16:00] learn over time, what you can reasonably expect in one person as you do this, but just as you’re going out and thinking through that, those are some of those ideas, technical versus creative. And then the sub-skill sets, how related are they? Anything that you’d like to add onto that consideration?

[00:16:15] Charlie Madison: Nothing, that makes sense.

[00:16:16] Zach Hammer: Perfect. And now that you’ve have your clearly defined role, you’ve got it down to the one thing. And that one thing is something that feels like it actually is a cohesive thing. What I do from there is I typically, at this point, I brain dump the ideas around what is the role. What do they need to do? What are some examples of the daily tasks? What does success look like? What are some of the skills required? What are some of the skills that would be nice to have, but maybe aren’t required? And I brain dump a list of that stuff into an AI prompt that I use that actually generates the job description that I’ll then take, and I’ll put onto other sites to actually find my hire.

[00:16:53] Zach Hammer: So, I’ve got prompts and templates that I use for that, but at a basic level, you’re listing out those things and you just want a clear [00:17:00] description of who are we looking for? What are they going to do? What kind of skills do you need them to have? And you should have a decent expectation or understanding around that in terms of, you should probably know what the processes look like enough to be able to say, I need them to know how to work a Google Sheet. I need them to know Facebook ads. I need them to know minor Canva editing or whatever, right? Whatever you were expecting them to be able to do, you should know that and be able to determine that.

[00:17:26] Zach Hammer: And also, be able to determine for yourself, is this something that they already need the skill or is this something that you could teach them if they have a basic technical knowledge, to be able to understand how to learn the tool. That sort of idea, you want to get that into a job description. And so then, we’re going to take that job description or that job posting, and then we’re going to put it up somewhere. There’s two main sites that I like to use, and I know you like to use, as well.

[00:17:48] Zach Hammer: The first one is where I think you get the biggest bang for your buck, and that’s OnlineJobs.ph. It’s an awesome site. I think the site was actually around before, what’s his name? Is it John Jonas? I think he [00:18:00] might’ve acquired the site after it was developed.

[00:18:03] Zach Hammer: But John Jonas, a good name. That’s fairly famous in the internet marketing space for teaching people how to hire VAs, especially in the Philippines. And there’s a lot of reasons for why. But OnlineJobs.ph is a site that he owns at this point. And it’s a great place where a lot of Filipino VAs come together and have the ability to put up profiles and indicate that they’re interested. So it’s a job board. That’s really useful. It is a paid site. It’s 50-60 bucks at this point. It’s very reasonable for a basic level membership, which for most people is probably all you’re going to need, for the basic level, you get to post like three job postings a month. And it is the kind of thing you don’t need to stay continually subscribed to it. If you got somebody to hire now, you sign up for it, put up your job posting, knowing that you might need to iterate over it a few times.

[00:18:46] Zach Hammer: And then, you don’t need to keep that subscription running unless you’re continually making those hires. Does that sound about right?

[00:18:51] Charlie Madison: That is how it works.

[00:18:54] Zach Hammer: Is there anything else that you think people should know about OnlineJobs.ph?

[00:18:58] Charlie Madison: One of the things, it’s a lot [00:19:00] like listing a house. One time, I was hiring someone to manage my Google ad campaign. And I went and looked at the comps. I searched what other people were listing, what they were advertising, how much they were advertising.

[00:19:15] Charlie Madison: So, I got a really good idea of that. It’s got a really good search functionality. You can tell that the certain specific jobs that you want. And then, of course, we’ll get into it. There is a way that the applicants can submit a resume on OnlineJobs.ph, but neither me nor you, we don’t use that.

[00:19:35] Charlie Madison: That’s the way I view it, view it like a listing system and you want to get comps, so to speak.

[00:19:40] Zach Hammer: Yeah. Awesome. One of the other principles that I’d point out about online jobs is, I very rarely am going to go to online jobs unless I know that I’m hiring a consistent role for my company. So, it may not always be full-time. It’s typically full-time or something that I think could have full [00:20:00] time potential, even if maybe their one thing isn’t full-time, but I feel like I have enough that I could bring somebody to do full-time work.

[00:20:07] Zach Hammer: I just need like a one-off thing, I’m not typically going to OnlineJobs.ph for that. So, I’m looking for somebody Onlinejobs.ph most often. I’m looking for somebody that they’re looking to join up with a company. They’re looking to become part of your team. It may be part-time. Most typically, I’m hiring full-time, but it’s not for one-off projects. That’s not what I go to online jobs for. If I am looking for something that’s more just one-off or I very rarely need it, or maybe I need it, but I like it comes in spurts, right? Where it’s not consistent as part of my business that I need a job done.

[00:20:42] Zach Hammer: For those types of jobs, I go to Upwork.com. It’s where I typically am hiring for that. So Upwork is great. But the downside of Upwork is that, if you find somebody great and you want to make them part of your team, you’re supposed to buy out that contract in order to actually bring them onto your team to not have your account be at risk of being [00:21:00] shut down and being banned from Upwork.

[00:21:01] Zach Hammer: Now, whether or not that happens often, whether or not, like how they enforce that and all of that, you can potentially run a risk there, but the risk is that you get your account shut down and make it really hard for you to hire people. I tend to try and stay away from looking to Upwork as where I source full-time staff, because then you’re paying more than you need to. Because Upwork does take a cut of what you pay.

[00:21:23] Zach Hammer: So, the way that Upwork works is that you could submit a job, people could bid on it, you choose who to hire, but you pay them through Upwork. So, there’s some convenience there in that, you don’t have to think about how to pay people as much you pay Upwork, and that tends to be easy for you to do. And then they pay out the person. So, the person themselves has to figure that out with Upwork and that’s not on you.

[00:21:45] Zach Hammer: But the downside is you’re typically because they’re getting paid portion of what they’re putting on Upwork, you’re actually paying more than what the person you’re hiring is getting paid.

[00:21:56] Zach Hammer: That’s not the worst thing in the world, but that does mean that over time, like [00:22:00] if you grow their income, you’re also growing what you pay Upwork. And so, it works really great. For me, I’ve used it for things like graphic design.

[00:22:08] Zach Hammer: Actually right now, like my bookkeeper, I use through Upwork. And I found them through there. Really, when I need help with something, and I don’t think it’s gonna be somebody who’s continually a part of my team, or it’s something that I really don’t see a way that I need them full time if that makes sense. That’s what I typically look to Upwork for, but that’s some of the downsides there, as well.

[00:22:28] Zach Hammer: Otherwise, it’s most often really a similar process for how I hire people through either, which is, you post the job and then we have some specific strategies for how we get success from there. But yeah, so that’s the idea you had mentioned.

[00:22:40] Zach Hammer: So just as a comparison, one of the other things that’s nice about Upwork, you don’t have to have as much clarity around what you expect to pay. It’s good to have some level of an idea going into it. Do a little bit of research and figure out what’s reasonable, but people will bid on the job. So you might be surprised with what people bid. And then, you take them through the process to actually determine who’s going to be a good [00:23:00] fit rather than specifically the price. Whereas OnlineJobs.ph, you do have to come armed. Like you post a price that you’re willing to pay for something. So you do want to do, like you said, a little bit of research, find the comps and at least have a strategy for that.

[00:23:12] Zach Hammer: Now, just that people have some idea on this when it comes to price, you actually have a little bit of a strategy for like, how you think about where your price point should be and what to expect. Can you walk through that as an example, for how you could test the price of it?

[00:23:27] Charlie Madison: Yeah so the first thing, knowing like $3-4 an hour is a really good salary in the Philippines. That’s a good job. So that’s, but by default, so I’m looking for doctors make around eight bucks an hour. You can think about that. That’s my default.

[00:23:44] Charlie Madison: And then, what I’ll do is, I’ll go to online jobs and I’ll see what other people are posting. And so, I’ll use the Google Ads Manager, cause that was a good outlier. Google Ads Managers, they make a lot in the Philippines, even then. And [00:24:00] so, I looked in the majority of the job postings, the majority of, you can also search resumes. We’re looking for 1,500 bucks a month.

[00:24:08] Charlie Madison: And so, I started out with my, close to two to three bucks a day. I think, I started at 400 bucks a month, and I got zero responses. And then I doubled it. So, I got to 800 bucks a month. And I got a couple of responses. One really good one. And he said, Hey, look, my goal is that, in 90 days or so, when I prove myself and you’re starting to make a lot of money that I get a raise too. And it was his idea. He said 1500 bucks a month. That’s his goal. And so, you got three job posts a month that you can do. And so, a lot of times, I’ll even have a real brief job description and I’ll have a more lengthy job description. And just never know which is going to respond. That’s how I start and just know, I can start low and go up higher.

[00:24:56] Zach Hammer: Yeah, and that makes sense. And so, what you mentioned, so if the [00:25:00] norm is 1,500, you started at 400 to see what kind of results you get. Cause it’s worth testing. You might find an outlier where people are posting higher than is expected. And you might be able to find an outlier down low, but you could zero in on that right price. And test the waters to see what you’re getting and then adjust up or down, depending on either the quality or the quantity of candidates that you’re getting. And so, that’s what you were able to see. So 400, no bites. 800, you got one great bite, but they knew going into it that they would ultimately want to go up in price. And then chances are, you didn’t end up having to go this way, but if you put it out at 1500, you would likely get a lot of candidates, and then be able to filter through them. Because that’s the going rate is the idea.

[00:25:43] Zach Hammer: Do know that, as you’re figuring this process out, do expect you might want to be ready to test a little bit? To figure out where that price point is based on what you’re looking for, but don’t have unreasonable expectations that you’re going to find a rockstar person with an amazing in-demand skill set, and you’re going to be able to hire them for 200 bucks a month. It’s [00:26:00] not likely. The reality is, yes, there is a cost of living difference in the Philippines compared to the US or Canada. And so, you’re able to leverage that the expectation of what they could normally get paid per hour, otherwise. But they can find VA work for about three bucks an hour, pretty readily. So, you’re not likely to get lower than that. And that’s the expectation, at this point.

[00:26:24] Zach Hammer: So, we post on OnlineJobs.ph and Upwork. Here are some of the strategies that I use in order to really maximize the chances that who I’m hiring is a good fit. Now, note this going into this. The reality, I account for this in kind of the last step of this process.

[00:26:41] Zach Hammer: The reality is, there is no perfect hiring process that’s going to make it so that you’re hiring, your job posting, and your process guarantees that you don’t spend any money until you have found the perfect person. Nothing will do that. Because the reality is that you do not fully see who somebody is that you’re [00:27:00] working with until you are working with them. Until it is actually the working relationship where they’re getting paid and doing the work. You don’t really see who somebody is until that happens.

[00:27:09] Zach Hammer: And so, our goal in the beginning process isn’t to be positive that we’ve hired the perfect person. Our process is more about trying to whittle down the number of candidates to choose from, based on meaningful obstacles that make it more likely that the candidates that we’re choosing between are the best ones to consider of the bunch.

[00:27:29] Zach Hammer: But knowing that we won’t really know who’s best until we’ve hired somebody. And so, know that going into this. So with all that being said, one of the first things that I do, is that I always include a secret code word that people need to include either in their cover letter, in their email, in whatever they submit, whatever the next step is, that I asked them to say at first that I know that they read the posting. And the way that I do that, I don’t hide it, but I don’t draw attention to it.

[00:27:55] Zach Hammer: So typically, I’ll include something that’s how to apply or here’s what to do next [00:28:00] or whatever. And in that, I’ll include mention of, I’ll say what the next step is. And one of the steps in that process is, make sure to include this keyword to let me know that you’ve fully read this posting.

[00:28:10] Zach Hammer: I use it as a way to filter. Anybody who applies that doesn’t include the keyword, I don’t consider. Because typically, is it either means that they don’t pay attention to details, which in pretty much everything that I need people to do. Indicates that we’re not likely going to work well together because I’m going to give instructions and they’re not going to pay attention to the details.

[00:28:27] Zach Hammer: Or two, it means that they weren’t actually motivated for your job in particular. They’re doing a blast and pray, thinking that if I just apply to a bunch, I’m going to get the job. And they’re not specifically motivated by your work, they’re just trying to find work. And that isn’t necessarily the worst thing in the world, but I would rather have somebody who this job appeals to me. So I’m reading through it. I’m motivated. I’m interested in that job in particular, rather than lots of jobs in general. Does that make sense?

[00:28:55] Charlie Madison: Yeah. That’s a 100% what I’m looking for. I want someone that wants, [00:29:00] I’m hiring for. And so, my go-to is, I have them send an email to me with a certain word in the subject. But then, I also have them write why they want to work for me in a Word document and attach it.

[00:29:13] Charlie Madison: And all of that is very specific. I want to see how they write. I want them to tell me why they want this job. I want to see, can they follow directions. Are they going to actually attach a Word document, or are they going to link to a Google doc? And actually tell them, I don’t want your resume, because the resume means nothing.

[00:29:33] Charlie Madison: And what I’ve found, it’s probably 5-10% of people. So 5-10 out of a hundred, will actually do those, which is amazing. Because I only want the 5-10 that like actually will do those.

[00:29:48] Zach Hammer: Yeah. And that’s the key. Honestly, really, what we’ve figured out in this process is that our goal is to make it that it’s as easy as possible for us to consider people, by having the process, get us down to [00:30:00] just a handful of people that you could sit down, you could review what they’ve sent you, and feel confident, they followed the directions if they got to this point.

[00:30:07] Zach Hammer: Now, I can actually do the assessment rather than trying to sit down and go through 100 applicants and figure out, what differentiates them. I want to make that easy. So like, you didn’t do the code word, great. You’re easily off the table, right?

[00:30:19] Zach Hammer: But here’s the key, we try and make it, that the obstacles are meaningful obstacles. That if they got over the obstacle, it says something about, how likely they are to do well in the role. And so, you might adapt those obstacles depending on the role that you’re hiring for, and what is important or what isn’t important.

[00:30:39] Zach Hammer: For me and for you, the code word is almost always important because it indicates, either an attention to detail or a motivation for that job in particular. But, I’ve adapted what I expect people to do. If I expect that I’m going to be having lots of conversations with somebody, I’ll have them record a video saying, why they want the job.

[00:30:58] Zach Hammer: Because I want to see a little bit about [00:31:00] how they show up for something like that. What do they do? How do they record the video? That sort of idea, as opposed to writing, cause maybe I don’t need them to write as much as I need them to be personable in how we’re going to interact, because we’re going to interact a lot, right?

[00:31:11] Zach Hammer: Maybe that’s matters more. Or maybe I’m not going to interact with them all, but almost at all. And so, I don’t leverage a video because that doesn’t matter, right? And so, that’s the key there is, you give them some sort of next step of what they do. For you, you’ve mentioned you have them send an email, attach the document, other things that I’ve had people do.

[00:31:29] Zach Hammer: I’ve used Google Forms a lot too. So, I’ll link to a Google form. And I’ll say, fill out the Google form. And I don’t tend to have a lot of information there, but it makes it easier for me to like collaborate with somebody else on my team, where we have a centralized list of who’s applied and I can go through it together rather than having it just show up in my email. And like in the Google form, I’ll have their name, email. I might have a spot where they upload their resume, I might not.

[00:31:52] Zach Hammer: One of the things that I’ve done a lot, though, is, I want them to have familiarity with Google Docs, if possible. And [00:32:00] so, what I have them do is, I’ll ask them, share a link to a Google doc where you’ve written why you want the job. And make sure it’s viewable by anybody.

[00:32:09] Zach Hammer: Because that does take a specific technical knowledge of either knowing to Google, like how do I share this? This person can actually read it. That immediately is, I go into the document, if I have to request access, they didn’t share it correctly. So they weren’t paying attention to that detail.

[00:32:23] Zach Hammer: And that makes a difference for whether or not I consider them. Especially if I’ve got 20 people that put in the document, but only three people made it so that I could view it without requesting access, then those three people are, setting themselves apart, right?

[00:32:36] Zach Hammer: So I’ve done that. I’ve had people do some sort of screen recording. I’ve had people do videos. It really depends on the role for what I do. But the key idea is that you have them do some sort of meaningful obstacle. And this is one of those areas where you don’t have to have it figured out perfectly going into it.

[00:32:51] Zach Hammer: You always have at least one step, where it’s like, they do this thing to even be considered. You might add more obstacles along the path, depending on how many [00:33:00] candidates you get. So for me, I’m ideally looking to actively consider three to four to five people who I feel like all could be good fits, right? That’s what I want to get my list down to.

[00:33:12] Zach Hammer: And so if, after the first step, if I’ve got 20, then I’m going to set up some sort of other obstacle, right? Again, I try and make it meaningful. So, it might be that they book a time on my calendar for an interview, but I’m having them do it in a specific way or via a specific process. If they don’t do it that way, the interview is either canceled or it doesn’t matter.

[00:33:33] Zach Hammer: For instance, I hired somebody whose job it was, to actually badger me to get on calls that we would work together. Because that’s part of what I wanted them to do as an assistant. I’ve got a task that we need to do, we’re gonna work together, I want you to be there to hold me accountable.

[00:33:45] Zach Hammer: And part of the skill that I was testing for is, if I give you permission to be annoying to me, do you do it? If I define that this is what you need to be willing to do, anybody who didn’t do the process, I was like, okay, this isn’t going to work. That [00:34:00] makes you uncomfortable enough that you’re not going to do it.

[00:34:02] Zach Hammer: And so, it’s not going to be a good fix. I need the person who I hired to be willing to do this. And so, I was able to test for that literally, just by having a book the interview. And so, that’s really a key part of the process, when you’re looking at these meaningful obstacles.

[00:34:14] Zach Hammer: Make a meaningful, make a matter to the role. No going back to that foundational idea. Know what that one thing is that you need them to do, and then try and devise your obstacles around that.

[00:34:25] Charlie Madison: I thought so, the details on that, I think people need to know. You had them book a call and then you were not going to show up. And they have a process of to reach out to you. They were going to text you, call you. The boss battle, so to speak, the final thing was, they had to call your wife, and say, text and say, is Zach around?

[00:34:49] Charlie Madison: And only one did it, right?

[00:34:51] Zach Hammer: I think, I actually had two people do it. I think I had two people do that, ultimately.

[00:34:55] Charlie Madison: I thought it was ludicrous. That just seems way overboard, but it was exactly what you [00:35:00] needed. Like it was personal for you. For my Facebook Ads Manager, I didn’t want to give them access to my Facebook ads, but I wanted to know if they were comfortable with it.

[00:35:10] Charlie Madison: So what I had them do, I gave them some example ads and I said, I want you to record your screen, you creating these ads. And what ended up happening is, a number of people, it was taking them 30 minutes because they weren’t familiar with the interface, but who are hired? What I found out, the people that really knew what they’re doing could get it done in five to seven.

[00:35:31] Charlie Madison: Because what I was looking for, are you an expert at this? Are you familiar with it already? And so, it’s a matter of just, you want to see, will they actually do the job?

[00:35:40] Zach Hammer: Exactly. And that’s the key. So, this is one of those areas where there’s a little bit of an art to it. And what I found is, I didn’t have clarity on exactly what I should have somebody do, until I talked to my mastermind about it, and said, they were able to give me feedback knowing, for me, part of what was important was hiring somebody [00:36:00] who would readily be able to meet, and would readily be able to hold me accountable to that.

[00:36:03] Zach Hammer: And so, in discussing that with them, I got clarity on it. So that might be what you need to do. You might need to find somebody that you trust, find somebody that knows what you’re hiring for, and have a discussion to think through. What do I need to test for? What would be a meaningful test? And come up with ideas and you might need to be creative on that. It might not be as obvious, corporate America, I think typically tries to go back to what school did they go to. What degree do they have? Or what other jobs have they had? I don’t care about any of that. I care about the actual end result. I care about, do they have the skill. Can they do the job? And that’s what I want to test for. Cause all the other stuff is meaningless. It’s trying to be a shortcut to what you actually care about, which is, can they do the job?

[00:36:42] Zach Hammer: And so, in my meaningful tasks, I try and get as close to, what is the work that they’re going to be doing and how can I test that, as possible. Go ahead.

[00:36:50] Charlie Madison: I think, part of that is having the courage to actually be honest with what I want. It’s really a custom job [00:37:00] description for what I need in my business. And I use the word courage because it’s not one of those things where I can pluck out from someone else what I want.

[00:37:10] Charlie Madison: I’ve got to be honest with my strengths, my weaknesses, like what I actually need. One of my things is, Hey, you’ve got to be really good working without talking to me for four or five days at a time. We’re going to talk once a week for an hour. We may talk more, but you got to be okay with that.

[00:37:28] Charlie Madison: And I had to have the courage to be like, look at who I really am. And this is who works with me.

[00:37:34] Zach Hammer: And what’s interesting is, that’s exactly the opposite of what I hired for. I hired for somebody that I wanted them to be so ready to talk to me that they’re willing to hound my wife, in order to do so, right?

[00:37:45] Charlie Madison: Yeah.

[00:37:46] Zach Hammer: But because, we were both really clear around who we needed and why we needed them, and could hire for that. I learned the same thing when I was hiring designers. I realized, I hired one designer and like their work was good. They were able to [00:38:00] output stuff well. But trying to get back what I needed from them took so many rounds of, they needed me to be so clear and so exact in what they were going to produce for me. I was like, I could design this myself in the time that it takes just to describe this to you.

[00:38:16] Zach Hammer: And so I realized, Oh, I don’t just need a good designer. When I show up with a loose concept, they are excited about being creative to fill in the gaps. They’re excited about being able to come up with a vision, that I could say, here’s some ideas that I have kicking around. Here’s the basic idea. Here’s the concept. Maybe here’s a few things for inspiration. I want you to come up with your best idea based on these loose concepts. And I want you to give me two or three visions for what this could look like. When I realized that, I found that person. And quite honestly, I’ve been working with them for like over 10 years at this point.

[00:38:50] Zach Hammer: Because it was such a perfect match for who I am and how I need to work with somebody, that as soon as I found it, I was like, ah, this is perfect. This is exactly what I needed. [00:39:00] But I wouldn’t have known that had I not had the experience of working with somebody who was the exact wrong fit.

[00:39:04] Zach Hammer: So know that this isn’t exactly part of this hiring process, but know that going into it. This is technically the last step in what we described. You may need to go through a few people, as you learn what does and doesn’t work for you. So do note, do your best trying to hire somebody and try and come up with meaningful obstacles to hire the right person. But sometimes, the way that you find the courage that Charlie mentioned is that you look at a hire that you just did and you see that it’s not working, and you get honest with yourself about why.

[00:39:33] Zach Hammer: Like what is it that doesn’t seem to be working? And try and hire better, when you realize what that issue is. And for you, it was not needing to communicate often. For me, it was being ready to communicate often. For the designer, it was being able to communicate loosely, but still get back, good results, and be able to iterate from there. So, getting clear on that makes a massive difference, and know that going into it. Don’t feel like you hired somebody it’s not working out, that means that you suck [00:40:00] at hiring. Nah, the reality is probably, you haven’t gotten clear enough yet. And hiring is part of how you get clear.

[00:40:06] Zach Hammer: And that actually brings us to really, what I would call the most essential step is that understanding, you do not know if you have the right hire until you’ve hired them. And until you’ve actually done work with them. And so, consider part of your hiring process to be, hiring the person to do some test work, where you will pay them, you are hiring them. They are employed by you to do a project and make it if you can. Something that you actually need done, something that is real world, like I need to get this done.

[00:40:36] Zach Hammer: The other thing that I do is, I try and hire at least two people to do the work. Because I’ve learned, it’s really hard to tell if I’ve got a good candidate, unless I have something to compare it to. And the only way that you can compare how it is to work with somebody is to actually see, do it as a controlled experiment where you say, the same job is being done by two people. Who does it better? Who do I like [00:41:00] working with better? Who seems to do the process better?

[00:41:02] Zach Hammer: And this is different to me than a test task of just do this before you’re hired. This to me is, you’re hired. You’re hired under a probationary period, but I’m looking to see who I like working with the best. I’m looking to see who gets the best result.

[00:41:17] Zach Hammer: And typically through that process, there becomes a pretty clear winner. Especially when they know that they’re getting paid for the work, they show up in a slightly different way than I’m being considered, right? They know, okay, I can actually put attention and effort into this. I’m not expecting somebody to work for free, in order to prove it out.

[00:41:34] Zach Hammer: The reality is you potentially could. I just find I can more consistently rely on the outcome of that kind of test if they’re being paid for the work than if they’re not. And now that, I’m actually getting meaningful data. And so, in the times where I can, I hire multiple people. If I can’t hire multiple people that I somewhat expect, I might need to go through multiple iterations before I actually find the person that seems to fit best.

[00:41:58] Zach Hammer: And so, it’s not [00:42:00] absolutely necessary to hire more than one, but whenever you can, it really, it’s the thing that it makes it clear as day if you have the right person if you hire at least two, sometimes three, to do the exact same work to see how it compares. Does that make sense?

[00:42:13] Charlie Madison: Yeah. A 100%.

[00:42:14] Zach Hammer: I might be the only person that I’m aware of that’s crazy enough to do it that way. Have you ever hired somebody, like two people for the same work, to see how it works?

[00:42:22] Charlie Madison: I don’t always hire them. Sometimes, when I hired my last programmer around, I had a very small, like it’s a demo project. So like I’m not getting anything out of it, but it’s very clear and I was like, Hey, I want you. And it should have taken four hours. And I had them all do that.

[00:42:39] Charlie Madison: So, sometimes I do that. Number one, I hired her and someone else side by side and she was the clear winner. And I also went to a VA Mastermind a few months ago, and that’s actually what they recommended, you do.

[00:42:53] Charlie Madison: Their recommendation was to hire two to three, let them know that it’s temporary. Let them know [00:43:00] that you’re going to pick one, and see how they do.

[00:43:02] Zach Hammer: Yeah, and it’s made a massive difference to me. It’s something that I figured out, intuitively. It was like, I don’t know how to compare this unless I can compare it live. And I have seen that there’s a difference between how somebody interviews versus how somebody actually works for you.

[00:43:16] Zach Hammer: So, I might do an interview, but more typically, the interview is just the excuse to get to test something else. And I don’t care a ton about the interview, I care more about the work itself. I’m always about, how do I get my pool of candidates down to 3-5 that I would potentially hire. I hope to hire it, 2-3. And then from that 2-3, I hope to find one winner. That’s the idea.

[00:43:39] Zach Hammer: And so, expect that really what you’re doing is you’re building a hiring funnel, where you expect to get a lot of candidates in at the top. You whittle them down through your process, however many steps that you need to, until you get to about hopefully 3-5 that you’re considering. And then, you ultimately hire maybe 2-3 and you keep one.

[00:43:57] Zach Hammer: Now, do I follow it [00:44:00] exactly this way every time, always? No, right? It’s always some iteration of that. There’s always the code word. There’s always some sort of next step that makes sense. But whenever possible, when I need to run that whole process, it’s what works best.

[00:44:15] Zach Hammer: And what most consistently gets me, ideal candidates for a role. And honestly, some form of that process, whether it’s a full-time person, a part-time person, a freelancer, like no matter what, when I employ this process is when I tend to find somebody that’s good to work with.

[00:44:32] Zach Hammer: And what I’ve learned is that it may feel like a lot of work just to find somebody to work with. But man, does it save time in terms of actually getting what you need done effectively? Because once you’ve hired somebody, human psychology says that we want to hold on to the thing that we have at a greater value than before we have it.

[00:44:53] Zach Hammer: And it goes the same with employees. If you hire somebody, it’s mentally harder to try and find a new [00:45:00] person once you’ve hired, then it is to do the work on the front end to make sure that the person that you hire is a good option. And so, that’s why this process could be so powerful. So again, before I go through and overview this process, anything that you could think of in this process that you think people should consider?

[00:45:14] Charlie Madison: Yeah, I think two things. One, I think it’d be great for us to talk about how we hire, how we pay, how we monitor, how we handle that. That would probably be good. And the other thing is, at my mastermind, there was some folks there that have hired, literally thousands of people. And the question was, when someone said, I suck at hiring. And I love what this guy said. He said, Hey, here’s the thing, we all suck at hiring. He said, what you have to do is you have to get good at firing. And so, what my goal is, I’m only going to talk to someone that I’m probably going to hire.

[00:45:47] Charlie Madison: I want to automate every step of the process, so I don’t talk to someone until I’m pretty sure I’m gonna hire them. Cause that’s most of the time if I’ve got to interview five people versus the one or two, that’s a big difference. [00:46:00] And I just love that.

[00:46:00] Charlie Madison: Still, at the end of the day, we got to get good at firing, because you never know until you know.

[00:46:04] Zach Hammer: Exactly. And honestly, it does make it easier when you bring somebody in and you make it clear that, Hey, you’re under a probationary period. So, in your mind, yes. You want to start thinking about them as part of your team in terms of imagining, how is this working. Do they feel like a good fit? But it becomes a little bit easier to let the wrong person go if it’s not working out in that period. Then if you fully brought them on, you didn’t mention that there’s a probationary period, etc. So, you’re right. It makes it easier to do that firing step if needed.

[00:46:34] Zach Hammer: And honestly, here’s the reality. You might get somebody in and in that probationary period, it feels like a good fit, but things change. And you do, you need to be ready to acknowledge. Is it working out? Is it not working out? And take care of the organization and make sure that the right people are in the right roles. And it’s not a personal thing. It’s a people’s goals change. Maybe they have kids, maybe they figure out that they don’t like work that they did, that they used to like, that their motivations [00:47:00] have changed, maybe they’re going through a hard time in their life, they’re not able to show up for the work.

[00:47:04] Zach Hammer: And there’s always great ways where if you can, that you support people through that. But man, ultimately, the business has to do the work that it needs to do. And you gotta have the right people in the right roles, and letting people move on to roles that are better fits for whatever their current motivations and goals and needs are, can be exactly what they need to do, as well.

[00:47:22] Zach Hammer: So anyway, again, that process that we went through, first thing that you’re going to do clearly to find the role, make sure that you’ve got that one key idea that you want them to do that will make it successful. Make sure, that’s realistic and likely to be found in one person.

[00:47:35] Zach Hammer: We like to use OnlineJobs.ph and Upwork depending on the type of role. People who are part of my team typically come from OnlineJobs.ph. People who are more for one-off tasks or not doing things that feel like they’re.

[00:47:47] Charlie Madison: It’s like they’re contractors or freelancers use that.

[00:47:50] Zach Hammer: I tend to go to Upwork. And occasionally, I might even hire that out through Facebook and stuff like that too. I’ll do social posts and find people that way, but most typically, Onlinejobs or [00:48:00] Upwork.

[00:48:00] Zach Hammer: From there in our job description, we’re using the code word strategy to try and find somebody that is actually caring about the job. We’re sending them somewhere else, either email, Google form, something like that, in order to actually get them to apply typically. And then, we’re putting them through a series of meaningful obstacles that test for a good fit in the role.

[00:48:21] Zach Hammer: Hiring 2-3, if possible, after we’ve whittled it down to a small pool of people to consider. And then, from that 2-3, they go through a probationary period where we ultimately end up with one. And so, each step of that process really makes a big difference on actually finding somebody who’s a good fit. But when you run that process, it makes a whole lot better.

[00:48:39] Zach Hammer: For all of this stuff, you and I both, we went over in pretty high level of depth. What this process looks like? But things that we didn’t share, we didn’t share templates. We didn’t share the actual prompts that I use for some of this stuff. We didn’t share the exact examples of what we’ve done with Google Forms, and how we write out the emails and job descriptions and all that sort of stuff.

[00:48:58] Zach Hammer: Chances are, you and [00:49:00] I are going to be coming out with more information around this. There’s likely going to be a couple of ways to get access to that. One, make sure that you are on either mine or Charlie’s email list or both. Where you’re aware of when we come out with that information? Let us know if you are interested in more in-depth information, and direct step-by-step processes, templates, and checklists around this. Let us know that you want us to come up with that.

[00:49:22] Zach Hammer: But two, for me, people who are going to be part of my AI Mastermind will likely get access to our course around that, by default. You might be able to buy that course one-off, as well. Same thing, Charlie, you have referrals while you sleep, where folks who are part of that program, likely get access to this as a value add, as well in the future.

[00:49:40] Zach Hammer: Now again, we’re still figuring that out. Some of this is up in the air, so we’ll see exactly how that comes down. But if you want more in-depth information, I do recommend that you let us know that you want that. And make sure that you’re in communication with us, that you see when that stuff’s coming down the pipeline.

[00:49:53] Zach Hammer: Any other thoughts or final thoughts on that, Charlie?

[00:49:55] Charlie Madison: If you got questions on, what it takes to hire a VA, we’d love to know your questions. [00:50:00] Send them to us, because there’s a good chance, we can put that in our resources.

[00:50:04] Zach Hammer: Indeed. There you go. So yeah, feel free, reach out. Again, ReferralsWhileYouSleep.com, or RealEstateGrowthHackers.com/rwys. If you wanna let ’em know that you came from this show, or go to RealEstateGrowthHackers.com and reach out via our contact page in order to let us know any of those questions, as well.

[00:50:23] Zach Hammer: Charlie, hopefully, people found value in this. I know, this process has made a massive difference in my business, of being able to bring people the whole who, not how concept from Dan Sullivan is really powerful. The more that I’ve been able to realize that I will only ever have 24 hours in a day, seven days in a week.

[00:50:39] Zach Hammer: And of those, I’m probably only useful for 10 of them. And so, I’ve got to tap into building something bigger than myself, and do what I’m good at, bring on people for other parts, and scale from there. So, VA’s hiring great. Great VA is a powerful process in here. So, thanks so much for your information and your wisdom, both on this episode, as well as [00:51:00] in general.

[00:51:00] Zach Hammer: And yeah, any final words or are we good there?

[00:51:03] Charlie Madison: I feel good.

[00:51:04] Zach Hammer: Perfect. There you go. That’s the Real Estate Growth Hacker Show for today. Until next time, we’ll catch you on the next one.