Okay, okay, yeah, we are talking about recruiting and hiring. So at this point, we've gone through your own workload, we've created a list of all the things you do, we have sorted those out. Deciding what makes the most sense for you to spend your time and energy on is going to create the most value for your clients and the most impact that you want to be seeing in the world. We have taken all those other things and sorted them out into different kinds of buckets of skills. And then we've created a job ad, or maybe a couple of job ads, depending on what those skills buckets are looking like. And to kind of get us started on thinking about recruitment. And then most recently, we just talked about the money part, and how money and finances and your offers or your product and all the hiring kind of fits together. So that's all been kind of prep, background, essential foundational work to get to this place of the recruiting and hiring. And when people come to me, and they're, they're talking about recruiting and hiring, this is often what people want to start with. But as I'm sure you can understand, if we don't start with all of the other pieces, that all that foundational work that we've just done, then we don't have what we need in order to do this next part really effectively. So we're at this transition inflection point, right now, we're we're moving from the the personal reflective, and foundational work that's really important in order to be able to, to get into this part, which is the more action based, you know, go out there and find a person kind of space. So this is what we're going to cover in this lesson. So we're going to take your job ad. And if you have more than one job ad, that's great, you're just going to do the same thing with each of them. And you're going to refine it to add the desired pay rate that you're looking for. And then also how you want the person to respond to you. We're going to create an advertising plan for your job, we're going to create a plan for knowing how to interview people. And then for reviewing and revising proposals, or if you're hiring an employee, then it's going to be creating a job offer. So some of the bonus resources, I believe most of the bonus resources are related to this particular lesson right here. So one of the resources that's available to you is about choosing to hire either an independent contractor or an employee. So if you're unsure about which way you want to go, or you know, if you can hire a person as an independent contractor or an employee, I recommend that you check that out. Generally, it is more simple to start by hiring independent contractors rather than employees. But if you're asking someone to do a lot of client facing work, then you may have to hire them as an employee. So check out those kind of sections. If you're getting stuck there, let me know I'm happy to help with that. Another thing, and that is in that section is a sample job at so I created a job ad for a position at fortress in Florida. So you can see in there, how I broken out those different sections of the why the how, and then what I'm looking for the person to do, and then also pay rate how they're supposed to respond. So that's all in there. And there are reading interview question there. The it's like the questions that I usually use when I'm first interviewing someone, just to kind of get a sense of who they are and what they're all about. And then there's like this bank of, I don't even know how many questions there's like 100 Different interview questions that are all on these digital like flashcards, so you can if you're kind of getting stuck thinking about what do I want to ask in an interview? I have no idea. That's a great resource for you. So you could have a first interview that says screening interview, it's like 10 to 20 minutes long. And then you do a more in depth interview after and you pull out maybe eight of those questions and use those. Okay, what else is in there? Oh, yeah, another resource is. So if you are deciding to hire an employee, there's a resource to help you with the extra steps that you'll need to take before you hire them. Things like setting up payroll, getting yourself registered with your state for different things. And so that's all in there. So if you're going employee route, check that out. Okay, so we're gonna get started. So refining the job app. So you already have these sections of your why you're, you know, why you're doing what you're doing, what your company is all about. The how, how you do all of that. And then this skill set that you're looking for. And the reason that we build a job ad like this, is to entice the person that you want to work for you to apply for it, right? It's an advertisement. It is like an ad for a product or an ad for a program, or a service, right? It but it's an ad for a job. And so often, when I see people go out to try to hire people, it's like this list of responsibilities that they're putting out there, right, or it's job description that they're putting out there, something like that. And that's not really going to, and then they wonder why they got a whole bunch of really bad applicants or why nobody applied. And it's because, you know, in the same way that you have to describe the value of a product or an offer, you have to describe the value of the work, because people want to do work that's meaningful. And they want to do work where they feel like they're contributing to something greater than themselves, generally. And so that's why we create a job ad like this, because it will help people. If you're describing your y, it will call out to people who have the same y or similar y, who people who care about the same thing that you are caring about that your business is bringing into the world. If you talk about the how, then people are going to understand what like how the company does what it does, you know, your why can you know my why equities sustainability, wellness, could be a conservation organization, you know, but I'm a Human Resources strategy firm, right. So that is important to understand for people who are applying to understand what the company does, and how they serve other people. So that they can decide whether or not the company is the right fit. And you want to give people as much opportunity as possible, as early on as possible to self select out. Because that helps you to that the people who are really in alignment with what you're trying to do. That said, You're not like we're not trying to be discriminatory and how we're doing this, right, we're not trying to self select out certain categories of people, because of discriminatory reasons. We're trying to, for people to self select out, if they're just not the right fit for the job, right? Or then that's not the right fit for the mission and vision of the company, right? It's really important to get our job out there in a really broad way. So that we can get as many different kinds of qualified applicants as we can find. But we'll get into that next. So then we have a section about their skills, because you want someone to be able to decide whether or not they have, you know, if they have the skill set, they have it if they don't have it, they don't have it. So you want to give them the opportunity to be like, oh, yeah, I know how to do all of these things. Or, you know, I know how to do most of these things, at least. You can even have a clause in the job ad that says, you know, we're always looking for, we're always looking to expand our team. If you feel like this particular position isn't the right fit for you. But you want to talk about something else that you can bring to the table, please reach out. We'd love to hear from you. I love having that on job ads because you may not you may not know
You may not be looking for what someone's skill set is. But they may learn about you and be interested in your company through finding a job ads. So you want to keep a list a bank of all those people so that when you have those needs in the future, you can call them. So then you put desired hourly pay rate. So I recommend putting on job ads, the amount that you want to pay, or a range of pay that you're considering for the position. This, again, helps people to self select out if the tape does not fit what they're looking for. So you don't have a whole bunch of people who are, you know, applying for this position that want to get paid a whole bunch more than you can afford, right? Those are very difficult conversations to have. And so you want to be able to just say, this is the pay rate, this is the range, I don't recommend having a very, you know, like a big a wide range. You know, if you're considering somewhere in the 20 to $25 range, or 15 to $25 range, I think that's like a totally acceptable amount to have out there. But it's really weird to see on job ads, like all pay between 15 and $45 an hour like they're they're really what's happening there is that you're looking for two different kinds of candidates, when you get into those two different pay rates. And you're expecting different kinds of skill sets when you get into those different kinds of pay rates. So be clear about what the skills are that you're asking for. Think about in that last section, we talked about what people generally charge for different kinds of work. And then what you think will be a good match between what you what you the person that you want to hire, and the pay piece. Knowing that the lower you pay, often the more training you need to do. And we're getting into training in the next section. So we'll cover that base. The last piece of the job ad is your request. So how does this person respond to you? And a good question to ask yourself is, what do I need to know about them? In order to know if I will want to interview them? So if I get a whole bunch of people that apply, like, what is the information that I need? In order to decide, yes, I'm going to hire, I'm going to interview this person, I want to talk to them or No, I'm not going to interview this person, I don't want to talk to them. Like how will you figure that out? So one tool for that is a resume. It's not always appropriate in every kind of job situation to ask for a resume. But it is a common thing. Because if you're asking what their past experience is, there, they have to you know, create a legible document and summarize their work. And so a resume can be extremely useful. Another tool that can help is a portfolio. So if you're looking for someone like a graphic designer, or someone who do social media, someone who's doing something that the visual or you know, an audio editor or person, you can ask for a portfolio, which is their work a photographer, so that you can see if the style of how they do their work is in alignment with your, your brand. Basically. You could create a questionnaire if you don't want to do a resume or a portfolio or you know, maybe you do those things, and you have a questionnaire were you just asked them some work related questions. Like usually I'll do these in relation to the skills that are on the job ad. So like, tell me about your experience doing this thing? Like do you have you know, have you done at least this this and this one time? Do you have experience in these different programs that my company uses? You know, like, why did you apply for this job? Why are you interested in working with me or for my company? That's a really good one. I like that one a lot. So, this way, when you put the job ad out, it already has in there, what you want them how you want them to contact you and what they need to do in order for you to consider that. Yeah, okay. So that's the job ad. Then advertising. So, advertising a job is just trying to find out where your ideal buyer is? Where are they already? So how do you find them based on where they are. So one tool that can be really helpful is if you have a company newsletter, or if you have, you know, a company business contacts, who send something out to them, saying, you know, I'm hiring for this position, I'm really excited to be growing my company, this is what it is, if you would like to apply, please do. So. If you think you might know someone who might be interested, send it over to them. Social media is an important way to get the word out there as well. Remember that like not every place where you are advertising is necessarily where the person is going to apply from, but that they will find out about it through these different channels, right. So neighborhood friends, family, telling, you know, telling people that you're going to hire that you're, you're looking for some help in your business that you're really excited about it that, you know, this is kind of what you're looking for, do you know anybody professional group that you belong to. So I belong to a number of like business associations and, and then mentor in a in a business incubator. And so these are all really great places to bring job opportunities, just to see if people know people or if they're interested. There's also Slack channels. And I belong to the Kenza collective Slack channel. And if you're looking for something and kind of the internet base of support, and they have a job, or I think, finding help, or jobs or something kind of section on the slack, where people just post when they are looking for certain kinds of jobs. So when they're hiring for something, they'll put it up there, like I'm looking for graphic designer to do this, or I'm looking for a project manager for this thing, or, you know, whatever it is. So that can be that as a great resource anyone can join it to so. So if you're thinking about hiring, and you want to connect with a group of people who could be your person, that is an idea. There are other Slack channels that are like industry focused. And so you can, it takes a little bit of research, but you can kind of find those. And Facebook also has a Facebook group of people who do different kinds of things and work in different professions. india.com I have a video on my website about posting for free on indeed. And, one, so this is one of those panels where like, if you post your job on Indeed, you're gonna get a lot of resumes, and you're gonna get people from all over the world and from different states and like all these things, right? You don't have to read all of them, right? Like if, if, if there are things that mean that a person would not be qualified for the job, then you can just bet them out. Right? Like you don't have to read all all the resumes from all around the world or even the resumes that are from outside of your state, like if you want to just focus your hiring on a specific geographical location that is a legitimate job like like reason for just looking at a certain group of people so you can weed out some folks that way. But what is good about indeed is that pretty much everybody who's looking for jobs is looking there are a lot of people are looking there. And so if you post something that is a job that's available in your local market all the people who are looking for jobs are going to start to see it if it's on Indeed they may not apply through that channel that they made I mean that's actually how I find found my Danny was that I posted on Indeed I got a whole bunch of like awful things, but then I got this one gem right. So that's the tool and you do not have to pay to post on indeed that's what my video is all about. If you go if you go to the fortress and flourish YouTube channel you can find In this video, how to post for indeed for free. Yeah, watch that, I'll actually link it to in the bonus resources. Another great place, and is the 90 day VA. So 90 Day VA is a program that people who want to be a virtual assistants will participate in. So it helps them learn how to be a virtual assistant. And so they come out of it, like knowing how to put together a proposal for work with someone, they, they come out of it knowing like the main pieces of of work, that BAs generally do. And they have a job board. And so part of what they're trying to do is connect newly certified VA is with job opportunities. And so you can post to their job board for free. They also have options, paid options, where they will help you find the right virtual assistant for you. So if you're really struggling to hire, and you're trying to hire a virtual assistant, I would say start with that job board. And then you can also get some support from them. If it's getting if you're not finding exactly the right match. And then you can always reach out to me, I have a good network of people that I can spread the word about your job with, I would love to be able to help you, you know, hire your first person and help you find someone who can, you know, really get you to the next level of the work that you want to be doing with your organization. And you can just do that you can email me and us at fortress and flourish.com. And let me know what the job ad send me the job ad and then I'll put it out and see what I can help you. Okay, now we get to interview. So you've created your job ad, you've gotten it out into the world. You know, out there doing its thing, I recommend that when you're going through the responses, like resumes, portfolios, that kind of thing that you set aside, like a certain time of week that you're going to do all of that. So like, don't read all of them as they're coming in, right? Like if you're, if you're on Indeed, and you have email notifications coming to you sorted also, it's all going into a folder, or like flag them as they come in to look at later. So it's not taking up all of your time, it's really good to batch all of this work. And so when you're going through the resumes, look for the people who really look like they're the good fit. You want to find the people who are you know, they're well qualified. If they're not well qualified, they're at least very aligned with what you want to be doing. And you're not interviewing the person who like you know, for some reason applied to this thing, but you know, it there's no good reason why or they have no skill sets are there's no alignment, like, you don't have to interview everyone, you should only really Max interview 10 people for one job. I usually, and I've been doing this for a long time now. So I mean, I get that that's part of it. But I usually only ever interviewed like five for for any job. And that just comes from being really clear about why like the why of the work the how of the work and the skill set that I'm looking for. And, and weeding through all the people who are applying or all the people who are interested. And only talking to the ones I really think are going to be a good fit. Yeah.
Just I was wondering if I missed anything there related to sorting through all the resumes. But yeah, that's it maybe like once a week or twice a week, you go through everything you've received, you pick the ones that you want to talk to, and then you send them an invitation to connect and that could be a phone call. It could be a zoom call. I don't really recommend having the first thing be in person because that's a lot to you know, it's that it would be better to do that as a phone call to just bring them make sure they're the right fit and then do an in person meeting the next. So I generally recommend either zoom or phone for the first initial get to know you kind of session. And give them some time, like you can use a calendar booking tool to help you do that or you think give them a couple of options, and have them tell you which one works best for them. Okay, so when you're thinking about interviewing, a question to ask yourself is, what kind of vetting process do you want to have? There's kind of two ends of the spectrum here. One is where building a friendship from the outset. And it's very personal. And then the other end of the spectrum is I'm putting a bunch of hurdles in front of you that you have to jump over in order for you to prove to me that you're good enough. Most people will land somewhere in the middle. So I'll get into sort of the vetting process, a vetting process that kind of get that both at once. But when you're thinking about interviewing, you're thinking about meeting people who might be working for you. Just think about how you want that to look, you know, do you want it to be prove yourself to me? Do you want it to be? Let's be best friends? Or do you want it to be like, you know, that I'm going to be the person who is the leader in this relationship, I want to know about you, I want to know, you know, your background and what you're interested in the skill set that you bring to the table, and to see if this is the right fit for both of us. And that's kind of where I land in the interviewing space. The second thing to think about is, what are the skill sets that you're looking for? And what questions do you need to ask to find out if they have that skill set. So you could be asking them about specific projects that they have done in the past? And how that would relate to this work? You could be asking them, you know, tell me about your background. Tell me about, you know, how you have learned to do XYZ work that you're hiring for. But you really want to ask them about those skill sets and make sure that, you know, even if they apply, that doesn't mean that they necessarily have them. All right. So it's first a check to see like, Okay, do they? And then also, if they don't, that's sometimes okay. It's just how will will they learn? You know, and how do they best learn? Think about what else is important to you, that you want to know about them. And then if you haven't already done this, at the end of that first kind of screening interview, I recommend requesting either a portfolio or references and calling the references and just asking, What was it like to work with this person? Would you recommend working with them in the future? Like, what what are some more difficult things about working for them, or working with them? And again, there are screening interview questions in the bonus resources for you. So you can even just start with that, if that's what you want to do. And drink.
Okay, so, sample interview sequence for an independent contractor, we're going to do independent contractor, and then we're going to do employ, they look a little bit different. Okay. Candidate responds to your job ad. All your candidate responses are going into one folder into your inbox. you're reviewing those responses a couple of times a week, maybe it's on Monday and on a Thursday or something like that. You're inviting people who are qualified, who are, you know, meeting what you are needing to interview giving them a couple times. Could be phone could be zoom, first interview pretty short. And it's 20 minutes long. Usually, actually, if they're going well, though, they'll go longer. And if they're not going well, then there'll be a really, really short. So that's kind of a thing to think about, too, as you're in the interview. Like, am I feeling really comfortable with this person? Is this flowing easily or Is this really kind of uncomfortable and not working well, and so next part independent contractor request a proposal from them, request their references. And then again, if it's a more, if it's appropriate than a portfolio, so then they're going to send you their proposal, their references their portfolio, they're going to send you what you have asked for. In the proposal, when you're doing the request for proposal, you just want to be clear about what exactly you're asking them to propose. So it could be that it's just exactly what's in your job ad, you know, but you might also need to put some cadence on things like. And you may also need to kind of work through it as time goes on, right. Or it may be just that you're agreeing to a certain number of hours of work for a certain pay rate. So just be clear about what you want them to put in the proposal before they send it to you. And then after you get that proposal, after you listen to those references, then there's the last step is a more detailed interview. Last finalizing this proposal, right. So the reason, you could do a more detailed interview before requesting the proposal, and that's completely like, a valid way to do it. I just prefer that if I, if I am getting a good sense of a person and that I think that they would be a good candidate for the job. And they're an independent contractor that I want to see their proposal, before I decide if I'm going to do if I'm going to invest more time and building the relationship and doing another interview. So I want them to do their work on their end, get it to me, and then I can decide what the next steps are. So if I move forward with someone, that usually means that we have another, we get together one more time, we review what was in the proposal. And then I asked them some more questions that I have for them about the work their their previous work, or how we're gonna get the like alignment between what I'm doing and what they're doing. That's an independent contractor. With an employee, it goes pretty much the same. Until you get to the end, right, they respond to the job ad you review the responses, you invite them to interview, you request their references, you're not going to ask them for a proposal, because they're an employee. So with an independent contractor, the independent contractor is making an offer to you about the work they're going to perform with an employee, you are making the offer to the employee about the work that you're going to offer them and the compensation for it. So that means that we we do screening interview, request references, we talk to those references. And then we make a decision about doing a more detailed interview. And in this interview, you're asking the person more about their experience with the work, you're learning more about them and what it would be like to work with them. And then with the one that you decide that you want to work with, you make a job off. And so that looks like converting your job ad into a job description. That's just kind of more of like the list part. And then it also includes the pay piece of thing. And you're sending that to them, and they are making a decision as to whether or not they want to accept the job. So that's the difference of interview sequence between independent contractor and employee. And again, if you're not sure which one to go with. First check out what's in that bonus resources. And then if you're still unclear, then you can reach out to me. Okay, on ramp for an independent contractor. You're determining what their beginning responsibilities are Like, what are they going to do for you first and the on ramp, it should be, like, built in such a way that you feel confident that the person can take on the work, that you can check in on how the work is going and give them feedback on the work. And that you can build off of it. So what a person does for you when they start working for you, and then a year down the road is not always the same. But you start in a certain place, right? You're gonna want to determine the billing frequency. So how often that independent contractor is going to be sending you invoices, and then what the processing time is on, is expected to be on your end. So basically, billing process like, is it an invoice that's been sent? How many days? Do you have to pay the invoice? Or is it like I'm putting my my credit card into a system and you're charging me every week or every month or something? So what does that look like? You're gonna determine the start date. So when is the person going to begin. And then if there's any revising, that needs to happen to their proposal to make sure that it really accurately reflects what the person will do for you, then you want to do that, before they start. And before you sign anything, and then an employee looks a little different. And if you're, again, if you're hiring an employee, I recommend you go to the bonus resources to hiring an employee to know all the extra steps that you have, because there there things like having workers compensation insurance, you know, setting up your payroll, and all these different things. But so the on ramp for an employee is a little bit more robust. So you convert your job ad into a job description, you make a job offer with an anticipated start date, that can be an email with the job description attached. And you will determine again, similarly to an independent contractor what the starting responsibilities are, you'll be collecting an a form called an iron nine, and one called a W four. iron iron is immigration verification, like are you eligible to work in the US kind of stuff. And then w four is tax stuff. You'll want to communicate with them the timekeeping system. So however your timekeeping, it could just be a spreadsheet to start. Or it could be some kind of an app based system. And so if you're hiring, if you're not hiring many employees, often people will just start with a spreadsheet. But if you're starting to get into more and more employees, it usually helps to have some kind of a system where people can clock in and clock out and keep track of their breaks and their time away from work. Keeping track of breaks is something that's especially important those 30 minute breaks if people are working over six hours. So keep that in mind, you're going to need to set up your payroll processing. And then also, and this is true of all people, not just employees, independent contractors too, but establishing your communication preferences. So, you know, times when it's appropriate to email times when it's appropriate to fall back to be in different kinds of communication.
And that was a lot of information. I'm gonna just stop sharing right here. So feel free to go back to different parts of this when you're at different phases of the interviewing hiring process. So I would say just like, use it out, one by one. So first thing, revise your job ad, get it to a place where you feel really good about it. Then start getting the word out there and it can take a while to find the right person. Just know that you might be getting the word out there for a while. It could be a month, it could be two months. It could be one week. I mean, it just depends on how long it takes for the information to get the right person. So be patient. They will come to you. You will find And the right person, but sometimes it takes time to get yourself ready to do some kind of interviewing some kind of process for getting to know people and seeing whether or not they're the right fit, and know whether or not you're going to go with an independent contractor or an employee before you get into any of this, because you don't really want to be making that decision later down the line. They can see how it's so tied into what you do, like how you even how you interview different kinds of people, right? So decide independent contractor or employee and then kind of get yourself traveling down this this road. And if you are stuck, I am so happy to help with anything that's coming up. And I will see you in the next section, which is about transitioning your responsibilities to this person who is going to be working.
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