181: Working With a Recruiting Agency for Your Design Firm
Michele 00:00
Hello, my name is Michele, and you're listening to Profit is a Choice. Joining me on the podcast today are Paige Risley and Beth Moffatt of We Recruit Well, both of these women have worked in the online space, both in positions of being virtual assistants. And now they have pulled together their resources and created a company, We Recruit Well, where they help place online resources for your company. And so we're going to talk today about what that process looks like, how to be prepared for hiring, and how to make sure that you are matched with the correct person.
Michele 00:44
Every day, empowered entrepreneurs are taking ownership of their company financial health, and enjoying the rewards of reduced stress and more creativity. With my background as a financial software developer, owner of multiple businesses in the interior design, industry, educator and speaker, I coach women in the interior design industry to increase their profits, regain ownership of their bottom line, and to have fun again in their business. Welcome to Profit is a Choice.
Michele 01:17
Hey, Paige, Hey, Beth, welcome to the podcast.
Paige Risley 01:19
Hi Michele.
Beth Moffatt 01:20
Hey, there.
Michele 01:21
Hey, I am excited to have a conversation with the two of you. I think that well, Paige, I know you, we work together. And I have just met Beth. And I am excited because I know the hole in the industry that you fill with your business. And so I'm excited to talk about that and bring that to our listeners. You both are the owners, co owners of a company called We Recruit Well. And so you do recruiting for businesses to help them fill positions. And we'll talk about what those positions are. And I just want to point this out, you guys are not a subscription model. So you're not an agency that places somebody with a month to month retainer type thing, right? I know that we had Laura Licursi on and episode 134, And we talked about that model. And we talked we kind of do a small compare contrast with a model of a placement, like a one time placement. And we'll talk about some of the differences there from your vantage point. And I know Beth, even in just the pre conversation, you made the comment that every business really needs to evaluate what works for them. And so we'll talk about some of what does that evaluation look like? And what are some of the questions we should be asking to know which way to go and what we need. And so I'm excited to begin. Before we do that, though, I would love to hear from each of you a little bit of your background. And then what brought you two together. So Beth, you want to go first?
Beth Moffatt 02:55
Sure, absolutely. Well, I think really our story kind of goes together because we used to be teachers together. In fact, I met Paige when she was my daughter's seventh grade teacher. So that's how far back we go. Then we started teaching together. And we really enjoyed that. And when we as our children got older, we decided, you know, there's got to be something better, more fun, we can do that has a little more flexibility. And we discovered the whole world of of working virtually. And we took the plunge together and started out actually as virtual assistants for a subscription model company and absolutely loved it, loved what we did. And then at one point we both, Paige went first and then I jumped in later, we both began to work for the corporation, rather than being individual contractors and just loved it. I loved what we did. loved working with that team environment, but then thought, hmm, maybe there's a better way to do this. And maybe we could do it. And that's where We Recruit Well was birthed. So that's a little bit about where our stories really dovetail quite a bit and Paige may tell you a little bit more about that.
Paige Risley 04:16
Yeah, so yep, that's right. We met almost 20 years ago now, isn't it coming up on really close to 20 years. I was a classroom teacher for years. Part of my desire to get out of the classroom, you can only teach middle school kids for so long before you really you really get beat down.
Michele 04:36
You need a brain break. My mother taught sixth grade science for 32 years.
Beth Moffatt 04:44
Bless her heart.
Michele 04:45
Yes, she's a saint. I'm just gonna put that out there.
Paige Risley 04:47
I knew when I started thinking about transitioning, I knew I wanted to work from home. I had no idea what I was going to do and what that was going to look like, but my husband was doing it. He was traveling a lot. And I knew that's what I wanted. So we just started kind of researching online. Actually the company we went to, we actually found out about it from a friend who went to a business dinner with her husband and met someone that worked there. So honestly, a lot of a lot of it is who you know, and being in the right time at the right place, and finding out about something and then getting on board. We both started with that company. Like I said, pretty early on in that company's history. We were probably one of the first 50 to 75 virtual assistants that they had hired. So we kind of got in on that ground floor, watched them grow, watched, how they how they did things, and saw how that industry could help small business owners especially. And not only small business owners, but churches and any kind of an industry really, right. So I worked for them for years, I think I maybe five years is what five or six years is what I ended up working for them between being a virtual assistant and being on the corporate team. When I transitioned to the corporate team, I was hired as a recruiter. I was working in talent acquisition, right from the beginning there, and just fell in love with that process of not only finding somebody and offering that person the opportunity of being a virtual assistant and giving them that flexible work life, but also then finding the right assistant for the client. And knowing that, you know, hey, I made this match. And there are some people who, you know, I bump into now and then and I find out who they are. And I realized, Oh, I made I matched you with your VA six years ago. And they're just dumbfounded, like, oh, my gosh, we're still working together. So it's, there's just something fulfilling about that, that that really made us think, hey, we can do this. And that subscription model. You know why it's right for some businesses, it isn't for others, because you have a much larger, overhead's not the right word, but you have you have a much higher per hour costs, right? In the subscription model. And with us, you don't you're more in charge of what you want to pay someone per hour.
Paige Risley 05:18
right? You made a comment there that I just want to kind of springboard off of Paige where you made the comment about really being able to get that right fit. Just like when we are hiring, any position, it's not a one to one, I need a junior designer, here's junior designer, it's going to be a fit, there is a process and there is a emerging I know in the coaching program. And my Aim With Intent, we talked about your why your mission, your vision, your values, and making sure that when you hire somebody in that they have an alignment in those areas, or you're going to struggle they're going to struggle is not going to be great. Tell, tell us all either you Beth, both of you a little bit about your process, what I'd love to do is start by talking about what your process looks like to find that talent to do the talent acquisition, then I want to kind of twist it a little bit and go what do we need to do on either side, if we're looking for a position so that we are ready to bring that person and or even to go look for them, we have to be ready to look for them. And then we have to be ready to bring them on board. So start a little bit with what the talent acquisitions piece looks like on your side.
Paige Risley 08:28
Okay, so really, our process is going to be unique for every business owner that comes on board. We don't carry a bench, we do have multiple people in the industry we can reach out to and we do. So we know people and we do reach out. But every every search starts pretty much from scratch. And it begins by talking to that client, finding out what they what they want, what they need, what their personality is, the type of person they like to work with the type of person they don't like to work with. Is this person going to be involved in personal tasks? Are they going to be in the nitty gritty of your personal life? Or is it just your business? So just a deep dive into all things that they need. And then we build that job descriptions specifically based off of that discovery call with that client to make sure that we've covered all all those bases, and we've got it all in there. Then that job gets posted. We gather those resumes and like I said, we know people so a lot of times we're searching back in our files and reaching out to people saying, hey, we think we've got a client you might like, we'd love for you to go through the process. And we're not just checking boxes. We've had people before and they checked all the boxes on paper. They checked all the boxes on a phone screen. But then when we do a zoom interview, within three minutes, I'm finished and you just know there's something about that face to face or zoom face to face that you can either connect with someone you don't, or you get a feeling for, oh, they're a great fit or something that nope, it's not. And so it is more than just checking the boxes and all yes, they can do the job. We're looking specifically for somebody that can can fit and work with, with that specific business owner and with their within their industry. Beth, I'll let you add more, because I know you do the deep dive with our clients typically.
Beth Moffatt 10:32
And that is that is really more my role. I actually, when Paige started in acquisition, I jumped in with her they called me Paige 2.0. And I loved it. And I really enjoy getting to know those, you know, each candidate learning about them, kind of learning to read them, which is very helpful. But I quickly learned that I missed the interaction with the clients. And so I ended up on that side of the of the equation and just getting to know clients learning how to ask the right questions. You know, for example, a great question that we asked, and Paige alluded to it earlier, of the person that you work with best on your team, tell me a little bit about them. Tell me about what you like about their work style, what is somewhat somebody that it really bothers you about the way they work, because that those uncover things that maybe you don't even realize, and it also helps us as we begin to, to look at those different candidates that come into the picture. And and be able to kind of discern between which one we think would be great. When she spoke about earlier, I thought about one of the latest clients that we did, in fact she starts on Monday. So this is a client, we just finished with. Page and I had a call with him and you know, ask 100 questions, and he was ninety to nothing. We got off the call, we both said, remember so and so we interviewed for this other client, and we both said yet, we think she's the one and guess what he interviewed her, he interviewed two different people. But that's the one he chose. And we knew it right off, because we had already interviewed her for someone else. And she was a great fit, but she was an even better fit for this guy. And I mean, they're gonna like the world on fire. And it's just really as we begin to, to learn more about you and learn more about the different candidates that we bring in. And I do think that having a really good job description really helps us because then we have the right people applying. And we have so many times they'll say I read that job description, that was me. And we know we've got one, we've got a good one right here. And so developing a very big picture of what it is you're going to need to be able to do, maybe you don't have every single skill that you can gain, those skills are super important.
Michele 13:01
So you interview the hiring manager, if you will, right. And you create a job description. And then you go out and you post that description, you get candidates, and you do first line interviews of those candidates before you ever bring it back. So I'm assuming that if you got multiples, you're going through based on criteria and ranking them internally and removing some two that you're not sending 15, even if you've already, like discounted them. So you're sending your top two to three, two to four, something like that to the hiring manager and saying review these and I've worked with similar type companies. And I'm assuming you do similar in that those zoom interviews are recorded and passed on so that people can the hiring manager can see your calls or hear notes or, or get notes or something about your initial interview. And then they go through the interview process.
Paige Risley 14:03
Yeah, yeah, we start straight from that application. On the application, we typically have two or three weed out questions. You know, this last one that we just did, he only uses Apple products. So one of our weed out questions was do you use an iMac? Do you have a Mac computer and an iPhone? And if they said no, they didn't go any further. They were just it was just they were just immediately disqualified. But we typically pick two or three pretty big deal breakers that, you know, the client has given us an indication that you know they must have this or they can't do this. And we make questions out of that. So we have those. And then we, again are digging deep into that that interview that Beth had the discovery call with the client to create the interview questions. All the interview questions, the job description. Before we post it before we start our process. We send those off to the client so that they can approve them. They can read through them. They can make changes they can add questions in so they're ready really kind of going along the process with us. But they're not doing any of the work. We're doing all of it for them.
Michele 15:05
You're guiding it, and you're doing all the work. And I was trying to think about when I went through a similar process. One of the things that was also helpful was creating the 30, 60, 90 day requirements. So not just the job description, but saying, Here's what I expect to have accomplished in 30, 60, and 90 days, so that everybody knew what was expected. Coming into that role, do you find things like that to also be helpful in the interview process?
Beth Moffatt 15:36
We do we we really lean toward people who have worked virtually in the past, so that they already have a really good feel for what it means to work remotely, we have taken a chance on people before that, you know, we're like, oh, yeah, I kind of worked remotely in this last job. They're just, they're just something about it just doesn't work really well for our clients. So we really look for someone who already knows going in, I know what I need to accomplish in 30, 60, 90 days. And also we let the client and the candidate know that for that 30, 60, 90 days, we're going to be checking in and saying, how's it going? What can we do to help you? Where are you in this process? Are you meeting regularly? Have you found a good task management system to help you along in this? You know, and it's really it's a great conversation, because, you know, I get to hear the positives and I and they'll say, hey, what about this? What if we were doing this and we can make suggestions, it keeps Paige and I on our toes, because we have to know really what's going on out there. And what the latest and greatest is in the virtual remote or hybrid world.
Michele 16:55
So when you talk about really having them having had the opportunity to work virtual before having that virtual skill set, what kind of things are you looking at and talking about, let's get a little more granular with that. What does that mean? Because these days, anybody who's sitting home behind a Zoom computer is going to say that they work virtually so. And that and I'm not saying that that's not a virtual work. But that's different than working in an online space virtually, Share a little bit about, about what that looks like, or how you narrow down to determine.
Paige Risley 17:30
Really one of the one of the questions that we ask on our application is describe your virtual work or remote work experience to us. And if they you know, in this in this age, if they say I've been working remotely since the pandemic, I mean, that's kind of, I don't want to say that's a red flag. But that can be a red flag. When I when I look at a resume as I start to vet people, if they're working for big corporations, and it's just, I have the have the opportunity to work remotely. We're looking for somebody who has worked with an entrepreneur, a small business owner, a ministry, a nonprofit, a smaller organization, and they have worked in a remote capacity pretty much 100% of the time, they've worked from scratch to set up. SOPs, processes, they've gone out and they can suggest the tools. They know the lingo, they know the tools that they're using. And then when we get them on a phone screen, that's what we're listening for. We'll say, tell me some of the tools that you find most effective in guiding a client to work remotely. And we're listening for slack. Airtable, Asana, Trello, Zoom. I mean, we're listening for all those. If I can't tell you how many people just say, Oh, I know Google sweet. Okay, that's great. So does my nine month old grandson. Right. So you know, it's more than just Microsoft Office and Google Suite there's so many other things out there. The other thing that we're really looking for and really listening for is that they are adaptable and flexible. Because Michele you know, just as well as I do, just because we work together it's if something doesn't work, you have to be able to just give it up walk away from it and completely start over with something right and try again so they have to have that flex of that flexibility and be willing to just drop off dropped something that they've pretty much poured heart and soul in that they thought was going to work but now it's not. So you know, we're looking that's really what we're looking for on the side of that virtual assistant for that person is that those are the things that we're using to find out if they have worked remotely if they are a to virtual assistant.
Michele 19:51
Okay. And so on the on the client side, before they ever call you What could they do to have themselves prepared for this process, I mean, my thought is at some point, they would have to be able to determine if they even thought they could. Or if they would be willing to have that virtual position. Right. Prior to the pandemic, I think many of us in the world, I'll just be very generalized with it, thought that in person jobs were the way to go. And I think many businesses have learned over the last two years, if you will, that, that there is an opportunity to higher skill sets and to have that remote work and, and while it is remote, sometimes from the pandemic, it opens up the door, I can imagine the virtual world has exploded over the last two years, because people are realizing you don't have to be beside me. I know, even my husband works for a technology company. And, you know, I think a lot of technology companies at first were everybody's got to be in the office, Google all of them. And then they realized, wait a minute, people are really working from home like that used to be the fear is that if you were at home, you weren't going to work. And not only that they have balanced lives more, so they're not spending, my husband was spending 10 hours a week in the car, if not more, getting back and forth to work, that's 10 hours that he can work out that he can do something different and still have a full workday, if not more than others. And so I can just imagine that it's all exploded, and we're having to learn to say, I think we could hire virtually. So let's say that we figured out we can hire virtually, we're at least open to it. What are some other things we need to do as hiring managers before we call you, that puts us in the best place to work with you? When you answer the phone?
Beth Moffatt 21:50
I would say probably the two things we talk about the most in those initial calls, is in fact we just we just finished our weekly meeting is how are you going to hire them? Are you going to hire them as a W2 employee, are you going to hire them as a 1099 contractor? So that's something we can actually talk you through. Because there are pros and cons to both. And you just really need to be, you just need to know and understand that. I also think a lot of times people come to us and they think, Oh, I've got to have a full time person, or I only need somebody five hours a week? Well, you don't really know, we can help you kind of talk through all the different things that where you see gaps, and kind of help you figure out how many hours a week we think that is. But I will tell you, I don't think we've ever had anyone start out at five or 10 hours that didn't immediately grow to 2030, even up to full time. And I'm in truly we've had people say, Oh, I'd never hire a full time virtual assistant or a virtual, you know, any kind of other position. And I can't tell you how many of them that we've done that we've even this year have placed who are already now full time within just you know, just the last six to nine months. So I think people realizing there's a lot out there that a virtual someone working virtually can do an exercise, you probably heard the bucket exercise or whatever with that's one we a lot of times when we get on a call and someone says well, we're not real sure what we'd have someone do. And so we kind of talk about putting everything you do in buckets, here's here are things I hate to do, don't ever want to do with love to give someone else, write those down, every time you start to do it and you think, Oh, that needs to go on that list, go write it on that list, then there's a lot of things that you probably really like doing, but you're not the best person to be doing it. And those are the ones that are really hard to give up. I think that's where a lot of business owners are like, Yeah, I know, I need someone to help me. But I really want to hang on to this, we need to get those things down on a list. Because pretty quickly, if you get if we get to the right person in there, you're going to want to turn them over. And you've got to figure out how you're going to train them, get them up to speed and turn that over as quickly as you can. So that you can look at the high capacity things and things that only you can do. And those need to want to listen to. And that's really needs to be your focus. How can we help you get your eyes over on all those things that are really going to help you grow your business? Make your business great and let somebody else do all the others.
Michele 24:33
Right in finding the person. This was the conversation that Kelcee and I had when we were talking about operations, Laura, I think all of us that are in the hiring space, or that coach in that space, I always have them put on a list of things you hope you never have to do again. Put down a list of things that you'd be happy to hand over if you felt confident in the person and then write down like you said the list of things that you love that you want to do as the queen bee in your business, and then less work to protect those things, or what are the things that you would love to do but don't have any time to do so that we can get these others off of your list? And so it is really helpful, like you said to first of all figure out Yeah, I think I'm going to hire virtually to do I think it's going to be 1099 or W2, or am I open to even having a conversation of the differences and how that might fit. And then even having the buckets, I mean, it's great to come in with the job description. But that's not necessary. If they've got their buckets and some idea of I need help. This is a kind of help. This is what I'm looking for that that's kind of the beauty of what you do is help create the job description, create the interview questions and the process around that hiring because that can be intimidating. Number one, it can be intimidating if you have not done it before. But number two, I remember hiring one time, oh my gosh, and I posted something up like on indeed on the board. I get so inundated with resumes and letters and reach outs. And if you don't answer them back immediately, some then get all in their fields, as my kids would say, and they wouldn't let me know that I didn't answer them back fast enough. And I mean, it's just like, I was like, oh, good gracious, this was like a whole skill set just to handle the inquiries or whatever. And then, you know, I think it was also hard as a solopreneur. Making some of those decisions by myself and not having anybody else in that interview process. Nobody to talk about, you know, did you notice this? Or did you notice that I know in, you know, one of my last hirings, I went in thinking that I was going to go one direction and chose a different direction. Because when we got what it looked like on paper was a totally different feel that connection that Paige talked about, when we got on that Zoom call. And so what was nice was I had somebody else like you guys in that interview with me. So when we were done, I could be like, I picked up this vibe, did you pick up that vibe, and you know, to either have it confirmed or to or stretched or test tested a little bit was really, really nice.
Paige Risley 27:12
And that's part that's another part of our process that is a little different. We each have a touch point with a candidate we do they fill out that application, we will do a phone screen, and one of us does the phone screen with them. If we're moving them on to the Zoom interview, the other one of us does the Zoom interview, so that by the time we have three or four candidates that we think are good fits, Beth and I can have a call and we can say Alright, did you see this? Or did you see this? And even if I get finished with a phone screens, hey, I really liked her. But I'm unsure about XYZ, can you dig in on your interview about these three things. And then when we send these candidates to the clients, we kind of like to do it, where we send them the information. So they get there, they get the resume, they get the we do check references, they get references, if the references response, so they get they get those two things, and then a write up about them or interview notes, all that information. And then we'd like them to review that information. So we kind of like to send that on the Thursday, and then meet with them on a Monday or Tuesday. So they have had time to review the candidates kind of formed some opinions, form some questions, and then have a call with them. And ask, Do you have any questions? You know, do you have any thoughts, you know, and then at that point, we can kind of guide them and talk them through. And sometimes we've had clients that go completely different direction based on, you know, an answer to something they've asked us, we try not to give them our opinion upfront and say, Hey, we think you should go with a but here are the other two, we want them to form an opinion. So that then we can, you know, come back and discuss it. And a lot of times they go in a whole nother direction based on then they go ahead and interview the three and they go I see what you mean. I'm glad I interviewed that person.
Michele 29:06
Yeah, it's just such a nice process to not have to do it all by yourself. Because different people see different things in different ways. And it isn't just any what kind of comes out in an interview, you know, from people that have strong opinions about different things or their aspirations for their own personal job and career isn't in alignment with what may be the hiring manager sees as the career path for that particular role. And so then you know, I've done a couple where you realize at the beginning, you're a fit today, but you're not going to be a fit tomorrow. Right? And so I don't know that I want to invest in you today. If in the very short term, you're going to react I would rather invest in somebody who has some longevity, you know, in this particular role. Tell me or tell the listeners a little bit about the different types of positions that you all focus on hiring for. I mean, you can't be everything to everybody. So you know, what, what is it? Where have you focused and where is your genius in the hiring process,
Paige Risley 30:18
I would say that our superpower our genius in this in this market is that executive virtual assistant role. A executive virtual assistant, a C-suite, virtual assistant, a virtual assistant for an entrepreneur, anybody that is looking for pretty much a right hand man, right hand woman, somebody that can just come in and fix your life, social media, digital marketing. Something else that we do that we're really good at as well is project management, I would say, I don't really want to call it relationship management, customer service or not, it's not a customer service representative, but somebody in that space, who can kind of interact with your clients for you on your behalf as well. Office Business Management, somebody who can come in and help you run that business, we can we do that as well. We have, you know, the pandemic kind of threw everybody a curveball, including people in the remote space, even though we were already in it. Right now we're seeing people who a want hybrid, they want a little bit of both, they want somebody who can be remote, but they want somebody who's close enough they can meet in person, or somebody that can come into the office. But most definitely our wheelhouse is remote.
Michele 31:31
People are craving connection and relationship.
Paige Risley 31:34
They are big time.
Michele 31:36
And I think that we're having online zoom fatigue as much as we you know, here I am, I run my whole business through zoom. It is it's different. And there is a part that you just want to pay, you know, you just came to the event that I did. People just want to connect in person, they want that living, breathing touch point. So I can see that. Exactly. It definitely also know that there's a beauty to being able to work from home.
Paige Risley 32:02
Exactly. And that's what people want. It's not that people want to stay remote, and they want to stay working from home. People are craving that flexibility. They want the flexibility to hey, I want to I can come into the office, hey, I can stay I can work from home, whether they just need to stay at home and work to be more productive, or they've got something going on.
Michele 32:22
I am having, you know, something done on my house. And I need to be home while they do it.
Paige Risley 32:28
Yes, I'm getting something fixed. Exactly. There's all kinds of reasons.
Michele 32:33
to do roof. And I just need to be at the house for that. Right, exactly. There's all kinds of reasons.
Paige Risley 32:38
We do try and steer away from 100% face to face in office every day, nine to five jobs. Those are those are very hard to place for us just simply because of what we're doing and the people we're looking for. It can be done remotely so successfully.
Michele 32:58
That's right. That's right. What do you think really makes a successful placement? Like, what have you seen that made the placement because here's one of the fears, I'm going to go in, I'm going to hire this person, they're going to be with me three to six months, and then they're going to leave, and then they're going to walk away? What is it that you have seen that is like the special sauce, if you will, that allows on both sides, employer and the employee in whatever way that they're doing it to really be a successful placement. Like how would you define that? And what might that look like?
Beth Moffatt 33:32
I think that as far as from the assistant point of view, we're really looking for, and I don't, I don't want to say that we're looking for people to use buzzwords, because that's exactly what they are as buzzwords. But we want to see someone who is really wants to serve, that that's really their desire, they, they like it just really lights their fire to serve other people. And you can see that you can see that the passion for that. I also have seen the really good, really good connections is when they can quickly become passionate about what the client is passionate about, doesn't mean that they have to be an interior designer themselves or really enjoy that, but they can see that and see the value in it and get excited about it and what that person is trying to accomplish in their business. And, and you can usually tell if someone's going to be that way. Pretty right off the bat.
Michele 34:34
That's a good point. But Kelsey, and I actually just made a similar point a couple episodes ago, where we were talking about, um, during one of my hiring processes. The person was like, I want to be out front and I'm thinking why are you coming in to support my business but you want to be out front that felt odd to me like why would she want to be out front of my business right And Kelcee's comment was about the same Paige, just like you that coming in to serve like how can I take things off your plate? How can I make your life better? What if we do that one of the first things Paige you did over on mine. I mean, thankfully, we had a quick turnover. But I gave you all my SOPs, we've talked about it before, on the coaching side of things, talked about what you can do. And you know what it might look like, quickly, you had some SOPs, and one of the first things you said was, hey, Michele, I think there might be a more streamlined way to run your podcast on the backend with some of the organizational pieces. Can I move everything to Airtable? You're like, I know it, I know what to do there. And I think that we could be quicker, faster, more organized. I'm like, do it go. And we've never looked back. We haven't regretted it a bit. And you and I said to you from the beginning, tell me what you think well, I'm hiring you because you to your both your points, you know what you're doing, you understand the project management and you know, task management, you understand these systems here, the systems I already have, if there's no I didn't even have air table at that point. Or I had one little thing, but not a day to day use. You tell me what I need, and I'm going to trust you in your position to go get it. And I think that trust is a big piece of it. Because I knew that you know you and Kelsey and others Danny others that are on my team helping me, you're here to try to help me do what I do best so that I can go do that work. Like you said Beth the bucket of here's the things I love to do. And it is interesting that you could bass exactly what I could tell when I got on my interview process was this person is a bit more out for their own company business than they are. They're looking for a job, they're not looking for a why to get behind and support. And it was glaring, you couldn't tell it in written form. But you could tell it when we got on the call interview,
Paige Risley 37:07
I think the client side to answer that question about what makes that what makes those matches work. When we meet with our clients, then we're, you know, trying to sell ourselves to them. So when that when that when they come into us as a lead and we start meeting with them, we're looking for clients that we would want to work with, right. So if we're meeting with a lead, and this isn't somebody that that that I would want to serve, or I would want to work with or be their virtual assistant, I don't want to hire them for my company, I don't want to find them a virtual assistant, because we have to, we're salesmen on both ends, we have to sell the client to every person we interview the same way we're trying to sell the virtual assistant to our clients.
Michele 37:54
So we got to like both. You mean, you got to be connected to both of them?
Paige Risley 37:58
Yes, we have to like both of them. And I know that's another thing about Beth and I were sort of ying and yang. I hate that term. But it does apply. Beth is a very good front facing client facing face and person. And I'm a very good back end operations keep things moving. But then on that talent acquisition, that self aware emotional intelligence side, I am very, very self aware very highly emotionally intelligent. And as I'm talking to people, I can usually within about, you know, a 95% success rate, figure out which person the client should go with? Almost every single time I can I know who they should take. And I think I've been right almost every time I don't think I've been surprised. Yeah, cuz
Michele 38:44
it it, let me back up one second. I think some of that too, is because you are not as emotionally invested as either of those two people. So you have the ability to stand outside of it. And to hear and to see, right? That that's one of the beauties of what I do in coaching is I'm able to see a pathway where the other person can't quite see it, I we're recording this in the fall. And I kind of liken it to going to a, like a corn maze. You know, where you're in the middle of the corn maze, and we're on the outside, you can see the picture of what's in there. But when you're in it, you have no clue where you are. And then they've kind of got the lookout and a lot of these and somebody can come up in the lookout and see where you are. And that's kind of what we have the ability to do you too and your role me and my coaching role, we can climb up in the lookout and we can say hey, I kind of see a pathway for you here that you just can't see your great service. Oh,
Beth Moffatt 39:46
That is a great picture.
Paige Risley 39:47
Yeah, that's very, very true. And it's, it's, we it's very we like it when a virtual assistant starts to see that picture for the client as well. And as they're going through the process with us, so from the time they've applied, they've had a phone screen. And by the time they get to a zoom interview with Beth, they're even giving Beth ideas if she's doing the zoom, you know, hey, here, here's what I saw on their website. Here's what here's what I learned from Paige, here's what I have found. And here's some things I would do. And then by the time they get to interview with the client, they're, you know, they're just not they're ready.
Beth Moffatt 40:22
They come they ready, packed and ready. Yeah. And,
Michele 40:24
you know, I don't know that I would ever go back. I mean, I, I'm not saying I will never, because, you know, we've learned, I'm in my 50s. I know not to say that. learn that the hard way. But I can say that, unless I was absolutely pressed, I personally, will not go into an interview process. Again, without another set of eyes and ears around me, I just won't do it in some capacity, because I just think, you know, if you go into corporate, you're always going to go through multiples. And so having you all, do that, and again, to have kind of that outside viewpoint, where you see what we don't see, you see what's unspoken. And you know, sometimes there's not even the awareness of all that we need. I know I've hired over the years. And sometimes I didn't even know what I needed. I just know I needed. And it was more of I think the position will develop as I go along. Now, that's not always been a success. Because I wasn't prepared. They weren't prepared, paid. You've heard me say this in my coaching all the time. But I believe hiring is like bringing in guests to your home. And you need to have the home or your business prepared for them. Which means a job description expectations, you wouldn't bring somebody into your home for a weekend event and say, I didn't make the bed, the dishes are dirty, we have no food in house, here's the toilet brush guide, and you clean that bathroom before you use it. I mean, we just wouldn't do those things. Yet we bring people into our companies completely unprepared. And then we wonder why it wasn't a good fit and why they're not happy to come back. And so if we can do the work on our side, before we hire, and they're doing the work on their side to Pat correctly, then when we come together for that weekend, right? It becomes something glorious and wonderful. And we want to continue doing it. Question for you in that. I've asked this a couple of different times. But I'd be curious to hear what the two of you say, what are some good indicators that a business owner could start to see or recognize that tells them they're ready to make that hire? And so then, of course, to pick up the phone and call you, but what is it that that they're going to recognize that says I need somebody? Because that's what we get all the time, right? I think I need to hire I'm not sure if I need to hire, how do I know when I'm ready to hire? What do I do?
Beth Moffatt 42:46
I would say if your email or your calendar are a mess, absolutely you got you got to get someone in there to manage it for you and turn it over and let them do it. Because someone else can do both of those things so much better than you can. I also think that if you see the need to be using some type of project management system, whether it's proprietary, or industry or whatever, and you think you're going to implement it, or maybe you have just implemented it. And it's basically you and maybe one or two other people that are dealing with that, and you don't have someone who's over that. Absolutely, I can't tell you how many times even this year, we have helped someone find an assistant, an office manager type person, because they're implementing some type of management system and need someone to just be in charge of it. And that's absolutely what someone else can be doing. You shouldn't be touching that thing, you should barely know how it works, to be honest,
Michele 43:51
right? Remember to just get yourself around in there, you should be able to log in
Beth Moffatt 43:55
and look around. And it should tell you what you need to know you should be able to pull up the report or whatever. But somebody else should be in there and know that thing backwards and forwards. And that that is I would say key especially if it has to do with like invoicing job, job sites, any of those types of things, someone else can be managing all that for you. And maybe your business isn't huge, but maybe they're only there 10 hours a week, you realize that's only two hours a day. That's that two, they're two hours focused on doing those tasks. A day, that probably takes you four because you've been interrupted 10 times before you can write that right.
Paige Risley 44:41
I know personally in our business answering that question because you know, even though we both work as virtual assistants, as well as running this business, so we have our hands on both ends of
Michele 44:53
great you know what it feels like
Paige Risley 44:55
besides so running our business it's funny, it over a year It's been over a year, since we decided we finally kind of like, we're going crazy. We don't have time to do this. We don't have time to do that. And Beth said, I don't have time to do social media, like I don't like doing social media, and who what do we do? Why don't we have someone for us doing our social media. And we hired somebody to give her social media to. And I'm telling you what it runs like clockwork, and it's beautiful. We don't have to worry about it. It's just goes she does it and it's taken care of. And then again, maybe about eight, nine months ago, it kind of got that way for me. And I'm like, Beth, I'm doing things I shouldn't be doing. I'm doing things I don't need to be doing. And I sat down and put a bunch of processes together and created documents and passed, our social media person is also a virtual assistant as well. So she can do both sides of it, we passed more off to her. And then we did it again, just about a month ago, I sat down with Beth and I said we've had consistently two or three clients here at a time, and I don't have time for some of this stuff, I'm doing more of it. So. And that's the joy of that virtual assistant, they can start at 5, 10 hours a week, and they can grow with you as you need to. For me, a personal indicator that I need help is I am not sleeping at night, I don't want to get out and go on my run every day I don't, I am exhausted, I can't clean my house. I mean, think when things start piling up personally for me, and my brain doesn't shut down. That's an indication I'm doing too much. And I need help. And I need to start off, start off-boarding things. So you really don't want to get there and the joy of that virtual assistant as if you bring somebody in at five or 10 hours a week, they got plenty of room to grow with you. Right.
Michele 46:44
I'll also link to the podcast that I did about delegate don't dump. And I think that will be a good follow up for those that have hired on how to delegate the work and not just dump it in somebody's lap. Because that also creates a successful relationship, right? Here's your job description, your 30, 60, 90 days now I'm going to delegate, which means I'm going to give with care. The work to you, I'm going to educate you equip you set expectations, empower you and encourage you to get it done. I'm not going to dump it in your lap and say, like, what is that? Oh my gosh, I think it's like the funniest commercial ever, where the husband and wife pull up, and they drop the kids off with the grandparents and the minute the grandparents pick up the kids, they run out and get in the taxi. And they're like, don't leave me with the baby. My husband and I, we think that I mean, we just screen that little man, but that kid run down sidewalk, don't we with the baby. And sometimes I think we put people that we hire in that position that we dump it on, and then we go running out the door. And so just knowing that we can be prepared, they can be as much as we want the person we hired to be prepared, we need to do the same thing. Awesome. So is there anything else the two of you would like to share about your business we recruit well, that you think listeners need to know,
Paige Risley 48:04
I think the one other thing that that does differentiate us it from other businesses is we we are that we're small, we are three people. And we pretty much when you when you hire us, you get us you get Paige and Beth. And we're the ones that are working it and we're the ones that are taking you through that process. We don't bring you on board and dump you off to somebody else. We don't just keep passing that buck, we stick with you from the beginning to the end, both of us do. And I think that's what sets us apart. We're very, we're very particular about who we work with. Like I said earlier, we want to work with them. One of the clients we did this summer, I'm telling you what, Michele, I might have left you for this day. No, no, no, no, no. I mean, so we you know that that's kind of the catch 22 We want to work with the people that our clients, we want to work with him, you know it, you know, in this guy's defense, I love spy novels, and I love all the thing Navy Seal and that's kind of what his business was,
Michele 49:10
I don't know that I could have competed with that Paige. broken my heart, you
Paige Risley 49:16
know, it's so that's, that is what's different about us, you know, we truly do take an interest in in that business. And then you know, as the months go by, we love getting the follow ups we just absolutely love like hearing from like, recently, we placed Rose Zefferino with her VA and hearing from Rose and hearing from her VA and the emails that we get from these people and, you know, just their gratitude and oh, we are so thankful, thank you so much for giving me this opportunity to work with this person and that's so it's that personal interests that we like to take to make sure that it is going to last and that it does. You know you do work with this person for a long time.
Michele 49:54
You know, one thing I can also tell you that I see as a differentiator from other companies out sort of not passing him off, is you and Beth worked really well together. And I think when a company itself works well internally, and the overflow of that, to the companies that have the ability to work with them in some capacity, it's heightened. That's one of the things that I even love within my company, you know, I get so many compliments on the event that we just held for the inner circle, at how you, Paige and Kelsey and I how well we all work together and enjoy each other. And so I think you work in an environment with other people that you respect that you get along with him that you enjoyed that joy then overflows. And honestly, that's the gift that I see the two of you trying to bring to those that you're placing together, you're not just placing together to make money, take a check, you know, check mark, that placements done. Move on to the next one. It's a vetting process, a true vetting process? Are you the kind of client that we even want to work with to try to put somebody in your workplace because we feel responsible for that? And then are you the type of person that we trust enough to put into this position to support this company? And is this? It's almost like when you're doing that? I mean, it's matchmaking, it's professional matchmaking is just what it is, right? And so we you think about that, if you were trying to match to people that you wanted to build a relationship, you would be very cautious and very careful of who you put together. Because you know, that they're going to see you here, you, you know, run into you at some point, and you're going to have to revisit that. And so I appreciate the care. But I also appreciate the friendship the two of you have that allowed you to, to have the same heartbeat when it comes to how you run and manage your business. Because I think that's it definitely shows and what you do and how you do it.
Beth Moffatt 50:04
Thank you so much, that means a lot.
Michele 51:35
So we'll put it in the show notes. But tell everybody where you're hanging out online since your online, Paige like what is your website? Where are you so they can go follow you?
Paige Risley 52:01
Yep, you can find us at www.werecruitwell.com. And we're on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. all @werecruitwell. Is that, is that right Beth?
Beth Moffatt 52:13
That's correct.
Michele 52:17
Okay, perfect. Well, Beth and Paige, thank you both so much for joining us today, sharing about your business, the importance of it, process, how to do it, when to do it. All the things and I wish you both much success.
Paige Risley 52:32
You too. Thanks, Michele.
Beth Moffatt 52:33
Thank you.
Michele 52:36
Paige and Beth, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. You know, hiring really can be scary. And it can be difficult if you're having to do it for the first time or any time all by yourself. And so I really love what Beth and Paige have pulled together to assist all of us so that we don't have to do this alone. So please check out what they had. I also want to help you not have to run your business alone. So if you're interested in coaching or having that second set of eyes or someone to bounce information off of them, I would love to be able to assist you with that. You can find more about my services by going to ScarletThreadConsulting.com and checking out the work with me page and choose to be profitable every day, in your hiring in your daily business, and certainly in your financials. Because profit doesn't happen by accident. Profit is a Choice is proud to be part of the designnetwork.org where you can discover more design media reaching creative listeners. Thanks for listening, and stay creative and business minded.