Welcome back to the Short-term rental riches podcast. If you’re new here, well, we have quick actionable episodes every week with a focus on short-term rentals. This week we’re talking about getting some additional help with our short-term rentals or with our business or with our personal life. We’re talking about hiring a virtual team member and I didn’t use the word assistant because the reality is we have a lot of opportunity at our fingertips.

The world is more virtual than ever and we can hire people virtually for any aspect of a business. So, from marketing to finance to help with our short-term rentals or our guest reception. I’ve talked before about hiring in the Philippines from online jobs and a lot of our team members are from the Philippines and they are amazing and will continue to be hiring people in the Philippines, but I just discovered another job site this time in Eastern Europe and I want to compare and contrast and let you know why it might be a good option for you to hire a team member. I know what you might be thinking if you’re just getting started with your short-term rental is that maybe it doesn’t make financial sense to hire a team member or it seems like too much work or maybe you’re concerned that their language, their English level isn’t going to be where you need. Well, I’m here to tell you that all of those things should not be a concern. We’ve hired a lot of people from all over the place and we’re now Mexico, Philippines, and I just hired someone for our team from Eastern Europe. I’m really excited to have them on our team.

And so, I want to talk about jobrack.eu. This is the website that I’ve used. One of the things I really like about it is that it’s similar to onlinejobs.ph. If you missed that episode, go back and check that out. We talked about just hiring virtual help in general, but how you could outsource your guest communications in that episode, which is episode 143. We talked specifically with online jobs, but there’s also some other good tips and tricks in there. If you missed that one, go back and check it out. Some of the things that I like about jobrack is first of all, it’s in Eastern Europe. So it’s not quite as far as Asia for those of us that are in the United States. And so, the time difference, the time zone difference is a lot easier for some of us. That’s one thing that’s great. The other thing that I like about jobrack.eu is that you can also hire your team members directly. So, a lot of you are familiar with and probably have even used Upwork at some time in the past, or there’s another one called Fiverr. One of the downsides with those platforms is that those platforms take a big commission or a big percentage of whatever payment that you end up sending for help, for assistance or for that virtual team member. Upwork, I’ve heard, 20 % are higher. And so, the great thing with jobrack.eu, again, is that you can hire directly. So, when I talk about Eastern Europe, jobrack publishes jobs in Eastern Europe mainly. And so, these are places like Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, Macedonia, Kosovo. And these names might not be that familiar to you. These countries, I should say. But don’t let that concern you or alarm you. I’ve visited a lot of these places personally already. And so, I guess for me, it just seems a little more natural just to look for the best talent possible in the whole world as long as they fit what we’re looking for. But if you haven’t heard of these countries, just know that there’s some excellent, excellent talent there, some amazingly talented and experienced candidates. And I’ve just finished a whole bunch of interviews actually just right before this call. And I got to say, I’m really impressed with the experience and from all over the place. So, I’ve met with people from Croatia, from Serbia, from Kosovo, you name it. There’s applications coming in from all these different places and they are experienced. Their English levels are really good. Of course, you want to make sure that your application or your job posting is as clear as possible.

So, in ours, for example, we clearly state in there that we need a very high English level. And that’s one of the questions that we send out before we even entertain the idea of interviewing someone. We ask them to rate their English level. So, it just simply says, how would you rate your English level from one to ten? We do most of our calls via Zoom. And so, we want to make sure that you’re comfortable speaking in English. So, everyone I met with had excellent, excellent English skills. Again, you can find excellent candidates in Philippines with great English skills as well. But just wanted to give you another option, because a lot of you probably haven’t heard or considered Eastern Europe for some help with your short-term rentals or with your business. Now, just a quick rundown on the cost for jobrack.eu. And this is at the time of this recording. It’s about two hundred and fifty dollars to post a position for a whole month. But if you don’t find a candidate, you get to repost your position. I’ll say we’re going through bringing on our second team member right now. And it really shouldn’t take you more than 30 days, as long as you know exactly what you want. And you need to make sure that you know exactly what you want. So, if you’re looking for some virtual help managing your guest communications, then you might want to include things like familiarity with Airbnb and VRBO, great English skills, great customer service skills, ability to work on this specific schedule. That’s another really important thing that you want to put in your job posting. You want to make sure that whoever you hire, whoever you’re talking to, knows exactly what time zone and what times you need the position for. Now, again, I realize this might not be for everyone. And there’s a lot of you out there probably thinking I can’t afford this right now or this doesn’t really make sense for me. But I’ll tell you what, after you bring on your first team member, you’re going to be really, really happy you did. If you’re just getting started with your short-term rental and you just want some help and you want to take away the majority of the virtual work.

So, messaging and guest management and those types of things. Well, then I always recommend hiring for your busiest schedule. And so, for us, that is Thursday through Monday during check in times and during checkout time. So, it’s not realistic to try to find someone to work 24 7 or be on call 24 7. But if you’re just looking to get rid of the majority of your work, check out jobrack.eu. Make sure you know exactly what you’re looking for. And you’re going to be really happy that you did. OK, so if you’re deciding that it’s about time to bring someone on, I want to give you just a couple quick time saving tips. Things that I do when we’re bringing new team members on to our team. And the first one is we’ve already mentioned is just make sure your job posting is exactly what you’re looking for. So, you’re not attracting the wrong candidates. And it also helps you think through exactly what you need help with, too. And maybe there’s much more than your guest management. Maybe you want help with your finances, with bookkeeping, with managing your email inbox, you name it. You can get help for it. And what I found with myself is that if I’m procrastinating with some sort of my business life or personal life, it’s usually because that’s not something that I want to be doing. And so, I keep putting it off. And the reality is that there’s always someone out there that’s going to enjoy the same thing that you’re putting off and be better at it than you.

And so, if you have the resources, I highly recommend that you think through what some of these things are and you get some help for it. But once you’ve decided you need help, you don’t have to spend hours and hours trying to hire people. So, my real quick, simple little process is just to make sure I’ve thought out in advance all of the questions that I want to ask a potential applicant and I will ask them in person. That takes a lot of time, right? Interviewing and scheduling the interview and doing all that. So, I send out a series of emails, four to five different emails with four to five different questions on each one. And based on that, you can really narrow down your candidates. So, I like to narrow down to five candidates, max. And then I do an interview where you can clarify prior responses that they send out, ask some additional questions. I’ve got a couple quick interview questions for you here coming up in a second, but I don’t do a whole lot of interviews. So basically, once we get to that point, I haven’t really spent too much time. I asked the same questions to the same candidates to see their responses. One of the things that we’re now including in those emails, by the way, is a disk assessment. This is a personality test. And I found this to be really insightful. So actually, everyone on our team has now done this. If you guys haven’t heard of this, we’ll include a link in the description and the show notes where you can go and take it for yourself. We’re just using a free test right now. I’m not sponsored in any way by this company. I’m also not sponsored or affiliate with jobrack. I’m just want to bring more resources to you guys to help you out if you’re feeling overwhelmed and you think it’s about time to hire someone. So, check out the disk assessment. It’s interesting just to know ourselves a little bit better, too. Right. OK. So, you’ve sent out your series of email questions, maybe three, four, five series of emails. And each one of them has several different questions. So, remember, you can just write the questions once you send the same questions. Maybe you need to tailor them slightly before you send them back to your candidates based on any questions they’ve asked you. That is a very good question to always ask, by the way, is what questions do you have about me? Do you have about my property? Do you have about my business? And if someone has no questions, well, maybe they’re not too interested in actually working with you. And they’re just really looking more for a paycheck. So that’s something that you can kind of hone out by crafting your email messages a little better.

Another answer you might see, a very common one now, is if you’re asking someone why they’re interested in working with you, is that they want to work remotely. Don’t we all? Yes, the whole world wants to work remotely now, but not everyone can. And it’s not as easy for everyone to do. And this also shouldn’t be the only reason that they want to work with you, right? Because there’s a lot of remote work opportunities now. And I don’t know where this is going to leave the US or other job markets that are losing potential jobs to other countries. But the reality is for our businesses, for our personal lives, we should be working with whoever it is we find to be the most appropriate for the position, to be the most talented. And if we’re running a business, of course, we need to keep our costs in mind. Right. Just to clear something up to real quickly is that a lot of times people might feel bad about paying a lower salary in a different country. But you shouldn’t. The thing is that the salary you’re paying goes farther in a country if it’s cheaper to live there. So right now, the dollar is at an all-time high. Not to say it’s going to be there forever. And that’s something that you need to consider if you’re paying someone a different country and the exchange rate between their home currency and the currency you’re paying them in. If that changes a lot, well, then the amount of spending power they’re going to have is going to change. That’s one thing you need to consider. But right now, if you’re in the US, the dollar is really high and working virtually is easier than it’s ever been.

And there’s a lot of very talented people out there. So, after you really thought through your questions, you sent them out, you narrowed it down. So, you’re doing one, maybe two interviews. You can always send out a test project. That’s a good idea as well. Once you’ve decided on a candidate, it’s good to send out a formal agreement. You guys both sign it. You can send it with a digital signing program. So, everyone’s always on the same page. You may want to put in there that you want to start out on a test basis just to make sure that things go the way you want. And they’re not too permanent right in the beginning, although that can deter some candidates. Remember this process, this whole process shouldn’t really take more than 30 days to to find candidates. I would suggest one other thing when you’re on jobrack or you’re on onlinejobs. If you’re looking in the Philippines, there are other sites we’ve talked about before, like indeed. When you’re on these sites, it’s good to look at the candidates that are already looking for positions. If you’re looking for a marketing position, for example, type in marketing and see what type of experience you could expect to get that’s already available. So that’s a really good thing to do. And you can also invite people to your job after you’ve posted it. So that’s something I like to do at the very beginning. We’ll post a position. We’ll go through and invite, you know, maybe 10, 20, 30 people. Again, that’s a copied message that says, hey, John or Julie or whatever it happens to be. I saw your profile. I think you might be a great fit for a position. Here’s a link to check it out. Boom. Copy paste, copy paste. Of course, you don’t want to be sending that message to people that you don’t think will be a good fit. We’ve got to remember that these are real people, even though everything’s virtual and they’re looking for a position for a reason. They want to make a change in their career. They’re looking for more growth. These people have families. I mean, just because it’s virtual doesn’t mean you should take anything for granted. We want to make sure that we’re respecting everyone’s time. And for those candidates that don’t work out, it’s good to send them just a short message, letting them know, thanking them for their time and consideration and letting them know that you decide to move forward with another candidate. Maybe it was just based on experience. So just some final thoughts here on on hiring. I think it’s important that we trust our gut. You know, they say our gut is our second brain and it really does seem to just make the right decision for us sometimes. So, make sure you trust your gut. If something’s feeling uneasy or doesn’t feel right or you’re suspicious about something, make sure you bring it up as well. We want to talk about prior challenges and we want to ask any question we have, especially during that interview stage.

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