A new source for bringing on your first team member

I've talked before about hiring in the Philippines from online jobs and a lot of our team members are for 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 if you're looking for some virtual help now 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 in 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 so if you missed that

one go back and check it out but 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 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 percent are higher and so the great thing with jobrack.u again is that you can hire directly so when I talk about Eastern Europe job rack publish 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 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 are some amazingly talented and experienced candidates and I've just finished a whole bunch of interviews and I gotta 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 right 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 in entertain the idea of interviewing someone we asked 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 you probably 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 250 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 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 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 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 uh 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 okay 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 what you need help with too and maybe there's much more than your guest management maybe you want help with your 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 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 don't 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 d-i-s-c and 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 in 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 uh to help you out if you're feeling overwhelmed and you think it's about time to hire someone so check out the disc assessment it's interesting just to know ourselves a little bit better too right okay 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's 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 to leave the U.S 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 too 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 it an all-time high uh 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 so that's one thing you need to consider but right now if you're in the U.S 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 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 say 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 job Rack or you're on online jobs 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 of 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 happens to be you 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 got to remember that you know 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 they 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 it 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 or in our thought out emails so that nothing's sort of getting hidden in the background right remember a resume is really a list of someone's best achievements right and so they're not going to put something on there that they're not proud of so it's good to talk about challenges and prior conflicts that potential applicants have had

in the past and see how they overcame them aside from that just remember that we're more Global than we've ever been and people want to work remotely it allows us saves us time from commuting we have more time with our families and it's really leveling the playing field a lot I would say we can we have there's incredible Talent out there so check out jobrack.eu if you're not already familiar with it and if you're on the fence about hiring someone but you think you're there I'd

say go for it it's been one of the best things that I ever did I wish I had hired people earlier even when I thought I couldn't quite afford it because it really helped really helps you grow and it's also a nice fun just learning process growing a team so I hope that gave you a little more insight and also another place to look if you're looking for a little more help with your short-term rental or your business or whatever it happens to be till next

time I hope you have a wonderful day fast track to Financial Freedom through short-term rentals what all starts with the properties you acquire but you want to make sure that you acquire the right properties I want to give you my ebook that will show you how to do just that there is no charge it's my gift to you for being one of our subscribers just go to restmethods.com that's r-e-s-t-methods.com