Questions For Your Next Team Member (or 1st)

welcome back to the show I'm really glad that you're here again today we're talking about something I think is really exciting because it's the power to build a team and to build something bigger than we can individually right and with our short-term rentals it it definitely helps to have a team and so we're one of the first team members that someone might hire is a virtual receptionist and or someone to help you a virtual assistant to help you with so many tasks we've talked about them

a lot on this show before and this week I wanted to break down some of the questions that we ask our potential candidates so we're in the hiring mode again and if you've listened to the podcast for a while you know that uh our team works all over the world really so we have people in Mexico in Europe in the Philippines and then of course in the US as well and I'm down here in Brazil at the moment although that's only about half the year I'll

be back in Columbia soon enough so uh just a few notes on hiring uh the first thing is when we get a resume from someone what is a resume a resume is basically a list of the best achievements that that person has made in their whole career excluding all of their biggest failures and challenges and blemishes it's just the best image of them that they could think of right because they created it themselves so a resume doesn't really help us much but questions can help us

a lot if we're asking the right questions that is and as long as we're giving them the opportunity to explain and talk and we get to know them right that's really how we can uncover if someone could be a good fit now there's lots and lots of resources out there on hiring you can obviously have your candidates take personality tests which I really recommend um the disk DC that's a very common one but we can save personality test for another episode we're just going to jump

into some of these interview questions I think I've got uh let's see 13 around 13 for you today uh and the first thing is when you're doing an interview a live interview especially if you're hiring someone that's from another country maybe English isn't their first language well sometimes they're nervous right everyone gets nervous um and the same goes for virtual interviews so just remember that and you kind of want to break the ice right and and ask some questions that aren't so harsh and I do

have some not harsh questions but some deep diving questions that you're going to like that I'll share here in a second so I like to ask just some basic questions like hey what do you do for fun or hey I noticed that you're in Albania or you are in the Philippines and then I asked some about where they actually live and I've traveled a ton uh over 80 countries now I think and a lot of them have gone back to that's kind of how I got

back into short-term rentals so if you're new to the channel uh I still stay in a whole lot of short-term rentals but I always kind of start with that because I have that in common I can say oh yeah I most the time I've been to these places and it's kind of fun to bring up those memories so so I always like to start off easy so that they're feeling comfortable and then I start to get into the questions so mind you we don't get to

the interview stage until we've already asked a lot of questions via email and we even ask our candidates to send us a video before we get to the live uh interview and and the video allows us to really see their English level again this is if you're hiring someone that's in a foreign country where English isn't their their first language but I know a lot of you are out there so um I like to start off just with the background like can you tell me again

about your work background and I know that you already answered a lot of these questions in our emails luckily we have some really great people on our team now that are doing a lot of the filtering out uh before I get to the interview but I still am interviewing everyone that joins our team and I do find it exciting so I asked them about their work background just to give it to me again yes I have the resume yes I have their responses from all the

emails that they've sent back and forth we do about like three or four series of emails to see if people can follow directions to see how serious they are about the position so that weeds out a lot of people uh so we go over a little bit about the background and then there's some other basic generic questions I don't really like to ask these basic generic ones but I'm just going to put them in here we'll start off and then we'll get into some of the

juicy questions here in a second so what qualities make you a team player so we have our core values laid out on our job postings all the time if you've never thought about your core values or maybe you're just getting started and you just have one property uh it's important to think about these things so these could be things like honesty really big for us accountability really big for us and teamwork really big for us us as well these are this is a team team sport

here with short-term rentals so we also have continuous Improvement and our last core value our fifth core value is positive guest experience always because if our guests don't have a positive experience you know what happens they don't leave positive reviews and you know what that does to your short-term rental it really hurts your Revenue so those are core values maybe think that through if this is your first time hiring someone what's really important to you uh and you know there's a lot of discussion out there

do we hire someone based off the experience they have or do we hire them based off their values I would say a lot of the things we do in the short- terminal world uh are much more procedural right so most people can learn them without too much challenge uh so you may want to look at the core values but that's up for debate so okay what qualities make a team player what do you look for in an employer so these are pretty basic questions you've heard

another really generic question you're going to hear tell me about when you had a problem and how you handled it right these are questions that people pretty much prepare for before an interview because they know they get asked all the time so let's get into some more important questions uh and dig a little bit deeper first of all you're hiring someone virtually you want to ask about their experience working virtually what experience do you have working virtually how long have you worked virtually do you have

distractions at home do you have family members you can ask these things right how was their communication at their last position where they worked virtually just keep digging and remember to give them some time to respond right A lot of times we find ourselves uh if we see that the other person's may be a little uncomfortable they don't know quite how to respond or they're not quite prepared then we sort of just answer for them or we keep talking but you don't want to do that

in an interview you want to give them the chance to tell you what's on their mind here's another good one what benefit of remote work do you value the most so a lot of times we hear well I don't have to commute anymore and yeah that's a great one that's that's why so many people are working remote now let them explain to you and this also get them a little more excited about the position as you go on here's a good one what would your last

boss or manager say about you remember to leave that silence in there another good one you'll want to ask especially hiring virtually what tools are you familiar with what tools have you used before if someone does have short-term rental experience well you want to ask them have you used price Labs have you used property management programs are you familiar with Airbnb I mean all these things hopefully you got out of the way before you even get to the interview but give them a chance to let

them tell you what tools they've used over their career uh if this is a virtual position then they have to be a little techy right cuz everything's happening online remember to keep digging so if they talk about one tool ask them what their favorite feature was about it ask them if it help improve their efficiency if so in what way okay so we want to know about their work background we want to know what they're looking for in this virtual position we want to know about

the tools we want to know about challenges they've had here's another question that probably doesn't get asked very often is asking them who is is the most ambitious or driven person you know so this isn't one that's very common and they're going to have to think about it uh unless they're tuning in to this podcast which we do have people tuning in and gosh I don't know the exact number anymore but I want to see like over 80 countries so thank you for all of you

tuning in and if you haven't left us a review yet well I would really appreciate that it is amazing getting uh the feedback uh and I always love hearing from you I read every email so go to Str strr riches.com submit a request for a topic or just let us know what you think and I will read it I promise uh here's another question when was your last passionate debate who was it with and what was it about how did it turn out so we want

to pause after all these questions but this is one that really they're going to have to think about and they're going to pull something up it might not be good what they pull up uh but hopefully it allows you to uncover just a little bit more kind of what they value and and the type of person that they are uh here's another one and this one I haven't heard very often at all and this one's a little harsh but why shouldn't I hire you what are

your biggest weaknesses so we hear that one all the time you know and someone will turn a weakness into a positive you know like well I I always show up too early so yes we hear that one all the time but why shouldn't I hire you that's a pretty that's a pretty good one give it a try if you're out there looking to bring on a new team member another one that I really like what motivates you the most so I think most people when they

respond they know not to say things like uh oh I'm really motivated to to make more and more money or things like that and they they sort of search for something that's going to help fulfill the company you would hope uh believe me it's not always that way um but hopefully there's something there that is a little bit outside of money obviously we all need to make money that's why we get a job um but maybe someone someone's interested in investing in real estate or maybe

someone that loves to travel and they'd love to host guests if there's some sort of underlying attributes to your job or your position or the way you posted it uh that really has them excited well it's going to be a lot easier to keep them excited and sort of keep that momentum going as you bring them on to your team uh another question I like to ask and this one gets asked all the time but it's a good one tell me where you see yourself in

3 years and sometimes you'll see people say you know well I I plan to become a doctor and something that has nothing to do with the actual job that we're posting we know that not everyone maybe wants to stay a guest receptionist or wants to work on support tickets or something like that um but a a good answer is still going to incorporate your business right you know maybe they say I want to start an entry level position but I want to move up I want

to have people working underneath me I want to be part of a company or working with an owner that has plans to grow their portfolio Everyone likes to have a sense of direction right so you need to be able to provide that for them what your future plans are and hopefully the two of yours match up at least a little bit uh the last one here is also a good one it's just what questions do you have for me and so if you've had a series

of email questions going back and forth sometimes people don't always have a question depends on how good your job posting was but uh usually it's nice it's nice for them to have something right shows it that they care so that's it that wasn't any particular order and those are some generic questions but I guarantee there's some in there that you haven't asked before uh and if you haven't hired your first assistant or your first team member to help you with your short-term rental or your short-term

rentals I highly suggest it uh luckily we live in a world that's super virtual these days we can do things from thousands of miles away way all we need is a good internet connection and so if you're right on the fence I hope you take the leap and I hope these questions and I hope our podcast and all of our prior episodes we've talked about this before including places where you can post your position we've talked about those in Prior episodes you can check them all

out at Str strr riches.com and we also have a really cool tool now that you can use for free on Str strr riches.com that will help you find all these episodes without having to search them it's actually a clone of myself I know that sounds crazy but uh we've been producing content for years and years tons and tons of hours and we're also on YouTube video if you're listening to the audio version and sometimes it's hard to remember exactly when we talked about a certain thing

but we've talked about most things now uh I forget the episode numbers to and so this is a way just to go back and really ask it anything you can ask it what bed mattress we like to use use in our properties you can ask it if you should work with a independent housekeeper or housekeeping company really sky's the limit it's trained on all of the content that we've produced for years and years uh and it's got a good sense of humor too so go to

ses.com check it out there's a little bot button in the bottom right uh I think you'll like it until next time I hope you have a fabulous week want to get on the fast track to Financial Freedom through short-term rentals well it 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 rest methods.com that's reest methods.com