Would love to hear everyone's thoughts on interviewing, hiring, and managing a virtual team to scale.
The solopreneur style works great, but there comes to a point where you need to hire additional help to scale the company.
For those of you with a team of hourly freelancers/virtual employees, do you give them set work hours in which they have to complete tasks in? Or do you give more flexibility?
Thoughts on keeping virtual hourly employees accountable and tracking their progress?
Some overall things I've learned from my experience of going from solo-preneur to a team of 4 people;
1. Spend more money to hire A players- if you have someone charging $20 an hour and someone offering to work for $5 an hour, don't always choose the $5 an hour person because of cost. The $20 an hour person could do the work in much less time, actually saving you money. They also could require less input/instruction from you, which saves your time and energy.
On the other hand, don't assume because someone is expensive means they are better. Always test them.
2. Don't assume someone is an expert because of credentials, especially on sites like Upwork. Always check their actual work via test tasks. We were burned thousands of dollars by a "Top Rated Translator" who we later found out was using a translation machine.
3. Create systems that guide your team; Have set procedures that the team member can refer to, instead of them having to ask you for input all of the time. (Ex. a document containing a budget for negotiation amounts)
4. Create a difficult interview process that includes them having to deliver immediate results. The best people accept a challenge, others who aren't serious will withdraw themselves from the job.
hope this helps. If anyone has books on managing/scaling a company, that would be helpful as well!
The solopreneur style works great, but there comes to a point where you need to hire additional help to scale the company.
For those of you with a team of hourly freelancers/virtual employees, do you give them set work hours in which they have to complete tasks in? Or do you give more flexibility?
Thoughts on keeping virtual hourly employees accountable and tracking their progress?
Some overall things I've learned from my experience of going from solo-preneur to a team of 4 people;
1. Spend more money to hire A players- if you have someone charging $20 an hour and someone offering to work for $5 an hour, don't always choose the $5 an hour person because of cost. The $20 an hour person could do the work in much less time, actually saving you money. They also could require less input/instruction from you, which saves your time and energy.
On the other hand, don't assume because someone is expensive means they are better. Always test them.
2. Don't assume someone is an expert because of credentials, especially on sites like Upwork. Always check their actual work via test tasks. We were burned thousands of dollars by a "Top Rated Translator" who we later found out was using a translation machine.
3. Create systems that guide your team; Have set procedures that the team member can refer to, instead of them having to ask you for input all of the time. (Ex. a document containing a budget for negotiation amounts)
4. Create a difficult interview process that includes them having to deliver immediate results. The best people accept a challenge, others who aren't serious will withdraw themselves from the job.
hope this helps. If anyone has books on managing/scaling a company, that would be helpful as well!
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