Episode #044: Hire A Thriving Team With Emily Perron

Blog Title: Emily Perron

Social Media:

IG: https://www.instagram.com/emily.perron/

FB: https://www.facebook.com/perron.emily

About: Emily Perron helps bloggers expand and improve their teams with people who care about them and their businesses. She has developed a strategic hiring process that’s allowed her to find dozens of knock-out contractors on behalf of her clients, as well as within her own business, and is passionate about aligning the right person with the right role. Emily has a Master’s Degree in Industrial and Organizational Psychology and Bachelor’s Degrees in Psychology and English. Her professional background includes working in marketing, coaching and organizational consulting. In other words, she really understands people, and her zone of genius is connecting on a fundamental level to understand their values and empower them to reach for interesting and ambitious opportunities.

Notes from Episode #044: 5 Steps To Hiring a Thriving Team

Fun fact: Emily is a Renaissance Soul – meaning she has 100’s of interests and hobbies, not just one she focuses on. Some examples are projects like knitting, quilting, loving to cook and bake. She watches college basketball and enjoys fantasy football.

Emily left her corporate job 4 years ago and early on put her education to use in hiring people; free lancers specifically. Before creating this super solid hiring process, she made *so many* mistakes. That’s why she’s worked so hard to develop and refine a hiring process that was less overwhelming, less stressful and resulted in finding amazing candidates every time. She tested and refined her process so she could find the right people. 

• Winter 2018 – Emily’s blogger friends came to her and asked for help to find good help. She was a resource to friends and so decided to make this her business. 

• Emily first developed an organization strategy. That sounds official but it just means a vision was being created for the team and what roles were needed before deciding to hire anyone. Everyone’s team is going to look different based on skill sets of the blogger and what he/she needs. 

1 – Develop an organizational strategy

How do you know where to start?

• Process mapping is writing down everything that is in your core processes. All of those steps and parts need to be written down. 

• Emily recommends using post it notes so you can write down a job or process and move them around in front of you to visualize and see how it flows. Then you can see what you can do, a VA and social media manager can do. This is something you build towards, it’s not to suggest you do it all at once. But start with what is the hardest and what’s being struggled to get done, that’s a great place to start.

I’ve been upsold by contractors a couple times.

I soon learned the key to hiring the right person was having an organizational strategy. It’s a document that has all the roles in my business right now and the roles that I want to add. It also has the main responsibilities for each role on it.

This has helped me put boundaries on my hiring decisions.

2- Write a mega-attractive job posting and never skip the application process even if you know someone.

I’ve found that the best freelancers are super selective. They don’t apply to vague job postings because they can’t tell whether they are a good fit.

I give detailed expectations about the role and important information about the business, and I ask specific questions so that I can compare the candidates better. In your actual posting you should include the following 5 things: 1 – General description of what you’re looking for and what qualities. 2- Ongoing responsibilities in the position 3 – Preferred qualifications. Years of experience, background, characteristics 4- A little about you and your blog 5 – When do you want them to apply. Deadline. Then, instead of a cover letter, ask them to answer questions.

I ask things like… Why are you the best candidate for this position? What is your Zone of Genius? Are you a perfectionist, why or why not?

3 – Rate everything

Instead of looking at an application and asking myself whether I wanted to interview the candidate, I added a work sample. It gave me better perspective: do I want to see more from this candidate?

I also rate everything… the responses to my questions, the work samples and the interviews.

This makes it so much easier for me to see who should move forward in the hiring process.

4 – Conduct effective interviews

Two things that have helped me the most… asking evidence-based questions and listening for examples throughout the interview.

Things to look out for: If the candidate pitches things other than what the posting is for, they are out. If the questions you requested to be answered aren’t answered, then this candidate is out.

Always close an interview with when and where the candidate will hear from you. 

5 – Create a positive onboarding experience

My philosophy is to hire slow and fire fast. I love to use trial periods to make sure that the best candidate really is the best fit for the long-term.

The hiring process can take 3-4 weeks, really weeding out the wrong people.

Trial periods – Start with 30 days to see how it works. You can release them quickly if its not working.

• If you have a good person selected but communication is not great, be sure to change up your communication style and see if that helps to improve things. 

• When letting people go, Emily recommends putting it in an email. Then it’s in writing and includes documentation that you’ve attempted to hear from them and relayed what was required. 

• If your business evolves and what you need changes and its not a good fit to keep the same team, you might have to consider changing staff. Emily said that freelancers are familiar with this, they are flexible in this area and kind of have that built into their contracts, being more short term with businesses. It’s usually business owners that are nervous to communicate the need to change.

Emily’s learned and recommends being really intentional about giving feedback during the first few months of working together… Sometimes it’s uncomfortable but it’s always worth it because the contractor doesn’t know what I think unless I tell them.

Tips to retaining the help you’ve found and cultivated:

• Build a relationship with your contractors. You don’t have to be best friends but you want to know them and be in touch regularly. Check in to see what can make working together better – more time for deadlines, tools to make life easier. Checking in monthly is a good time frame or more frequently if necessary.

• Get to know them on a personal level. They will support you more if you share personal parts of your life and connect personally. 

• Give feedback: let them know if they do something awesome. Let them know when they miss the mark so they can adjust or improve. If you don’t tell them, they won’t read your mind so it’s going to create frustration that can be avoided.

Favorite Quote: From the book Happier, by Tal Ben Shahar: “Happiness is not about making it to the peak of the mountain, nor is it about climbing aimlessly around the mountain, happiness is the experience of climbing towards the peak.”

Helpful references from the episode:

Job posting challenge: https://www.emilyperron.com/jobpostingtemplate

Learn the secrets of an attractive job posting and write one using my formula so it’s ready to post within five days.

The One Thing a Virtual Assistant Can’t Do: https://www.emilyperron.com/blog/one-thing-a-virtual-assistant-cant-do

Upwork (hiring platform with high-quality freelancers): http://upwork.com/