Jeremy Weisz 16:27
What else would you say someone’s asking for one thing, but you’re saying, No, you’re actually looking for this. So in that case, the person comes in saying, I’m looking for a VA to do all these things, and you’re saying, you know, I think what you’re really asking is for an operations manager. What’s another example where they’re coming in saying one thing, and you’re kind of pointing them in, you know, a specific direction?
Noel Andrews 16:52
Yeah, there’s, I think it’s probably two really obvious examples. One is the term virtual assistant, or VA, right? It is, we never use it, right? In terms of relating tiny hires, because people associate it with, you know, very, very cheap people to just do tasks in general, other regions of the world. And so generally, what we find people really need is either someone to really do a job. So some people refer to a video editor as a VA, right? Well, they are a virtual person if they’re working online and remotely fine, but a video editor is a really skilled job. So there’s definitely peace around the term around VA. I think the other one that’s most common these days is people come in saying, hey, I need a marketing manager. And I’m like, oh, 15 years ago, you could hire a marketing manager and there’d be a nice generalist marketing manager. And there were, I don’t know there were 10 channels, right, that they could be managing. Now there’s 58, or 580, depending on what kind of channels you think about, right? It’s so broad, you know, people come in and say, hey, I want a marketing manager that can do all my marketing and be great at everything, I’m like It doesn’t exist. IYou’ve got to focus and think about, what kind of marketing do I want doing? Hire someone that is inexperienced and skilled in those one or two key channels and knows enough about the others to know when to get help or whether that should be the priority for the strategy. So I think marketing manager is still a term that’s out there, but it’s very, very broad, and so we have to narrow that one down a lot.
Jeremy Weisz 18:16
So maybe you’d say, Okay, you’re looking for a marketing manager, but what do you really want to do? And they say, I want to do, you know, maybe Google and Facebook or YouTube or something. And you’ll recommend finding a specialist in one or a couple of those who can also kind of just know the channels broadly to see what would be the best fit.
Noel Andrews 18:39
Yeah, exactly. It’s, you know, is it PPC? Is it content? Is it SEO? Is it partnerships, like, what are the channels that you want to have experience in so they can really, you know, replicate that and grow it. And I think the other piece with marketing managers, particularly, is oftentimes people come in and they want one person that can figure out the strategy, manage the execution, and be a marketing assistant as well. And what you either get is you either get someone on marketing assistant money trying to do strategy that doesn’t end well, or you end up with someone at, like, you know, not necessarily CMO level, but you know, really senior marketing person that can do strategy. But if you ask them then to do, you know, the nuts and bolts of it, yeah, probably going to be less happy doing that. So it’s finding that that right kind of compromise, or not to say, compromise, but middle ground between, right, where’s the strategy going to come from? Should that actually be a consultant, right? Should that be a, you know, short term paid engagement to help you figure out strategy, and then a manager, a really great manager, to actually, actually execute and be hands on and on and kind of get stuff done.
Jeremy Weisz 19:41
Love that. So some of the other mistakes, hiring too quickly, maybe not having you mentioned you have tests and other things in place, not being clear on the job description and the person. Any other big mistakes that you’ve seen people make or that you’ve made?
Noel Andrews 19:59
Yeah, I think the job post. We still see people put job posts on JobRack that are plain text, maybe with some bullet points, just to jazz it up a little bit, and people forget that they are trying to attract the absolute best talent to come and apply to them. So a job post needs to be like a sales page, right? So if you look at your own sales page for your website, it’s going to probably have a hero image at the top, it’s going to have a headline, it’s going to have a call to action and some subtext. It’s probably going to have some social proof in there, and client testimonials, things like that. It’s going to have clear steps on what to do next. And a job post should have exactly the same things, right?
So if you look at, you know, any of the job posts that we do for our clients or that we do for ourselves. We have all of these things. We include testimonials from our team saying what it’s like to work at jobrack, because the kinds of people we want to attract real team members, they care about this stuff. And imagine how compelling it is when you land on a job post and you see someone in the business already talking about how great it is to work there, right? So I think people often forget that you are selling an opportunity, right? And there is a hot competition, there is a, you know, there’s tons and tons of really great jobs out there. If you want to attract the best people, you’ve got to put effort into, you know, attracting them in the same way you would with a client or a prospect.
Jeremy Weisz 21:19
What about some big breakthroughs that you’ve figured out in the process? And it could be specifics. I mean, you mentioned test, but when you’re looking at the whole hiring process. What are some big breakthroughs you’ve had that you use, or you recommend your clients use to attract the best people?
Noel Andrews 21:40
So one of them is a really simple thing, actually. So we have always collected videos as part of the hiring process. The only exception is with technical roles, like software developers, we will typically hop on a call and not ask them to a video. But when we’re collecting videos, we used to have it as part of the application form because it was simpler, the process was better for all kinds of reasons. but we found a massive drop off in terms of the conversion rate, basically, from the people that would open the application form to completing it. And when we actually went out there and we started gathering feedback, what we found was that a lot of people will start a job application, maybe they’re on the bus, maybe they’re on the train, maybe they’re at, you know, on their lunch break. Who knows what? They might not be in a position to do the video there and then. So when we actually then separated it out into like a second stage. Now we do automate this, right? Someone fills in the application form, they are getting invited to complete the video. We saw a massive increase in conversion, both because they could then do it at a time that’s convenient for them in the next 24 to 48 hours, but also because there’s an element of Great, thank you so much, this is our next stage, so it feels like progression on a journey, not asking them to do too much too early.
Jeremy Weisz 22:53
Yes, you separate it out. When you look at the different stages, what does that look like?
Noel Andrews 22:58
Yeah, so typically there’s a so you’ve got the job post, you’ve got the application form recorder screening video, or record a video, and it’s, you know, we ask a few questions in that. And what we’re looking for on the video is we’re looking for energy, right? That’s the primary thing we’re looking for, energy and language skills. We then go into, typically, we’re going to then filter and take the best into a human to human interview, actually talk to them and get to know them, and that, for us is the only way to really filter people out effectively. We then take them into a test stage, and then we use the test and everything we’ve had so far to build a shortlist. And then, you know, if we’re hiring for ourselves, we go into longer, more in depth interviews.
If it’s for our clients, then our clients and agency owners are then going to choose their favorites from the shortlist and then interview, you know, maybe two or three from there, with the benefit of, you know, everything that we’ve done, our summaries, the test results, etc. And the tests that we do are, generally, we’re asking them to do kind of like representative tasks that they do for the role that, you know, it’s not going to be perfect, because they’ve not been onboarded into your business, but you are going to get a really clear view of, can they, you know, does it? Is it that suggestion that, oh, actually, they get it right, they can work in the kind of way we want to. And it gives a really, really great set of things to talk about at the interview.
Jeremy Weisz 24:17
I’m curious about the actual interview and some of the questions you ask, and I’ve heard you talk about this before, and one of the things you really look for is a great attitude. What questions are you asking, and what are you looking for in that interview from, like, an attitude perspective?
Noel Andrews 24:38
So I do a couple of pretty unusual things, and one of the things was given to me as a tip, when you’re trying to hire salespeople, you know what you want is them to be able to tell a story. And actually, what I realized is, for all team members, I want to be able to get to know them. So I start off, I get their permission. I’ll say something like, Hey, you know, would you agree that it’s more important for me to know who you are than what you’ve done, most people will say yes, and I’m like, Great well, and I take an unusual approach, but you can ask me to stop at any time. And I’ll ask them to tell me a story about one of their parents, and y’all listen, and then they’ll often share and it gets deep really, really quickly. We will talk, and I’ll ask them about what experience, what kind of childhood or teenage experience has shaped who they are today. And for me, this is a way of connecting with someone who hopefully might become a long term team member. It’s incredible, right? You get to a depth that you know, I get complimented on these interviews, even from the people we reject. They say it’s like no other interview they’ve had. It’s the best interview they’ve ever had. And that’s what we want and we aim for.
Then we use our values, right? So attention to detail is really, really important to us. So I’ll ask them things like, you know, when has your attention to detail saved the day? And that’s, you know, so some of these are, I’m really intentional with the wording, because someone that’s got good attention to detail will have saved the day at some point, and your definition of saved the day will be different. But that’s the kind of thing we’re looking for. And we’re looking for, you know, how do they bring this to life? But the biggest thing for me is getting to know people and getting past the, you know, the standard HR kind of questions that often aren’t actually that helpful.
Jeremy Weisz 26:18
I love it. No. Thanks for sharing that, Noel, it’s super helpful. So now the person is hired. You hire someone, we are talking before we hit record about you really are focused on making the delivery process and refining that, making it better and better. What are some of the things you’ve done to refine the delivery process?
Noel Andrews 26:43
Yeah, big thing that we did so we used to have a separate approach, so we had recruiters, and we had account managers, right? And the recruiters were kind of back office and didn’t liaise directly with our clients. And then we had the account managers doing that. And it worked, but it was very noisy internally, right? Our Slack channels were just buzzing right? And one of the things we realized as we grew, and we grew pretty quickly and then hit a bit of a ceiling, and we were trying to figure out what was going on, and we realized that our structure wasn’t right, so we changed that. And so we now have massively enhanced the kind of the quality, and we’ve changed out quite a few people. So we now have recruitment partners that are directly working with the clients right. One on one, their job is to stay incredibly close to the client throughout the hiring process. It’s like they’re on a, you know, we’re on a journey together, typically five to six weeks. We’re going to do this together. We’re going to communicate really, really closely. So that was a big shift, moving away from that account manager model to, you know, higher quality, you know, people that not only are really, really amazing recruiters, but also can manage clients and can manage agency owners who are busy, who have got lots of conflicting priorities, etc, and managing to kind of become kind of best friends with them for that for that period. So that was a big shift.
And I think another shift for me, and it was really, really difficult, was we were about three years in since we launched the process, and I realized that the manager that had been with me since the very, very start, actually, we’d hit her kind of like limit, basically, we’d hit her kind of capability limit. And, you know, one of the tricky things is that she, for various reasons, was uncoachable now, because I’m a big believer that, like most people, can grow and have a huge kind of capacity to grow, as long as they’re coachable. And in this case, that wasn’t the case. So very, very difficult decision to, you know, she exited the business, and I brought in a head of recruitment to lead our kind of delivery and recruitment function, specifically someone that had done this before, that had delivered recruitment and a recruitment operation at scale, and knew what that took and how to really kind of develop people, because that’s That’s what it’s about.
Jeremy Weisz 28:59
So someone, bring someone on. Talk about culture retention, especially you know, obviously you’ve been in this remote world for a long time. What are some of the things you’ve seen or you do that help maintain that culture in the remote world?
Noel Andrews 29:18
Yeah, so there’s a whole bunch of things that we do. There’s two that are probably my favorites. One is I do lots of loom videos to my team just day to day, like I’ll normally do at least a couple of week, and it will normally be as I’m walking somewhere, maybe I’m walking to a WeWork office, walking back from the gym, and I’m just letting them know what I’m up to and what’s going on. I’ll often share feedback that we’ve had from the clients, things like that. But you know, a lot of the time agency teams don’t really know what the owner’s doing, right? They don’t know what they spend their time doing. So I use that as a way of really, really keeping connected with the team. I speak to them every day. We have a team stand up, but the looms, just letting them know how I’m doing, how I’m feeling, what’s going on, that helps a huge amount, and the team really, really like and appreciate that.
So that’s one thing, the other thing, and it’s the simplest little thing we do birthday cards. So we have a little tool that we use called sendwishonline.com It looks like something out of like maybe the early 2000s and it’s just an electronic greeting card tool. And everyone gets the link, they can put a meme or a gear for a picture and a message, and then it gets sent to the team member on their birthday. And people love it. People really, really love it. We do work anniversaries as well, and that is something that, yeah, really, kind of like builds, kind of for me, culture is that little things that you do that build and make the kind of culture you want, rather than some grand gesture that people think culture is all about.
Jeremy Weisz 30:45
I love that. I’d love to understand maybe a little bit more about what you do through some specific examples. I know one of the companies you helped is newfangled.
Noel Andrews 30:59
Yeah, so Newfangled with Mark and the team there, we’ve been working with for about three, three and a half years now. And Mark and I, as I do with so many agency owners, you know, he’d heard about this remote hiring, and he’d heard about Eastern Europe and the quality people. And so we hopped on a call, and we just chatted through, well, what’s possible, like, what’s you know, what are the people like, and what roles can you hire? And so we started with one role. We hired them a WordPress developer, as it was at the time, and then just kind of built out from there and and I always remember these kind of conversations where people hire their first person from Eastern Europe or South Africa, and then it’s normally a few months later, and they come back and they’re like, no, like, oh my god, you didn’t tell me these people were that good. I’m like, well, well, I did, but I don’t want to sound too salesy, and from that, it’s built out.
We’ve hired, I think, around seven or eight people for Mark and the Newfangled team over this last kind of three and a half years. They have an entire team out in Eastern Europe, and they’re achieving incredible things, right? Both because of the quality of the people and the cost base is helpful too, but it’s for me, it’s not the cost or the reduced cost that keeps people coming back. It’s the quality of the people. And so that has been huge. And so, yeah, I chat to Mark and the team there regularly, and we’re always looking and you know what I love about the team at Newfangled particularly, is that they really have taken on board the importance of treating people like real team members. So we talk a lot about, you know, right, what’s the next step in terms of benefits? And, you know, kind of treating people the same, regardless of, you know, their contractor status or which country they’re in.
Jeremy Weisz 32:31
There was another one, Neol, a London based marketing company,
Noel Andrews 32:36
Yeah. So marketing agency here in London, they’ve got a team of about 15 people, and they were really struggling to hire account managers here in London. They’ve got two or three already, and what they were finding when they were hiring is just the quality was not there, and it was really, really expensive. And so they came there again, they were referred in to us, and we had a chat, and then we went out and we hired them two account managers, and it the It’s been huge for them. The reason that I’m not going to name them is because they’ve said kind of pretty openly to me that these account managers are the best account managers they’ve ever hired. And that’s not the best for Eastern Europe. It’s just the best full stop. The biggest challenge they’re having is stopping them working too many hours, because the two people they’ve got are just incredibly passionate and are loving the difference they’re making. And we’ve just been hiring some other roles for them right now. So they’ve, they’ve had huge, huge benefits from just getting just incredible quality people really, really great experience that love the opportunity to work for, in this case, a UK, a London based agency.
Jeremy Weisz 33:39
Yeah, are there certain skills? Or what do you look for in a really good account manager?
Noel Andrews 33:47
First thing is just their energy, right? It’s the most important thing, right? When they come on a call with a client, or when they email someone, it’s how are they showing up? What’s their energy like? That’s the first thing. Second thing for me is, I like to see, I want to see experience, right? I want them to have, you know, got their reps in, or been around the block a few times, you know, to use those kind of cliches, so that they’ve just seen the different types of clients that are out there. There’s lovely clients, there are nightmare clients, right? And they just need someone ideally, having had experience at you know, how to manage them, how to change their approach. For different people and different personalities. That, for me, is actually the biggest, like most important skill for an account manager, not just having one approach for everybody. You’ve got to change it based on who you’re dealing with. Naturally, you then get into attention to detail, the fact that they could be creative in problem solving and things like that. But for me, if they’ve got energy and the ability to adapt their style, but the situation and the client, that’s the main thing.
Jeremy Weisz 34:44
Because I feel like it’s a lot, it’s a very unique skill set. You know? It’s almost contradictory sometimes where you have to be super nice and listen, but also sometimes be able to push back on people as well.
Noel Andrews 35:01
Sure, yeah, we hired probably the most interesting kind of account manager, and it was an account manager and accountability manager for a client of ours. You might know her, actually, Mandi, over at Hands-Off CEO. And so they’re an amazing firm, and they kind of help agency owners with growth. They have an amazing coaching program, and what they needed was someone to kind of account manage their clients, who are CEOs and owners of agencies. They needed to keep them accountable to the actions that they’d agreed with on their coaching course. So they needed to find someone who was, you know, very gentle, but also could be pretty robust and pretty bolshy, and, you know, call out Jeremy, you know, people like you and me and be like, Jeremy, you’ve not done the things you’ve said you’re gonna said you’re gonna do, you gotta do them, the deadlines Thursday, right? That was fascinating. And we found an amazing person. They’re absolutely crushing it for Mandi and Mandi’s team there. So again, we do, we find these people. And I think one of the things that helps here is that the communication style and cultural style in Eastern Europe particularly, is very direct. Someone recently said to me, they’re like, Oh yeah, it’s like, they’re from New York. And I’m like, okay, great analogy. Love that. I’m going to use that. And so that kind of directness, not rude, but just just straight and super refreshing. But that it does help that culturally, that’s the norm.
Jeremy Weisz 36:24
Yeah, I did see that, I think somewhere on your page that said somewhere like straightforward to the point. Oh, yeah, no, fluff, no. BS, just honest, direct communication.
Noel Andrews 36:36
Exactly. So refreshing, so refreshing.
Jeremy Weisz 36:39
Yeah, people could check out. I did an interview with Mandi of Hands-Off CEO. She’s got a great book, Hands-Off CEO, so people can check that out as well. Noel, I’m curious, you know, I know we’re always trying to grow as leaders, um, just to uplevel our own skills. And I’m wondering, what resources have you found to be helpful? Whether it’s books or distant mentors that you follow.
Noel Andrews 37:05
Yeah, so I think I’ve had a lot of coaching over the years in various different ways, from mindset through business coaching programs. I’m very fortunate in that I’m in some really, really amazing communities of entrepreneurs and business owners, and I spend a lot of my time that’s my friendship group now, which I absolutely love. And so I get a lot of kind of input, and, you know, kind of peer feedback, and we challenge each other there. I think one of the things that I’m working on at the moment is, you know, who do I need to be for this next stage of business growth? And you know, what do I need to let go of, particularly, and it’s, it’s far more letting go of things than it is taking on new things. So that’s very much a work in progress right now. It’s, you know, the cliche is, you know what got me here, won’t get me there. And, you know, hustle and determination and sheer grit has, you know, got us this far. That’s got to change. I’ve got to be, you know, I’m well aware there’s going to need to be more leadership, potentially slightly less action and definitely more thinking. And I have a bias for action. So that’s a work in progress.
Jeremy Weisz 38:09
What have you found so far about what you need to let go of?
Noel Andrews 38:17
I think, letting go of doing things. I am very, very organized and with a bias for action. It means I can get a lot of stuff done. Doesn’t mean I should, though, so letting go of just things that maybe I could just let the team do. But you know, actually, sometimes it’s quicker for me to do it, and so therefore I do it. I think saying I have a tendency to say yes to everything. I’m a very social person. I love hosting events and gatherings and bringing people together and helping people connect. And so, like, I get an invite for something that’s vague, that’s interesting and with kind of good people, I’m almost certainly going to say yes and that I need to be more restrained about that, because everything has a consequence. It takes me away from, you know, any chance at just having gaps in my diary to really think, and not 15 minute gaps in my diary, but 3, 4, 5, hour blocks in my diary to really, really kind of think about stuff.
Jeremy Weisz 39:08
I’m curious. What have you found that’s important for you to stop doing? I know, like I ask as I struggle with this as well, so selfishly asked, but like John and I, my business partner, will have an intervention meeting. We used to have it once a week, and basically the intervention meeting was on me. I don’t know. I guess I’m the problem, on what I should stop doing, literally. So I’m curious what you have found to be helpful that you stopped doing?
Noel Andrews 39:41
Yeah, it’s early days. I think if we asked my team, they’d say, I haven’t been entirely successful at stopping doing things yet.
Jeremy Weisz 39:47
They’re the best people to ask, the team. They know exactly what you should stop doing.
Noel Andrews 39:52
Yeah, we’re doing a big push right now around some automation, around like internal process, and last week we’d had a few good sessions with the team. We’d identified some clear priorities and how we could move some things forwards. And then that afternoon, I found myself jumping into the Zapier, amending some zaps. I was in my element. I was loving it. And halfway through, I’d spent about an hour on it, I was like, Ah, this isn’t the thing. Stop doing it like Theodora or my team member, she can do this, right? And so I did actually wind my way back out of it, saved it as a draft, and then let her know. But so that’s a good example of things. If other people can do them, then I just need to let them do it. But yeah, it’s early days.
Jeremy Weisz 40:30
It’s tough for me. I get it. Communities, you mentioned there’s really important. It could be ones that you’re a part of, or just ones you heard are really good. And I know there’s different agency communities. What ones have you heard are good?
Noel Andrews 40:47
Yeah, so I’m in a few. The Bureau of Digital is an amazing agency community headed up by Carl Smith. I’ve been to some of their events. I spend a lot of time chatting to people from that community that’s a really, really nice, Slack based community with lots of events. Obviously, you know, Jason Swenk’s program and community that’s around that. I hear amazing, amazing things. I’ve partnered with Jason and the team and Derby there for a few years now. And then I’m in some separate kind of non agency specific ones. So one’s the Dynamite Circle, which I’ve been in for nearly eight years. Location Independent Entrepreneurs is the kind of theme from the guys that run the TMBA Podcast. That’s, you know, that was where I bought JobRack. JobRack was born in their forum back in 2015 and, you know, that’s how I kind of found it and grew from there. And then, more recently, I’m in Hampton, which is the community founded by Sam Parr. And again, really, really great collection of people. I think the common thread for me with the communities that I really enjoy is that they are of people that have got a growth mindset, but that are also really giving, really open about things, and there’s good levels of vulnerability. They’re the ones that I enjoy.
Jeremy Weisz 41:57
Love it. I have one last question, Noel. First of all, thank you. Thanks for sharing your story, your journey, your lessons, really valuable. Everyone can check out jobrack.eu to learn more. And my last question, I’m always curious. I don’t know if you’re an audiobook listener or reader. I’m curious about some of your favorites, maybe books or audio books, or it could even be podcasts that you found helpful.
Noel Andrews 42:28
Yeah, my absolute favorite is called The Power of Moments, and it’s a brilliant book, and it is all about the opportunity that we have as business owners, and all business owners have to create moments for our clients. And I think most businesses are terrible at this, right? There’s so many interactions and moments that are just average at best. And yet this book makes it really kind of easy to kind of to digest. It’s very, very inspiring. It links back into, you know, the founders of Airbnb talked about, like the 11 star customer experience, you know, way back years ago, this was so, yeah, The Power of Moments is a really, really great one. And again, I kind of almost like challenge every agency owner to then just look at their kind of client process and go, Hey, how can we deliver some really great moments in this process?
Unreasonable Hospitality is another one on a very, very similar vein. But again, they’re the ones for me that I think that’s what sets us apart. Like, I’m working really hard and have done for many years now to build a very helpful, friendly and personal business. There’s so many faceless businesses out there. Every time I get an email from support or sales and I’m just, I’m like, head in hands, like, what are you doing? Like, this is crazy. Who is it? Whereas, you know, anyone that goes to jobrack.eu and sees our page or clicks on our about page, it is really clear who we are, you know what we’re about. You know, we post all of our team pictures up there. We’ve got our team retreat videos. It’s all about how we are real people. This is who you’re going to be working with. And for me, like people want to work with people. So and hiring is so much about the people side. So, yeah, The Power of Moments and Unreasonable Hospitality, two really great books on that topic.
Jeremy Weisz 44:08
Noel, thank you so much. Everyone. Check out more episodes of the podcast. You could check out jobrack.eu, and we’ll see you for next time. Thanks so much. Thanks, Noel.
Noel Andrews 44:19
Cheers, Jeremy. Take care.
