Speaker 0 00:00:00 We help you write the job score card. We collaborate with you to write the job score card. We collaborate with you to write the job ad, which is pretty easy. Once you've written the job score card, we post the job ad into our private talent pool that we've got in the Philippines at the moment we just fo we just recruit in the Philippines. Okay. Because we've got a great talent pool over there, and we've got a unicorn over there called Michelle. We do the initial vetting of the candidates. So we put them through an English proficiency test, a disk profile. We check their internet speed. We do a background check on them. We put them through communication test. We put them through online development test. If they're developers, right, we do that stuff. And so we might get 15 to 20 applicants for a role, but we only give you, like, once you come in here, you'll only see the top three candidates. Uh, you you'll see a bunch of candidates come in here, but you'll only ever get the top three come into the short list. And then we introduce them to you on email and you take over the process and you put them through the interview process based on our documentation.
Speaker 1 00:00:59 If you have a vision for the agency you want to build, then we want to help you build it. Welcome to the agency. Our podcast brought to you by agency Mavericks.
Speaker 0 00:01:09 Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, wherever you are around the world. Welcome to another episode of the agency hour. Live here in the digital Mavericks, Facebook group, bit of a departure from normal programming this week. We don't have any funk music. You might notice we have some Sicilian sounding music. And, uh, my guest, my co-host this week on the agency hour is my good friend and coach from oh, who is Pete crispy butter Perry, ladies and gentlemen. Wow. That you are looking dapper. My friend, you are looking dapper. Indeed. A man. Not to be missed with how are you Mr. Crispy butter?
Speaker 2 00:02:06 I'm doing alright.
Speaker 0 00:02:08 Oh, listen to those times
Speaker 2 00:02:09 And times
Speaker 0 00:02:10 Now you've been acting this week. I hear,
Speaker 2 00:02:13 I even brought the cans
Speaker 0 00:02:15 <laugh> Man. Yes,
Speaker 2 00:02:23 I am. Um, I'm in a, I'm in a, an organization that does a play once a year and we it's a ridiculous farce of an event. And we are doing the God brother, not the godfather. We're doing the God brother and dress rehearsal was tonight. So I figured
Speaker 0 00:02:43 So is so is this what you wear in the play? Is this what you're wearing in the play?
Speaker 2 00:02:46 I'm a, I'm a gangster in the play. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:02:48 Wow. Wow.
Speaker 2 00:02:51 Actually have two roles. I'm I'm a gangster. And I'm also like a director, like a Cecil B DEMIL kind of
Speaker 0 00:02:56 Director Uhhuh. Oh yes. Cecil B DEMIL. Oh man. You're taking me back. Um, of course, most of the audience watching this had no idea what we are talking about because they weren't alive. Uh, the, the, is it the same play that you do every year?
Speaker 2 00:03:10 No, no. It's a, it's a different play like, uh, right. A couple years ago it was a, it was, um, 50 shades of gray hair.
Speaker 0 00:03:18 <laugh>
Speaker 2 00:03:20 And it was, it was BA it was also the 50th anniversary of Woodstock 2019. So we did like, it was in modern time, but like all the Woodstock people were now in the same nursing home.
Speaker 0 00:03:35 <laugh> that's fantastic.
Speaker 2 00:03:38 I'll uh, so you do something different every year. It's it's really ridiculous. We do, um, song parities and the guy who writes the guy who writes the lyrics for song parities is a genius, like really good stuff.
Speaker 0 00:03:50 That's great. That's fantastic. This does tie in nicely with something that we're not allowed to talk about, but something that, um, might be coming up in the next, uh, few weeks here at agency Maverick. Oh, I'm not really allowed to talk about it much. I don't think,
Speaker 2 00:04:08 Oh, I thought I thought we were gonna, I didn't realize we weren't gonna talk about it.
Speaker 0 00:04:11 Well, you know, you know what they say, man, like the first role of first world fight club is don't talk about fight club. Right?
Speaker 2 00:04:16 Right, exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:04:18 Um,
Speaker 2 00:04:19 And we all know, we all know you have a hard time keeping secrets.
Speaker 0 00:04:22 I'm terrible at keeping secrets. Um, how, how, however, max, do you maybe just confirm with Emily or someone else behind the scenes? Uh, is there a, do we have a, do we, is there a waiting list? Is there a waiting list that we are sending people to for this thing just yet? Is there,
Speaker 2 00:04:41 I confirm a message from Emily that says
Speaker 0 00:04:45 You're just getting, I
Speaker 2 00:04:46 Can share, I can share links to the wait list.
Speaker 0 00:04:49 Great. All right. And does that mean the cat's outta the bag? If we share a link to the wait list, does that mean? No, it's not. There we go. Here it is. Agency mavericks.com/launch wait list. Wow. I haven't even, I have, I haven't even seen this page. I have no idea. What's even there. I'm gonna go check it out right now.
Speaker 2 00:05:07 Let's not say anything about it. Let's just see if people sign up for it without us talking about. Okay. All
Speaker 0 00:05:12 Right. No idea. I don't even know what's going on in my own company. I have no idea. I must have missed a meeting and all these things have happened without me. And oh, look at this. Join our wait list for the launch on 1st of November. And we're not even telling you what it is. Look at that it's so secret that we don't even know what it is yet. And so therefore we can't tell you what it is. Um, world war, seven's just broken out their Goldies, just tearing someone's eyes out at the moment. Jayden, you do not need to join my friend because you are in Maverick's club. You are in the family brother. You are in the family. So you do not need to join the waiting list. Although if you wouldn't mind testing out the form for us to make sure it works, that would be very much appreciated, but you need to join because you're in the family, you're in the family. If you know
Speaker 2 00:06:00 What I mean, right? Yeah. That's right.
Speaker 0 00:06:02 Um, so, uh, it is, there is something coming and, um, uh, and, uh, remember, remember the 1st of November there is something coming, uh, you should sign up because basically I'm on a mission to help y'all I'm on a mission to help. Y'all make more revenue for the work you are already doing. That's right. Make more revenue for the work you are already doing because I'm a magician. And, um, and that's what we're gonna help you do. So you should, if you, if you are interested at all in making more revenue for the work you are already doing, then you should definitely go and sign up for the launch that is coming on the 1st of November and all will make sense over the coming weeks. As we roll out this very well executed well-oiled campaign that I know nothing about. However, on this episode of the agency hour, I do believe we're going to peel back the curtain and we're going to show one of our killer processes in the old click up. Is that right?
Speaker 2 00:07:07 Yes,
Speaker 0 00:07:08 That's right. Is that what we're here for?
Speaker 2 00:07:10 That is right. I hope you got screen ready cuz I don't.
Speaker 0 00:07:13 Yeah, I've got it all prepared mate. I've got it all. I've got it all prepared. I've been awake since 3, 3 30 this morning and I've got it all prepared. Um, before we do that, I wanna know people who are watching, where are you from in the world? What country are you tuning in from? And uh, and also tell me this, if you could hire a person, uh, now, if you could, like, if you, if you were like, man, I'm just gonna, I need to hire someone, but it's a pain in the ass and I don't even know where to go. I wanna wave a magic wand and have a new team member working with me right now. Who would you hire? Would you hire a designer or a developer or an account manager or a project success manager or an SEO or a Google ads manager? Who would you hire if you could hire someone right now and uh, let me know in the chat, because what we're going to do very soon is we're going to dive into click up and we're gonna reveal our entire recruitment process and show you, uh, how we find talent for our own company. And also how we find talent for you guys. If you hire a project manager, Pete, how would that change your day?
Speaker 2 00:08:24 Uh, it would free me up to do more business development type stuff. Cause I, I am, I am still holding onto the strings, the puppet strings a little bit. Mm-hmm <affirmative> um, so yeah, the next next position is definitely project manager for me.
Speaker 0 00:08:40 So let's talk about a project manager for a second, cuz I have some ideas. I have some thoughts on this here, role called project manager. What would happen if you hire a project manager? What would happen if an existing client then emailed in and said, Pete, we need some new staff profiles added to our website and you had this project manager on board. What would that process look like? Who would take that email and action it. And how would you get involved and what would that look like?
Speaker 2 00:09:06 Well, so that would, that would be, I already have a, I already have a process for that because I don't handle that anyway as it is. So that would be, Hey, you need to send this through to our care plan. I'll do that for you. But from now on, please refer that off to the care plan. But I understand what you're asking me. So if a, if somebody came back in with a more, a more in depth project, like we need to add this functionality to our website and it's more than the care plan will handle. Then I would have a can email set up and say, Hey, yes, that's great. Let me introduce you to my new project manager. And I would just take it from there and have a process for introducing them to the project manager and handing that over to them.
Speaker 0 00:09:48 Oh, I'm setting you up here. I know. Thank you brother. I
Speaker 2 00:09:52 Appreciate it. I'm trying to come up with the right answer though.
Speaker 0 00:09:55 No, I want you to come up with the wrong answer actually, so I could look even smart. Well, that's what
Speaker 2 00:09:58 I mean by the right answer.
Speaker 0 00:09:59 The, so I believe we are hiring project success managers at the Mo, so I call them a project success manager. We are hiring project success managers or PSMs as they're affectionately known for clients at the moment. Um, because, uh, so a, a, a PSM, I believe so quick backstory, right? Get out, get out the popcorn kids at story time with uncle Troy quick, uh, backstory. I used to work a job. No, I used to work in an agency as a, uh, when I had my digital agency, I worked in a larger advertising agency who had a building proper bricks and mortar building had a, um, a, uh, art gallery down on the ground floor with their boardroom. And then all the, the team worked upstairs and there were account managers up the front of the building, overlooking the street. And then behind them, there was literally a glass wall.
Speaker 0 00:10:48 And then behind the glass wall was, uh, the studio of the developers and the designers and the email marketers and the copywriters. And then the creative director sat up in the back corner. And then I had another office in the other back corner and I was their digital guy cuz they didn't do any digital stuff. And so they would bring me in as their digital partner, I had my own agency and I basically just rented an office in their space. And it was a really good partnership over the, the time that I was there, which was probably about 18 months to two years, I observed this massive disconnect between the account managers who were that side of the glass wall, overlooking the street. They would come to the glass wall and they would basically have arguments with the project manager who stood this side of the glass wall and protected the, the studio from the account manager.
Speaker 0 00:11:31 So she was literally like the gatekeeper, right? She was, she was a horrible person. <laugh> I must say, sorry to. She was like, I would've fired her in a heartbeat cuz she was awful. She was toxic for the culture. Anyway, her job was basically to tell the account managers that there's no way that the studio could deliver what they'd just promised the client right. There was this. And there was literally a glass wall that separated the account managers from the studio. And I'm like, that's just completely broken. That last wall is symbolic of a few things. And what I learned by watching that over the years was those two people should be the same role, right? The project managers should be talking directly with the clients and the account managers should understand how the studio works and what's required to deliver what it is they're promising.
Speaker 0 00:12:14 And so I kind of came up with this hybrid role called project success manager, which the job of a project success manager is to make the project successful for the client and for the business. And so a project success manager needs to also understand when a, when an, when a request comes in from a client, they basically need to do like a mini go wide, go deep, right. And uncover, uh, we need to add this functionality to the website. Okay. Why tell us about that? Give us as much context as possible, which usually leads to uncovering more problems and more things that need to be fixed. Right. And, and so they do a little bit of account management and a little bit of investigative journalism. If you like, and then, uh, come back to the client and say, look, we can do what you've asked us to do, but we also think you might wanna consider this and you might want consider this and how does it tie in with social and it's gonna impact what we're doing in search and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 0 00:13:05 And so now all of a sudden there's more work, there's more consulting work and there's ultimately more value for the client. So there's more revenue for the business. Right, right. So we're actually hiring PSMs at the moment. And uh, that's kind of my take on that. So how do we hire, well, let me share my screen and walk you through how we use, click up to manage all of this, the way that we manage click up. I, I kind of think there are three big chunks in click up that you need to be aware of if you've never used it. And this is certainly the way that we are using it is there's documentation. There are, uh, lists and of things that need to happen. And then there are different views of those lists, right? So the way that, that we roll this out internally and for our clients, we've got a bunch of clients here that we are recruiting for and just be clear, different model to us, to, you know, what other people do.
Speaker 0 00:13:56 We're not an outsourcing agency and we're not a staffing agency. So when people hire people through us, they end up working for you, right? You pay them direct, you don't pay us. They don't work for us. We don't manage them. They work for you. All we do is place them in your agency and guarantee them for 30 days. And here's the process that we go through to do that. Now, the first thing we do is have this documentation with all of the templates you need to, to roll out this process. And so this is just like a, really a, a cover page of a a why, what, how now, uh, why you should think about recruiting, why you need a process, what the process includes, um, how we roll this out. We break our process down into, into three chunks, really preparation, uh, four chunks, sorry, preparing for the role, uh, interviewing onboarding, and then check-ins to make sure they last the 30 day period, cuz we give a 30 day guarantee on candidates.
Speaker 0 00:14:48 And so this really is just like a, a high level overview, like an education piece, really on how our process works. Okay. Everything you need to action. This, we then have as separate documentation here. So for example, we have a, a template for a job scorecard. So the first thing we do when we start recruiting someone is we develop a job scorecard. So the first thing we don't recruit anyone without a job scorecard. And the job scorecard is designed to get super clear about the outcomes that this person is responsible for achieving and how those outcomes are gonna be measured. Let me show you an example. Do
Speaker 2 00:15:25 You have any examples?
Speaker 0 00:15:27 I do well done. You just teed me up and I hit that one out of the park. Thanks Pete. Uh, so here's an ex
Speaker 2 00:15:33 <laugh>.
Speaker 0 00:15:35 Here's what I prepared earlier, fresh outta the oven. Uh, here's one for a project success manager. So job scorecard for project success. Manager reports to CEO company mission goes here. So we get the company mission from our clients. When we start working with a client, we say, Hey, what's your company mission. You don't have one. We'll help you write one. And we put it here. This is important because this is the reason people are gonna come work with you, right? Okay. If you don't have this, then you're basically offering someone a job and all you can compete on is how much you're gonna pay them and the flexible work hours. So this is really important because it gives them a reason why they should wanna come work with you. Then we have a mission for the role. Okay? And the mission for this particular role is the, uh, purpose of this project. Success manager role is to deliver client happiness and to help the company improve its products and services, which is really interesting because a project success manager gets a lot of Intel from interacting with clients and feeds that Intel back to the company and says, Hey, we should start doing email marketing. Cause we've got a lot of people talking to us about wanting to do email marketing. So we should either partner with someone or roll this out.
Speaker 2 00:16:38 So I think something, something I learned from you on this is, um, this mission. I wrote one for, for a client. And then I, then I cheated and read a few of yours. And uh, <laugh> this mission needs to be about more about the client than about the role they're performing for you. I think so many business owners and of our clients are, are, or our customers are focused on what is this person gonna do for me? Mm-hmm <affirmative> what is this new hire gonna do for me or my business? Mm-hmm <affirmative> and that's the wrong way to go here. You have to take it beyond that to mm-hmm <affirmative> what impact will this person have on the impact we're trying to have on our clients
Speaker 0 00:17:21 Hundred percent. And I, I say that everyone, every role in an agency has two customers. You have the customer who pays the bill. In other words, you client that you're doing the work for that's called an external customer and you have an internal customer. Now a, this particular internal role here, project success manager, their intern, their external customer is the clients that are paying the bill that we're doing the work for their internal customer is the CEO, right? That's the other customer that they're serving mm-hmm <affirmative>, which is why they have these. The two prongs to their mission really is to deliver client happiness and to help the company improve its products and services. So then the outcomes, I'm not gonna roll through all of these in detail, but the outcomes are, you know, all clients are happy and feel well supported, free up the CEO to focus on biz dev, grow the company, library of SOPs and help the CEO grow a team of a players.
Speaker 0 00:18:15 And what we do is with outcomes is we also have a separate column which tells us how we are actually going to measure that. And so all clients are happy and feel well supported. Well, we're gonna measure that with a customer satisfaction survey of four plus stars outta five. And that's an ongoing metric that this role is responsible for. So every time we launch a project, we're gonna send a CSAT to our, our client and ask them to rate their experience with the agency based on a bunch of criteria. And they're gonna give us a rating out of five stars. And if they give us three and a half, then it's time for a conversation. As long as that CSAT is four plus ongoing, then the project success manager is doing their job. What you'll notice here is nowhere here. Do we actually tell them how to do their job?
Speaker 0 00:18:53 We don't tell them to use a sauna. We don't tell them to use Zapier. We don't tell them what color pen to write with. We don't tell them what hours to work. We don't tell them any of that stuff, because the idea is that we are hiring an experienced project manager who knows how to actually do the job. What we are doing is setting expectations about what outcomes they're responsible for and then what key responsibilities they are also responsible for like what key areas they're responsible for. So, and the key with this is that the responsibilities need to be in line with the outcomes. So lemme just give you a couple of examples. Key responsibilities is to manage the relationship with all existing clients and onboard new clients. Well, that is in direct relation to that happy. Yep. Right? Communicate all aspects of a project to the team for successful execution.
Speaker 0 00:19:40 Well, you can't, you can't get a four outta five if you don't do that. Right? So that is, that's a key responsibility. Keep track of projects and ensure deadlines are met, respond to incoming requests from clients proactively seek out opportunities to help existing clients grow. Okay. Delegate client requests for extra devil maintenance work to relevant team members. That's gonna free up the CEO, make sure the team has everything they need to succeed. That's also gonna free up the CEO. It's gonna contribute to the library of SOPs. And then ultimately this person should be coming back to the CEO saying, Hey, based on what we've got in the slate, we need another developer in about six weeks. We need to start recruiting, uh, an, a player so that we've got extra capacity because we've got all these projects coming on. So the CEO is then just focusing on biz dev and knows that they can rely on the project success manager to go, Hey, uh, this is happening.
Speaker 0 00:20:33 We're a little bit overwhelmed rack capacity. We need another designer. Right? Then we just have like a bank of competencies that we pull from. So, you know, these are kind of the typical competencies that would be relevant for a project success manager. They would be different for a developer. They would be different for a designer. There would be some overlap, but we just kind of have a bank of competencies here that we pull from. And then core values are the company values for the particular company that we are hiring for. So if it was us, our core values would go here. If it was, you know, one of our Mavericks or one of our, uh, team accelerator clients, then their core values would go here. So once we've got the job scorecard written, the job ad is really easy because what we do is the, here's the, the template for the job ad.
Speaker 0 00:21:17 Uh, again, this is literally a copy and paste of the, uh, mission, uh, the, you know, summary of the mission of the company then here in the job, add, we just say who we're looking for. So there's just a paragraph here about the kind of person that we're looking for, like from a personality point of view and then responsibilities. Well guess where these come from, this is literally a copy and past. We don't actually write the outcomes here. We just put the area that we put the responsibilities. So we literally just, you know, grab this stuff here that we've put in the project success manager, we grab this stuff here, the responsibilities, and we pace that into a job ad right? Here we go. Bang. There it is experience. You should have past experience communicating with clients across a broad spectrum of small businesses, helping them get clear on their goals and assisting with solutions, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You should be comfortable using project management, software, Dropbox, zoom, slack, and other cloud based communication tools. And, um, that's how we'll.
Speaker 2 00:22:12 So that stuff gets in there. We figure out how to get that in there. Cause yeah, yeah, of course that's important. Yeah, that's important, but it's not. We
Speaker 0 00:22:18 Also, we also say this, you should be confident enough to push back on the leadership team and express your opinion. If you think the ship is heading off course. So if we hire a project manager who comes in and says, oh, I see the way you've been doing things, that's a cluster. Fuck, we are now gonna do it this way from now on. And here's why I go, you be thanks very much, cuz guess what? I'm a shit project manager. I'm happy. I've hired someone who actually knows what they're doing. The big mistake I see happen over and over again is people hire someone and then try to clone them to within an inch of their life so that they just become a, a robot and a carbon copy of you. And that's the wrong way to do it. Hire someone who's got experience and who is better than you. And then you get outta that's
Speaker 2 00:22:58 Better than you smarter than you. Yep.
Speaker 0 00:23:01 How we will help you
Speaker 2 00:23:01 Succeed because ultimately you want them running your business, correct part at these parts of it. So they've gotta be exactly right. Least better than
Speaker 0 00:23:08 You ONM the coach of a soccer team. Right? Guess what? I don't wanna have to get on the field and kick the goals, right? I'm gonna be up in the's box, um, employment type. This is a full-time role and we're not looking for an agency. Uh that's you know, in this particular instance, and then we always include an Easter egg and the Easter egg is please begin your application with the name of one of the websites featured in our online portfolio at blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that's just making sure people are actually reading instructions. You can put anything there. You can say, please begin your application with the words, blue elephant mm-hmm <affirmative>, uh, which is a favorite of mine, uh, just to make sure people follow instructions. So what, what we do then is we then go and post that job ad and uh, we get a whole bunch of talent.
Speaker 0 00:23:50 Uh, we call it, uh, smoking out the talent. We get a whole bunch of talent. We then prevet them. We put them through an English proficiency test. We put them through, you know, we check their internet speed. We put them through, if they're a developer, we put them through an online PHP test. If they're a project manager like this, we'd put them through an online communications test and we do a whole bunch of that stuff, personality test, all that stuff. And then we take the, uh, the top. So, so in order to prepare for the role, this is what we have to do here. Write the job, scorecard, write the job ad post the job ad initial vetting of candidates, review applicants and commence interviews. Right? Uh, make sure our, our, uh, international money accounts are set up so we can pay them if they're international and then company mission and values.
Speaker 0 00:24:35 That really, that really kind of should be up here. Right? That's gotta be done there. And then once we have, you know, a bunch of candidates that we like and that we wanna actually put forward to a formal interview, we actually have them fill in an application form. So we have just like a quick five minute. Hey, are you lunatic? Can you, you know, we talking the same language, what time zone are you in? Have you done this before? Okay. We think you might be a good fit. Let's go and actually get you to apply for the role. And we just have a click up form where people put in their name, email, their phone number, you know, where they are in the world, right? Are they available to work full-time or part-time what work and life experience do you have that makes you a good fit for this role.
Speaker 0 00:25:13 They need to make their case there. What makes you confident that you'll succeed in this role? What work achievements you most proud of and what, what failure has taught you? The biggest lesson, a whole bunch of questions here, which tell us a, a lot about the person and their experience. When are they available to start now? Anything else you wanna add? No, they click submit. And when, as soon as they click submit, they come through to our interview pipeline in this column here, applicant, this is just dummy data, by the way, right. They come in here and they, uh, have a whole bunch of subtasks already assigned to them, uh, through an automation that we run and click up. So here are the custom fields that they've filled in, in the form. And I can see them on the card here. I can go there full time in the Philippines.
Speaker 0 00:25:55 They're ready to start now. And what happens is our team will give them a rating out of five stars based on that initial pre-veting interview. Right? So the first time we talk with them, we'll get a bit of a gut feel and we'll rate them out of five stars. So by the time the agency only comes in and says, huh, who have we got here for this role? Uh, I know a little bit about them. I can click in here. And then it tells me what to do next. Okay. Set up the culture, interview, get their disc profile. Uh, here's everything I need to do to get them through the pipeline. And so then what I do is I come in and I, I move them into my short list and I go, well, this person's gonna be right for an interview. I reach out to them and schedule an interview.
Speaker 0 00:26:32 Oh, how do I do that one? I'm glad you asked. If you come back at the folder level, all the docs are here. So we go interview invitation. Here's an email, dear Pete, thank you for taking the time to apply for the position of project success manager at agency Mavericks, I've reviewed your application. We'd like to schedule a 20 minute zoom call to get to know you a little better. Please find a time. My calendar here, insert calendar link. If you can't find a time that works, please let me know. We'll find a way looking forward to meeting you love Troy. So literally we are just making this copy and paste, right? So they send that and then they schedule a time for the culture interview. And at this point, the candidate is moved through to the culture interview. And then here is the template for running a culture interview, right?
Speaker 0 00:27:11 Here's the instructions on how to run the culture interview or what we call the coffee test. And here are a whole bunch of questions that you can use to have a conversation with someone. Obviously you don't ask all 50 questions, but here is a bank of questions that you can use to have a conversation with someone just to see if they're gonna be a good cultural fit for, uh, your agency. If you think they are, what happens at the end of every interview, typically speaking, you apply for a role. And at the end of the interview, the interviewer says, well, thanks, Pete. For your time, it's been really lovely. Getting to know you we'll let you know in the next couple of days, whether or not we're gonna put you forward to the next phase. We don't do that. We ask them to do that. So we give them some homework. We give them a homework task that should take no longer than 10 minutes. And they can just do it by writing us an email and explaining how they would deal with certain
Speaker 2 00:28:00 Situations. It's like a, it's like one of those it's it's like one of those word math questions, like <laugh>, it's one of the, it's a, it's an essay. It's short essay question, correct?
Speaker 0 00:28:10 Yep. It's not a like, Hey, it's not
Speaker 2 00:28:11 So build this thing or go do this stuff. It's
Speaker 0 00:28:14 Not at this stage.
Speaker 2 00:28:14 How would you handle this situation?
Speaker 0 00:28:16 That's right at this stage. I just wanna understand. I just wanna understand a little bit about their resourcefulness, their resilience, how creative they are, you know,
Speaker 2 00:28:25 I don't, and that's not just because they're a project manager. If they were a designer developer, same, whatever, same, same, same questions, same
Speaker 0 00:28:31 Basic questions. Yep. Same questions. Right? We don't actually test them at this stage. We just ask them a question and they can explain it in, uh, in words, uh, on an email. And what we do is we give them 24 hours to respond with their homework and whether or not they wish to keep the conversation going. I've had plenty of people come back within 24 hours and say, Hey, Troy, it was lovely to meet you guys, but this is not right for me. I'm I'm out. I go. Cool. No worries. Thank you very much. Let's not waste each other's time. And plenty of people come back and say, Hey, here's my homework. This is amazing. I've thought about it. I definitely wanna keep the conversation going. Let's go. Um, and if they jump through that hoop and they tick that off, then what we do is we put them through to a competencies interview.
Speaker 0 00:29:13 And the competencies interview is where we start digging into the scorecard. And I will actually share the scorecard with them during that competencies interview, I'll open it up and I'll share my screen. And I'll say, look, the purpose of this interview is for us to get really clear about whether or you have a 90% chance of succeeding in this role, based on the fact that these are the outcomes you are gonna be responsible for. So what I wanna do is I wanna talk about your past work experience. And I wanna ask you questions. And I want you to tell me stories that will tell us both whether or not you're gonna succeed in this role, because here's the thing. You don't want a role that you're not gonna succeed in. And I don't want you to be in a role that you're not gonna succeed in.
Speaker 0 00:29:53 So let's just have a really candid conversation. I think you're a good person. I think you're a cultural fit. I think you're gonna fit in well with the team. But none of that means anything. If you can't actually do the job that we're asking of you, so let's get really clear about this. This is what your day's gonna look like. This is what you're gonna be reporting on. These are the numbers you're gonna be responsible for. Right? We get through this. What you're looking for is people who light up and go, oh man, this is a walk in the park. I've done this before. I've done this here. I've got this, you know, you can chat to my previous boss over there or my previous client here. And they'll tell you how we did this and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So we run through the, the competencies interview based on the scorecard.
Speaker 0 00:30:31 Again, there's a bunch of questions that you can ask here. A bank of questions you can ask that relate back to the, the, uh, scorecard. And then we give them some homework. And this is where we might use an actual test, depending on the role, right? We might use test gorilla or test zone, and we might give them a PHP test or a communications test or some other test based on their role. We might even give them a design task based on the role that we are hiring, right? And again, we give them that homework and we give them 24 hours to respond and let us know whether or not they wanna keep the conversation going. And if they do then the final interview is the commitment interview, where we talk about, uh, salary expectations, remuneration work hours conditions. And really what I'm looking for here is the, if you come back to the documentation, each of these interviews has a question that I'm looking to answer, right?
Speaker 0 00:31:22 The, in the culture interview, I'm looking to answer this. Could I spend a couple of hours just hanging out with this person talking over coffee? That's the question I'm looking to answer in the culture. Interview the competencies interview. I'm looking to answer this question. Does this candidate have a 90% chance of success in this role? That's the question I'm looking to answer there. And the question I'm looking to answer in the commitment interview is, is what's the likelihood that this candidate will be with the company in five years time and that they can grow into a leadership role. Okay? So I wanna have a conversation here about what their short term career goals are, what their long term career goals are. If they wanna step into a leadership role, what are their salary expectations? How will they look at hiring people? Where else are they interviewing?
Speaker 0 00:32:11 Uh, I just wanna get an understanding if they can elevate into a leadership role, right? And again, there's one final bit of homework after this, that, that they complete and they should be able to, to describe in writing, right? Uh, because by, by this point, we should have tested their competencies. Now we're testing their commitment now in, in the real world, if you are, if you are like out of lockdown and you're hiring someone locally, I know that some people are a fan of actually going out to dinner with this person and their partner. And you go out for a, what's called a familial dinner, like a family dinner with the, the, the person that's hiring them and their partner and this candidate and their partner, because we're going, there we go. We're going out for dinner with the family. Um, because, Hey, we want you to come work here for five, 10 years.
Speaker 0 00:32:55 So we wanna make sure that we can all, you know, get along. I don't do that. Cause I think it's a bit creepy. Uh, but um, what we are looking for here is the level of commitment that we're gonna make to each other. And at any point during this phase, if they're not right, we send them this rejection email, if they are right and they make it through the, uh, this far, then there's a couple of options we can, if they're awesome, but they're not right for this particular role or they're not. Right, right now we can put 'em on the bench, which means we can always come back and revisit them later. If they're, uh, if at any point they're not right during the interview process, we put them in the disqualified column to make sure we don't accidentally interview them again in the future. If they are right, we make them a letter of offer. They agree to that. Then we send them the contract. And, uh, what do they look like? Well, I'm
Speaker 2 00:33:42 Glad you asked, can I back you up?
Speaker 0 00:33:43 Yeah, of course.
Speaker 2 00:33:44 Let's, let's, let's pick some of this apart. So I have questions. I'm a, I'm the only person really, truly in a leadership role in my business. Mm-hmm <affirmative> do I do all these interviews?
Speaker 0 00:33:57 Great question. Uh, I would suggest I've made this mistake in the past, uh, more than once <laugh>, uh, I would suggest that you don't do the culture interview. I would suggest that you have someone else do the culture interview. Now here's the thing. If it's just you
Speaker 0 00:34:12 Well, right. And, and you don't have anyone else locally, then I would suggest you find a colleague. I would suggest you, you get Christina Hawkins or you get Johnny, or you get a Maverick to do a culture interview. Someone who knows you really well. Right. And can have a 15 minute interview with someone. And you know, obviously either compensate them for their time or, you know, do a Contra where, you know, you might do a culture interview for them and then go, and then they come back to you and go. So Emily's done this in the past with me, she's done a culture interview and she said, Hey, you definitely need to talk to this person. They're awesome. Right. Um, so have someone else do the culture interview? You should then do the competencies interview and definitely the commitment interview. Now, if you're a larger agency. So, so this person's gonna be reporting to a, if this is a developer reporting to a CTO, then you might have the CTO, do the competencies interview. And then if you're the CEO, you would definitely do the commitment interview.
Speaker 2 00:35:00 And just to, I know the answer, but I want you to vocalize the answer. You don't combine the interviews.
Speaker 0 00:35:07 Nope,
Speaker 2 00:35:08 Nope, Nope. Okay.
Speaker 0 00:35:09 Don't come on.
Speaker 2 00:35:10 And then, and then, so we leave it to them to do the homework and tell us if they want to move on to the next spot, but to the next, to keep the conversation going to move on to the next interview. But what happens if, if I end up doing the culture interview or if I do the competencies interview mm-hmm <affirmative> and they're not a good fit, do I keep them going through the process?
Speaker 0 00:35:34 Yeah. What not a good fit. It's
Speaker 2 00:35:36 Not a good fit. Where do you, where you end it <laugh>
Speaker 0 00:35:38 At any point you end it right? If they're not a good fit, you send them this email. Hi Pete, thank you for your application. For the project success manager at agency, maverick.com. We re we really appreciate your interest in joining our company. And we wanna thank you for the time and energy you invested in applying for our job. We receive a large number of applications and after carefully reviewing all of them, unfortunately, we've decided you're a knob and we don't want you to come work here. Oh, sorry. Uh, at this time we won't be able to invite you to the next phase of our selection process. Right. Um, though, though, your qualifications are impressive. I mean, I wouldn't even say this. I just can't wish
Speaker 2 00:36:08 You all the best. That's it have a nice day
Speaker 0 00:36:11 We're
Speaker 2 00:36:11 Out. So, so in other words, at the end of the, that live interview, you wouldn't say, Hey, go away and do this homework and do this.
Speaker 0 00:36:20 If I know they're out, if I'm doing the competency,
Speaker 2 00:36:23 You would cut it short of that. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:36:25 Yeah. If I know if I know it's like, it's like a blind date, isn't it? Right. It's like, it's like, oh, it's
Speaker 2 00:36:29 All this stuff is like dating. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:36:31 We're gonna have dinner. Right. It's a blind date. We're gonna have dinner. There's no chemistry here whatsoever, but I'm gonna walk you home and I'm gonna give you a kiss on the cheek. And then tomorrow I'm gonna text you and tell you that, that I'm out. No, I'm gonna tell you I'm out during dinner. Right? Right. I'm gonna say, look, you are lovely, but this ain't gonna work. I'm gonna, you know, I got somewhere to be, I'm gonna hedge my bets. I gotta play the numbers game and you are not winning. Uh, so I would just, um, I would just wrap up the, the competencies in it and I say, Hey, this has been great. Thank you so much for your time. Uh, I'll let, we'll let you know. I wouldn't give 'em the homework. I would just say, we'll let you know, in the next 24 hours, I'd just send them the rejection email.
Speaker 0 00:37:07 Now, if they are right, we make them an offer is a letter of offer template we have, which is just an email. They just come back and, and say, I agree, right. Just please contact me at your earliest convenience regarding whether or not you accept this offer. If they accept the offer. And there's an example that we're filled in, right? If they accept the offer, we send them our contractors agreement. Okay. This is an Australian contractor's agreement and I'm not going to give it to you. This is a contractor's agreement that we send. We're not lawyers. So anyone of our clients, who's using this, you should have your own lawyers look over it because we're not lawyers. And this is for Australia only. I'll just say that again. Okay. And now I'm not giving it to you if you're not a client don't
Speaker 2 00:37:45 So can, can, can somebody get that if they want it?
Speaker 0 00:37:47 No. Okay. They have to be a client to get it. You have to be a client of ours to get all of this stuff. I'm not giving you this stuff for free. Okay. I'm done with the free shit. There's no more free food. If you wanna get fat and eat good food, you gotta pay for finally,
Speaker 2 00:37:59 He's listening to us. Finally,
Speaker 0 00:38:00 He's listening. Don't give anything away for free. So, um, uh, that's the contractor agreement we sent. And then once we have hired someone, right, we put them through our onboarding, get ready to take lots of screenshots. Uh, we put 'em through our onboarding courtesy of Pete Perry. And there is a bunch of stuff that the team leader needs to do. Then there's a bunch of stuff that they need to do. The, the new, the new, uh, team member needs to do. And then there's a bunch of stuff here. That's about us, like a repository of all of our stuff, right? Once they work through that, we should take about, you know, should get through that in the first four to seven days. Uh, so the first week then what we have is we have check-ins we check in with a new candidate, uh, on seven days, 14, 21 and 28.
Speaker 0 00:38:46 And these, uh, you might say, well, how do I run that check in? I'm glad you asked. We have a, an agenda for the check-ins, right? Why check-ins matter? What is a, check-in how to run a check in next steps. So you run those check-ins over 7, 14, 21 and 28 days. And then by the end of the 28 days, you'll know whether or not the person is gonna stay. And if they stay, then that's when our guarantee period expires and we go, great. You've got a new candidate. What's next? How else can we help you? Um, if they don't work out in that 30 day period, when we're doing this for clients, if they don't work out the 30 day period, then we just replace them with some more candidates in the interview pipeline, and we start
Speaker 2 00:39:19 Do it again.
Speaker 0 00:39:21 So I wanted to share this with you to show you how we manage this in click up, we manage we, this is the way we do it for ourselves. And this is also how we do it for our clients that we are. So,
Speaker 2 00:39:30 Troy, I'm gonna ask, I'm gonna ask the obvious questions that people aren't asking go on. Will you or Pete or somebody do the culture interview for me?
Speaker 0 00:39:41 I won't no,
Speaker 2 00:39:42 No, me neither.
Speaker 0 00:39:43 <laugh> absolutely not. No, Absolutely
Speaker 2 00:39:47 Not.
Speaker 0 00:39:47 Absolutely not. That's all. Um, now, um,
Speaker 2 00:39:50 It doesn't make sense that doesn't make sense for us to do that or any of the interviews. So we,
Speaker 0 00:39:54 You know what
Speaker 2 00:39:54 I would do? You don't do that stuff. We, we coach you through this process.
Speaker 0 00:39:58 That's right. I'll tell you
Speaker 2 00:39:59 What we do. And we get you the three candidates.
Speaker 0 00:40:02 I'll tell you what we do do, right? Yeah, we do this. We help you write the job score card. We collaborate with you to write the job score card. We collaborate with you to write the job ad, which is pretty easy. Once you've written the job score card, we post the job ad into our private talent pool that we've got in the Philippines at the moment, we just, we just recruit in the Philippines. Okay. Because we've got a great talent pool over there. And we've got a unicorn over there called Michelle. We do the initial vetting of the candidates. So we put them through an English proficiency test, a disk profile. We check their internet speed. We do a background check on them. We put them through communication test. We put them through online development test. If they're developers, right, we do that stuff. And so we might get 15 to 20 applicants for a role, but we only give you, like, once you come in here, you'll only see the top three candidates.
Speaker 0 00:40:53 Uh, you you'll see a bunch of candidates come in here, but you'll only ever get the top three come into the short list. And then we introduce them to you on email and you take over the process and you put them through the interview process based on our documentation. Now, if you are a freelancer and you're looking to hire your first team member, what I would suggest is that you, you partner up with your accountability partner. If you've been through one of our programs, or if you have a colleague that can help you and you lean on, then them to help you do the culture interview.
Speaker 2 00:41:20 Yep.
Speaker 0 00:41:21 Makes sense. Mm-hmm <affirmative> um, if you wanna chat with us about becoming a customer so you can get your hands on these processes, click below to request a call agency mavericks.com/clarity call, uh, have a chat with one of our team, cuz there's a couple of things we can do. By the way, once we recruit someone for a client, we then hand over this entire folder with everything you need into your click up account. So you then have this in the future. I call it teaching people how to fish, right? Uh, let's go out in the boat, I'll catch a fish for you and I'll show you how I do it. And then I'll give you the blueprint so you can catch the next fish. So if you are interested in hiring someone for your team, remember we're not a starting agency, we're not an outsource agency.
Speaker 0 00:42:04 This is gonna be someone that works for you in your agency. You are gonna pay them direct. You are gonna manage them, uh, jump on a, a call with our team and have a conversation about that. Or just leave a comment under here and let us know. Uh, the other thing is if you want access to our library of SOPs like this in click up and you would like us to take all of your SOPs that you've got in your head and in your business and turn that into an agency in a box. We currently have a wait list for ops accelerator and you can join the wait
[email protected] slash agency in a box. Wait list. We might just bring that up on the, uh, screen. Um, at some point, if we can, there we go. Uh, join the wait
[email protected] slash agency in a wait in a box, wait list.
Speaker 0 00:42:52 I think that is in the comments as well. So you can click that link in the comments and sign up there and we'll be in touch. We do have a wait list for ops accelerator, cuz it is quite a big, uh, job for us to turn your agency into an agency in a boxing click up. But what we basically do is build out your click up workspace. Um, there is a wait list. So if you wanna get involved and you want to hit the ground running and make 2022, your most organized year ever, I suggest you get on that wait list now, because if you're at the front of the queue, you'll be the, the next one that we talk to. I'm loving click up it's so it's such a great, we still use Asana for a lot of stuff in house, but the more I use click up, the more I like it, we are actually building out, uh, our team, uh, in the Philippines to manage all the processes in click up.
Speaker 0 00:43:33 Uh, they're going through training at the moment. They're actually working with a couple of our clients to build out the agency in a box and all reports. So far as things are going very well. And looking forward to ramping this up. The thing that I've learned over the last couple of years from our clients is that they're time poor. Even if we teach people how to create processes and how to hire someone and how to train people on onboard them and manage their team. The reality is most people are time poor and they just want some help doing it. Yeah. So, um, that's what we're doing. We're just gonna recruit people for you.
Speaker 2 00:44:05 And most people have, you know, most agency owners have come from not running a business, right? They, they didn't start out running a bus. They didn't come from one business to the next. So they've never really had to do this recruiting and hiring. And you know, I, I did in my previous life, um, and firing, which is no fun. Um, if you've never done this kind of thing before having a process that is proven and works for you, like it's a no brainer.
Speaker 0 00:44:38 Yeah. It's, it's a swipe and deploy like it's uh, by the way, for those of you who are in Maverick's club, of course you get access to team accelerator, ops accelerator, you get access to the whole thing. So there's a bunch of you already having a conversation with us about that in uh, Maverick's club and our job. I had someone on the call yesterday who was asking about Maverick's club and it occurred to me, you know, the, the, our job as a coach or as a guide is to help you figure out what to focus on next. Yep. Cause the other thing that's coming up in our conversations in, in our channels is that people are time poor, but they're also overwhelmed. They're overwhelmed with,
Speaker 2 00:45:17 We're hearing this a lot, this a lot lately.
Speaker 0 00:45:20 Yeah. There's like how many things am I supposed to be working on at the same time? And so our job is to sit down with you and work out a plan and go, Hey, just ignore all that stuff. Let's just focus on this for the next 30 days, get a team member hired. Then we can start building out your processes. Then we can figure out culture team management, then we can figure out your signature system.
Speaker 2 00:45:38 Yeah. And, and for those of you that are Mavericks, even if we're throwing at, at throwing something at you, ignore it. If it's not in your plan that we've worked on for, with you, you don't need to be worried about it. We can get to that later.
Speaker 0 00:45:51 Correct. Unless Troy says it's a good idea. Of course. And then of course
Speaker 2 00:45:55 You should pay no. And then you come to Pete and he tells you to ignore Troy, <laugh> you move on, stick to the plan,
Speaker 0 00:46:02 Stick to the plan to when's the play Pete Wednesday, Wednesday,
Speaker 2 00:46:07 Thursday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:46:10 And where is it? Is it like a local theater
Speaker 2 00:46:12 Or we do it in a local school on their like, or their auditorium, their, you know, whatever you call it. Um, it's fun. We have a de we have, we have a lady who plays, uh, keyboards to the song parodies. Right? Mm-hmm <affirmative> and sometimes they don't quite fit with the recorded version. Like it's a little off. And then, um, we have a DJ who plays either background music, B-roll music kind of stuff, or there's a lot there's sometimes lip syncing too. So
Speaker 0 00:46:43 <laugh>, and what's the, what's the organization that
Speaker 2 00:46:45 The Kiwan the Kiwanis club, which is an it's an international organization, Kiwanis club.
Speaker 0 00:46:50 K I w a N I S. Right. What, and what is Kiwanis? What is, what is
Speaker 2 00:46:53 That? It's an organization that is focused on helping children basically. So anything we can do to help children. And we raise, so dude, we raise like $40,000 every year between this, this event. And we also run like a 5k, a 5k, and a 10 K wow. We raise 40,000 bucks. Um, thanks to amazing sponsors. And, um, we do we with that money, about half of that money goes towards scholarships for universities.
Speaker 0 00:47:22 Wow.
Speaker 2 00:47:22 Kids going to college. And then, uh, the rest of it goes to people who are in need really just in our local community.
Speaker 0 00:47:28 Wow. I've just found the, the Kwans Australia district website Kwans is a global organization. The volunteers dedicated to improving the world, one child and one community at a time. Love it. I got just got covered in goosebumps, man. Fantastic. So,
Speaker 2 00:47:43 So for all you who wanna see me in some crazy costumes, if you look up Kingston, Kingston, Kiwanis, capers, you'll find me as Fred Flinstone and you'll find me as cousin. I, and you'll find me as split down the middle. I was cha and chastity bono in one scene singing. I've got you babe, to myself. <laugh>
Speaker 0 00:48:10 Oh my Lord. Golden. All right. Uh, Hey, I'm gonna bounce outta here. Let us know if you have any questions about anything we talked about today. If you want a piece of the action, just leave a comment or, or get in touch with the team and we'll have a chat about how we can help you. Um, and, uh, we will let, uh, Pete go back to rehearsals. Uh, so, so tomorrow, I mean nights' tomorrow for you
Speaker 2 00:48:32 Open tonight, tomorrow tonight's dress rehearsal. Yep. Wow. Hence
Speaker 0 00:48:35 The fantastic, right? So you've been the retro rehearsal on you're back.
Speaker 2 00:48:38 No, no. It's tonight.
Speaker 0 00:48:39 You're about to go. Okay. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:48:42 About an hour.
Speaker 0 00:48:43 Have fun. My friend.
Speaker 2 00:48:44 Oh yeah. Thanks for being here. Everybody learn something. We
Speaker 0 00:48:49 Make chow chow bye for now, until
Speaker 1 00:48:51 We done. Thanks for listening to the agency hour podcast, subscribe at apple podcasts, Spotify pocket, audible, and wherever you like to listen, you can catch all of the agency hour episodes on our YouTube channel, youtube.com/agency Mavericks. Or you can get involved, check out our free digital Mavericks Facebook group, where we broadcast these episodes live for our community every week, along with a ton of free training. We'll see you there.
