Ian Fisk:
The topic of today’s call is hiring folks when they are not readily available. This was actually brought up by one of our entrepreneurs, Evanna, who will hopefully be joining, us who works in Tanzania but has to hire in Kenya because folks with the appropriate skill set are not available locally. And there’s a variety of challenges around. Can you wait long enough to train the folks? Or, I guess skill set. We’ll go with folks with the appropriate training. How’s that for the phrase? And, can you hire locally and then wait and train them? What are the various approaches to identifying employees when the folks with the appropriate training are not easily available.
Ian Fisk:
I’m going to go around, have folks do introductions, have them talk about their particular relationship to this issue, maybe 30 seconds a person, and then we’ll go from there.
Ned Zimmerman-Bence:
Hi. Ned here. Let’s see. Right now we’re developing an adult literacy platform so that anybody in the world can read, learn to read English, while employers can find people that they need to hire. But before forming the app and pertinent to the discussion today, I was an executive director of an early online high school where we needed to hire certified teachers that were also had the skill set of being able to develop their own courses and teach high school. And at the time that was really hard. So we came up with a couple of different issues or techniques to find the people we really needed to hire. And I’m happy to describe that process later on.
Florence Navarro:
I have worked many years for the United Nations. UNDP program in south and eastern Africa, so I’m very familiar, pretty familiar with that area of the world. And for the past 10 years I’ve worked accelerators and incubators, and recently started my own company to help rapidly growing companies recruit talent. I don’t have any ready-made answers to anything, but I have a lot of access to networks and creativities. And, I’m learning by doing myself.
Von Nkosi:
The only thing I would say to this, to Florence, is those access to networks and expanding those access to networks to find people, it’s always worked for me. I had an issue in New Orleans when funders, people in philanthropy said, “Well, we can’t get consultants of color as examples.” And I said, “You know, stop kidding. The city’s got 300,000 people in it.” And we increased our network. We added like 25 consultants of color who were experts in various fields. You just have to look for them. I mean, you have to work hard. That’s kind of my point.
Paul Hyland:
Hi. I worked for a startup outside DC. It’s just getting to a point where we build a product and we also do some consulting. We’re about a small team of about 10 people, and we’re just getting to a point where the next year or so probably we’re probably going to have to bring out a bunch of new people. And, it’s going to be like a whole new environment, we’re going to have to figure out how to grow somewhat organically, find people that match our skills somewhat. But, it’s going to be tough to find the talent, I think. It’s also going to be tough to figure out how to integrate people for the next stage. Right now, we all sort of consider ourselves equals except for maybe two co-founders. So, it’s probably going to be a little bit of a hierarchy. We’re going to have a lot of challenges with recruiting in the near term. I mean, probably in six months to nine months or something like that. We’ve already had some false starts with a couple of temps to hire sales staff, to hire that out to a company or other things haven’t worked. But, we’ll try. And, we’re going to have to come back to that someday, too.
Alexandra:
Morning. My name is Alexandra. I work for a technology and business consultancy out of the DMV area as a chief of staff. HR falls under hiring, falls under my duties. And this topic really, really resonates with me. It’s something that I actually deal with and I’m combating on a regular basis. I’m trying to hire really, really qualified people in a really short amount of time. When projects are ramping up is something that I deal with and I struggle with all the time and so happy to share the techniques that I’m using right now, but also hear techniques that other people are working on too.
Ian Fisk:
Von Nkosi, what did you do to help you find folks that the foundations couldn’t find?
Von Nkosi:
Look harder.
Ian Fisk:
I know.
Von Nkosi:
Well, it’s outreach. It’s expanding some people’s networks. I think oftentimes we have a tendency to only touch people in our immediate circles. And that expression about the strength of weak ties. People we may be the couple of steps removed, know people that we don’t know. And that’s what I use to find people. I didn’t put any ads in the paper. I just word of mouth, “Hey, I’m looking for a certain type of person or people,” and I just got a flurry of responses. People said nobody’s ever asked us before. And I think that’s part of it. And thinking about the world of philanthropy at that time in New Orleans and nationally as well. They were just going by their networks, and their networks weren’t very diverse. It wasn’t an issue of… When they said, “We can’t find anybody,” it’s them relying on their existing networks and not expanding. So my thing was expanding outside my own network. We increased the numbers by 40% in terms of consultants that are based in New Orleans. Most of the consultants not even philanthropy uses, including myself, you don’t do the work because we found local people to do the work. I don’t know if that’s helpful for some people. Hopefully.
Ian Fisk:
Don’t just do the regular channels. Just put out what you’re looking for because there might be people who surprise you.
Von Nkosi:
Yeah, like-
Von Nkosi:
I would say so our connection, you and I for example with John is, I didn’t know you before, what, two years ago? And, we don’t have a deep deep connection. I don’t know all of your contacts. But, if I were looking for somebody with specific skillset I said, “You know what, Ian might know somebody.” And, I’d reach out to you.
And you never know and you might reach out to other people. say, “Hey Mike, this guy Von Nkosi in Atlanta/New Orleans is looking for this. Can anybody help?” And it seems unscientific, but it’s networks. It is something about six degrees of separation.
Ned Zimmerman-Bence:
Yeah. Well first of all, I totally want to second what Von Nkosi just said. When we were running the online high school, we had the problem where we didn’t necessarily have a problem finding people, but finding the right people. And we discovered that many teachers who signed up to teach really didn’t quite understand what teaching online meant and how it was a completely different skillset. And so what we devised is in the hiring process, the first step was actually to kind of audition for us via sending us an email, sending us a voicemail, kind of working through a lesson online. In fact, we kind of set up several, for lack of a better term, barriers that would naturally kind of let people know what the work was. And then that helped to narrow down the actual candidate pool because people who stuck with it, stuck with the process, were extraordinary. And you could tell that they really had the passion for the work that we needed them to do. And so we kind of incorporated kind of with them. We kind of blended our recruiting and our hiring process into the same kind of procedures I guess. And that worked really well.
Ian Fisk:
How do you do that in a way that respects the time of your applicants? For example, one of my pet peeves is in the US people will post jobs, but they will not post a salary range. And there are some legal reasons in some situations where you do that. But for the most part that means that you’re asking people to put in an hour or two of work applying for positions that they don’t know if they’re even going to want.
Ian Fisk:
If you make people jump through a lot of hoops, that’s good for you. But what is the balancing act of making sure that you’re not making people do unnecessary work if they’re not a fit at all?
Ned Zimmerman-Bence:
Well no. Those are great. And, we are very upfront with this. And we said this process could take between two to three hours. But the reason why we have this process because we don’t want to waste your time. We don’t want to waste your time in terms of signing up, going through all of our training, and then realizing at the end of the day, you know what teaching online is not for me. And I need to drop off and find a different job.
We really wanted to make sure that the matching was both on our side but also on their side, that they were interviewing us by going through this process. They got a better feel for the job because at the time the job was really new. This was 2008 where you didn’t have many online high schools at all, especially ones that were where you were expected to develop your own course.
Ned Zimmerman-Bence:
The other thing, we were really up front about that. And frankly saying, “This might take two to three hours,” that whittled down the pool a little bit.
Ian Fisk:
That’s good.
Ned Zimmerman-Bence:
Yeah. Does that answer your question?
Ian Fisk:
Yeah, it does. I do a lot of recommending. A lot of people, like Von Nkosi, because my job is to have a network literally.
Ned Zimmerman-Bence:
Right.
Ian Fisk:
I get a lot, “Can you connect A to B?” And I’m always hesitant being like, “Yeah, I don’t know how much this job pays or what city they’re going to have to live in.”
Ned Zimmerman-Bence:
Right. But, I think it also gets down to… I guess it was like in the mid two thousands, Microsoft was running a kind of free program for school principals where they came out and [inaudible 00:16:27] kind of learned the Microsoft way for hiring and stuff like that.
Ned Zimmerman-Bence:
And the one thing I took away from that is if you didn’t find the right person don’t hire, was what they’re saying because the amount of pain that you go through if you hire the person who isn’t really right for the job and right for the culture of your organization, was greater than the pain of not having that person.
Ned Zimmerman-Bence:
And to be honest, that was really borne out. And that’s why we kind of developed that hiring process because it’s just so damn painful to fire people or let people go halfway through the school year.
Ian Fisk:
Hire slow fire fast is one of the most important things about running a small company.
Ned Zimmerman-Bence:
Or even hopefully a larger company. I mean, I think that’s also … A parallel conversation maybe is just how do you make sure the culture that you develop at the beginning is maintained throughout. And I don’t even know if that’s possible. If we are able to scale to a 5,000 strong company, how would we make sure that the culture that we have today is still there tomorrow?
[inaudible 00:17:45]
obviously is part of it is part of your hiring, your recruiting process.
Ian Fisk:
So I actually have several thoughts on that. I just gave a commencement speech on Sunday where the concept of intellectual muscle memory was the core of the speech. But, Evanna has rejoined us. I hope that was her.
Evanna Lyons:
Hello. Yeah. If you can hear me.
Ian Fisk:
Tell us a little bit about where you’re coming from and what your challenges are.
Evanna Lyons:
Yeah, so I suppose we’re just in between a rock and a hard place in that we were a startup and we’re beyond seed capital. We’re looking for investing now to hire for scaling up. And so we’re kind of needing very highly qualified and preferably experienced people such as engineers, marketing and sales people, even research and development. And these are salaries at… I don’t know. But certainly in Ireland, you’d be looking down the barrel of 50,000 euro. And even to pay, it doesn’t matter where they come from, whether it’s from the university of Dar Salam or from Amsterdam, we want to pay them a higher salary. But with our funding, we obviously can’t do that. So the rock and the hard places that we’re just kind of stuck.
Evanna Lyons:
We need someone really strong to bring us to the next level. And we’ve contacted colleges, even Nairobi with a very slow response and looking for people maybe in their final years who might be interested in some kind of internship. And we’ve contacted the heads of each department and it’s just, it felt like quite a struggle. And we’ve also engaged somebody down in South Africa who’s an agent who can find us the right people. But again, without the funding, it’s difficult.
Evanna Lyons:
So here in terms of hiring local people, we’ve really tried. We’ve put it out there. We put it in newspapers, online media and the response has been okay, but the qualifications don’t meet exactly what we need or the experience needed. So, it’s kind of tough. It then becomes tempting to move operations somewhere else where the level of education and experience is higher.
Evanna Lyons:
But then, you’re talking about losing the culture and the ethos of your business. And our ethos is that we wanted to start it and spread it in underdeveloped countries. So, we just feel quite stuck at the moment.
Evanna Lyons:
And I feel like investment is coming. We’ve just widened our network. There’s a lot of interest. But, before that happens we’re slow to… I would feel sad to bring in someone foreign. I want to hire from here. But finding those people is very difficult. So I don’t know [inaudible 00:20:36] been a bit of a garbled way of telling you where we’re at.
Ian Fisk:
Right. One quick thought I have. My organization doesn’t take unpaid interns for class reasons because you’re just… Not that there’s anything wrong with any one random wealthy person, but when you just have folks like that because they’re unpaid interns, you end up in a bubble.
Evanna Lyons:
Yes.
Ian Fisk:
But what we do do that has been very helpful and successful in getting quality folks at affordable wages we can afford is we reach out to universities and we have an academic component in our work.
Ian Fisk:
We have set up class rooms for our, in essence, interns. But, they’re mostly getting their masters or their PhDs, or even to some degree, their undergraduate. So, they’re getting formal academic credit.
Ian Fisk:
We used to do sort of Monday afternoons a couple of years ago. They could just ask us anything about the big picture in the history of the context they were working on. And so we set it up as an academic thing and that allowed us to get sort of higher level university folks because it was part of their capstone. It was part of their master’s degree.
Ian Fisk:
If you’re looking at university folks, that might be a way where you have expertise and you could essentially become an adjunct professor.
Evanna Lyons:
Okay, okay. Yeah, as a visiting professor-
Ian Fisk:
Except that you’re doing it, you’re not just doing it at your workplace. If you want the students, the folks, finishing their degrees to come and work for you who have the expertise and maybe more junior, do it while they’re still in school. And in exchange for that, see if you can work out with a school that they get credit and that way they get what they need and you don’t have to put out the cash right now.
Evanna Lyons:
So, you offer sort of a training components and experience in return?
Ian Fisk:
Yeah.
Von Nkosi:
This is an interesting piece that you brought up Ian because I think part of the challenge with startups is you start up in your conscious and it’s just one person, two people, and then there’s this explosion of need. Right? And then there’s nobody to fill that gap because there’s a training piece and this is all in… just speak to one foundation. I was on a call last week. And they said, “We are no longer funding job training for job training sake. There has to be a job tied to the end of whatever it is because we have a lot of those programs in this country, in the US, where people are trained for jobs and they don’t exist.
Von Nkosi:
I think what you just mentioned Ian is a great approach. But for us as entrepreneurs, to start earlier to say, “Hey, I’m starting a company and here are the skill sets I know I’m going to need 18 months from now or two years from now.”
Von Nkosi:
Marketing. I mean these are basics. Marketing, Sales, whatever, and start that outreach then. It might be, I like what Ian said is, you reach out to the university and say, “I might have something coming online in about 18 months. I’m going to be looking for graduate students, people coming in and out. Is there a way we can start the process of setting up something?”
Von Nkosi:
That way when it hits, it isn’t this crisis where you then all your options are, you’ve got to go out and hire people from other places. You know what I mean? That’s just a reality. I do get that. I think it falls upon us as entrepreneurs and training the next generation of entrepreneurs to anticipate that need and put it out there in advance [inaudible 00:24:29] time horizon.
Evanna Lyons:
foresight is 2020 or hindsight is 2020 but I wish just as you said that we had anticipated this place and we had kind of put the balls in motion before now because now we’re finding ourselves like, “Oh [inaudible 00:24:56].” We need so many people and resources, and we can’t seem to get them in time or for the funds that we need. So, I wish we’d anticipated like you’re saying and put some… But I mean even if we were to start now, we need to start something now.
Evanna Lyons:
So even to email and say with a view to working something out, can we get the ball rolling for the next couple of months? I mean, I think that’s the way to do it rather than do you have anyone right now?
Von Nkosi:
Somebody else had their hand raised, I just want to finish this thought. I think if that’s if you say, “Okay, it’s too late. We’ve got to hire people with expertise. We have to go outside. The market is set up a training components of those people coming in.” You bring in local people to be trained in maybe 18 months, two years from now. Those other people can move on because they probably have options. If they are already experts in their field, and that’s part of the strategy. You need to build up that next step. Global talent. That’s it.
Evanna Lyons:
Thank you.
Ned Zimmerman-Bence:
Well, that’s a really brilliant idea. I have a more kind of perhaps a [inaudible 00:26:10] and that can maybe relieve your pain earlier. I’m not sure how this would fit in with your business model or the ethos of your company, but have you looked at students who might have gone abroad to get their degree and then come one now come back to Tanzania? And I’m thinking of like here in the States there’s a system that’s getting a pretty big attraction within colleges called handshake where you can post a job and link that job to, tie that job to specific companies and big schools and then… Hi, I’ll be right with you.
Ned Zimmerman-Bence:
Sorry. To kind of send that out to people. So in other words, handshake is a way that you can get recent college graduates who might want to come back to Tanzania and who might be interested in working with you. It might be an interesting way of posting your job. And that way you can get early graduates who you know want to be back in their home country but also do the work that they’ve trained for. And then, you can go on and implement Von Nkosi’s idea once you have those basic employees.
Ned Zimmerman-Bence:
But I apologize, I need to hop off but I wish I could stay on. This is a great conversation.
Evanna Lyons:
Thank you. Thanks for your help.
Ian Fisk:
And to add to Ned’s comments, we see a lot of entrepreneurs in the Mentor capital network who grew up in country A, went to school in country B, and then wanted to go back to their original country to start a company who are impassioned and know their local community because they’re from there but weren’t quite ready to start a company yet.
Ian Fisk:
Florence, I believe, has this experience of having seen these people. And so like finding these folks who want to go home and do something now that they’ve got their fancy education. Giving them a way to work in the field for a little while before they just start a company might be a great opportunity.
Speaker 5:
Mm, would handshake, do you know, offer a database of these students abroad from Tanzania for example? Or, you would just have to… I’ll look into it. I’ll look into it.
Florence:
Yes. It’s Florence here. So everything is said. And Von Nkosi, I’m totally with you on, I mean what you’ve done is, is proving that it’s true. But, you have to reach beyond your regular networks, and you can try to be creative as to network.
Florence:
So if you are in philanthropy world, try to access your private sector networks and vice versa. It’s very situation specific. So, it’s hard to give a general advice on this. But you can do something. For example, even I was thinking of… It’s time consuming, but being a panelist right at the university or something like that or at events around town, it can attract the kind of people who might otherwise not know who you are. And if you make your company look… When you talk about your work, you can make it sound very attractive and exciting and might attract people who are imaged for more than a salary.
Florence:
Also, there is a company, which name escapes me right now, but that’s recruiting specifically in Kenya and India. They do that online, but they do work a lot with social impact people. And once I find that contact, I can share that with you.
Evanna Lyons:
Fantastic. Thank you.
Florence:
And then thirdly, one thing, Ian and other people were talking about salary and skills screening. I am a big, big, big advocate of transparency. As transparent as you can be about the conditions of work, about the potential and the difficulties early on, I find it really helpful trying to attract people in a certain way. And then, slowly and suddenly they discover what it’s really like. It’s never [inaudible 00:31:11] disadvantage.
Florence:
And then my last thought is, well Ned is no longer on the call, but he was talking about screening people in certain way. Skills assessment are more and more common everywhere. I think more and more people in the US, I don’t think in Tanzania and Kenya unless maybe in the tech world. But, in the tech world is becoming increasingly common to hire people first by screening their skills not even by looking at their resume.
Florence:
And fourthly… So again, if you do hire tech talent that’s [inaudible 00:31:52], I can direct you to some tools and platforms.
Florence:
And then fourth, yeah Ned was talking about in certain way. There is a nonprofit I know who hires very deep in villages, I think in Tanzania. I don’t know. I’ll check with her. She’s in now. countries too. And what we do is we… So I don’t know if it’s something you can use it or not. But, they do training for a week of their future trainers. And, through the process of training they have build process in a way where we can identify people who would be good trainers. So people get something out of it. It’s kind of a training.
Florence:
But, it is geared towards also like they actively identify people who they feel would be good for the company as a part of the training.
Evanna Lyons:
Okay. It’s not job opportunity by any chance.
Florence:
No, it’s Village Enterprise.
Evanna Lyons:
Thank you. Yes. Yeah. Brilliant.
Florence:
You can share my email with everybody because you know that’s what I do for a living. So, I’d be happy to [crosstalk 00:33:14] more in depth.
Evanna Lyons:
Thank you.
Alexandra:
I can back up that idea of in the technology field. I mean we send out assessments and projects for every single person in the hiring process.
Alexandra:
So, it is becoming more increasingly common. I know a lot of people in our industry do it, and I think outside of the tech industry I know organizations that do it. [inaudible 00:33:49] when it comes to screening and bringing in… When you cast a wide net, it’s really helpful because you get people outside of your immediate circle like was said earlier. My organization has moved into doing that. When I first came on we were literally just hiring connections and now we’ve moved to outer circles. But, by having projects that people do during the hiring process, that screening is incredibly helpful because it makes sure we’re really, really bringing on the right people for that exact position, that exact client. There’s a lot to consider. So, I highly recommend going that route.
Florence:
Just one more word on the skills assessment. Indeed, I think also the progress with that is that increasingly if you do skill assessment upfront not even by looking at resumes, but just a skills assessment which you can do more easily on tech than anything else, it does allow people who usually don’t have the perfect resume [inaudible 00:35:00] the perfect brand names to show up and show their skills. And, people think that it is better to have a more diverse force and access to people who otherwise you might not screen [inaudible 00:35:14] resume because all of us are very bias.
Evanna Lyons:
Okay. Thank you. Both of you, thanks. Alexandria, also.
Ian Fisk:
Other thoughts?
Von Nkosi:
Hey Ian, one more thing for me. I want to go back to your earlier comment about transparency and available salary/fees. I have to second that. As consultants, that is a major, major issue of wasting time responding to RFPs or responding to resumes or what have you.
Von Nkosi:
So the school of thought that some people have on that as well, if I put the numbers down I’m going to get people who will only… They’re desperate. And they’ll say they’ll do it for that amount of money. And I may not get the best per person. So, I’m not going to put dollars on what it is. I just want to see what comes in, which wastes a lot of people’s time.
Von Nkosi:
So for us, I think that the downside is for us is we put in these proposals and shoot for stuff and they really can’t afford what they want. The other downside for us is they take the best of our ideas for free and then cobble that together, cobble several things together and put together a work plan for the person they want to hire for cheap.
Von Nkosi:
So personally, I’ve stopped responding to requests for proposals if there’s not a dollar figure attached to it. I just wanted to second that. I’m all in with you.
Ian Fisk:
The one situation I found that I don’t have a negative reaction to on that is there’s some large companies where they’re hiring and not everybody knows everybody else’s salary. Although, I think they should. I think you should have a transparency issue where you know everybody else’s salary.
Ian Fisk:
But, some companies have made the choice to operate that way.
Von Nkosi:
Yeah and I mean even if it was a salary range, 10 years ago, a foundation in New York invited me up to become a program officer and I didn’t realize until I got there what they pay. And I said, “In New York City? Are you guys crazy? There’s no way.” I mean it’s just, it can’t be done. I mean if they had put that in the front end, I wouldn’t have even thrown my hat in the ring. So, if they had just even put in a range. So it’s not quite you know what people pay that
[inaudible 00:38:09]
still know.
Ian Fisk:
How do we help Evanna find folks locally that have the skills that she needs? Is she developing those skills, or is she finding those skills?
Evanna Lyons:
I would like to think if I might say is that there’s a bit of both where it comes from the unskilled work that there’s going to be plenty of [inaudible 00:38:38], we’re hoping. In [inaudible 00:38:40] thing, for those of you that don’t know, we make sustainable furniture from plastic waste indoor and outdoor products. And we are developing four ranges to try and streamline the whole thing. You know modern to beach to office and, an eco-tourism range. And, it just means that we can in any of those ranges hopefully be able to offer, “Here’s your sink, here’s your bed, here’s your wardrobe table, couch, and decking” in any of those ranges. But more so, in terms of training people and giving the advantage to employment, it means that we can then streamline the actual manufacturing process.
Evanna Lyons:
So you take two greenwood boards and it’s streamlined. And then, our heads carpenters and the posters now can just say, this is the product. We’re going to be making 15 of them, and it’s done this way. And that way we can take on more people and there’s no kind of bespoke. It’ll be more cost effective and time effective. Basically, you know, teaching them every product that’s bespoke is it takes up too much time and energy, and there’s a likelihood that they’re called here. people can get it wrong, there’s more margin for error.
Evanna Lyons:
Whereas when we streamline it means hopefully that they won’t be. So in terms of unskilled work for now, we’re hoping it’ll all be about training. And we’re going to put on training workshops and be able to upscale because we’re getting a machine soon, and everything’s going to kind of kick off.
Evanna Lyons:
That’s what we’re hoping. But, before that happens we need to have in place, preferably by the end of September, a very skilled and experienced sales and marketing person in order to have the orders in place to kick all of this off. So we’re in the middle of prototyping everything and training people up. But I suppose we just have to break it into, yes, skilled and unskilled. But we really want to, when the machine comes [inaudible 00:40:34] the skilled and experienced engineer, [inaudible 00:40:36] obviously there’s health and safety issues apart from everything.
Evanna Lyons:
And there’s break downs and some maintenance issues. We need someone who knows what they’re doing. And sales and marketing, we don’t want someone who’s kind of not great because that’s off putting. Obviously, feels because the market here is relatively small. We’ve got a one chance at it to kind of nail the phone call.
Evanna Lyons:
Like, “Hello. What are you doing right now for decking? Do you know what’s costing you X amount to replace your decking every year? Why don’t you use ours and do up your entire project. All of our products. And we need someone who’s kind of quick, honest, knows the figures, is able to do the math and then follow up with marketing strategy in terms of kind of online doing the brochure.
Evanna Lyons:
I mean, maybe we’re asking too much, but it’s just been very… I’ve put the feelers out and as it stands, our network is quite big here, thankfully. It’s easy to get to know people and still, we’ve struggled with this over the last three years.
Evanna Lyons:
So, it’s looking like we might have to, for engineering and marketing and sales, look further [inaudible 00:41:39], which yeah, as I said earlier, I kind of feel it defeats the purpose of being here and giving someone… I know there’s someone out there that’s from here and it give them a decent wage.
Evanna Lyons:
But maybe, I mean, I’m thinking more and more as I’m listening to you, maybe I need to change the way I’m contacting universities or I need to maybe meet people face to face and travel to Dar, to Dodoma, to the universities. And then obviously try and find a database for people who’ve been educated abroad but want to come back here. That sounds ideal.
Florence:
if you are going to those places and your one of the key persons, you have to be there physically.
Evanna Lyons:
Yes.
Florence:
Because yeah.
Ian Fisk:
I want to quick throw in that you’re hiring in a small company. You want people to meet you because the number one reason people are good at their jobs is the people they work for, right? It’s a manager’s job to make sure their employees succeed first and their companies second. Although hopefully those two are strongly correlated. And, if they have a sense of you, then you’re going to get a better sense of folks.
Natalie:
Yes, I was listening about what Evanna say. And there is a component that she can [inaudible 00:43:07] use. There is a web base that these — Europe that now with the use of technology she can use the Skype and she can hire people from around the world with the capacity sensibility that she needs.
Evanna Lyons:
Thank you Natalie. You were breaking up a little bit, so I’m taking notes but I couldn’t catch what was the… Did you say it was an online service?
Natalie:
Yes. Online service or remote jobs that like that you can hire people from around the world without any necessity to see. But, you can Skype every moment with her, with that person. I used to work like that. You can feel passion about your… You can do at the same time, you are in not that place, but you can hire people from different skills that you need.
Evanna Lyons:
Okay. And Ian again, it was a little hard to get the details, but I understood overall. And maybe I can follow up with you.
Ian Fisk:
my basic premise was give people the opportunity to meet you, the person. Right?
Evanna Lyons:
No, I got what you said earlier. I’m just saying I was a bit lost there with Natalie. Again, in terms of connection. I couldn’t hear the detail of that online service she was talking about. But maybe if you heard it you could let me know in an email later.
Ian Fisk:
All right. Good to know. Any last thoughts, comments, questions?
Evanna Lyons:
I just have to say thanks again everyone for their input… For their time and energy into this. It’s unbelievably helpful, and I really appreciate it. We really appreciate it. So thank you.
Florence:
Yes, Florence here. Thank you. It’s a really very good call. And one thing I often remind people, two things is you really have to understand the kind of people. It’s timely. You have to spend time, and there’s no shortcut unfortunately. And secondly, once you recruit its only the beginning. And a lot of people feel like, “Oh, I’ve recruited, I’m done.”
Florence:
That’s where the connection starts. So management, paying attention to the people on your team is very important too. So just a reminder.