The Agency Hour
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The Agency Hour
An Offer They Can't Refuse
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We help you write the job scorecard. We collaborate with you to write the job scorecard. We collaborate with you to write the job ad, which is pretty easy once you've written the job scorecard. We post the job ad into our private talent pool that we've got in the Philippines. At the moment, we just focus 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 tests. We put them through online development tests 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'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_02If you have a vision for the agency you want to build, then we want to help you build it. Welcome to the Agency Hour Podcast, brought to you by Agency Mavericks.
SPEAKER_04Good 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 oh 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 messed with. How are you, Mr. Crispy Butter?
SPEAKER_03I'm doing all right. Oh, listen to those tones. Now, you've been acting this week, I hear. I even brought the cannolis.
SPEAKER_00Oh man. Yes, 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.
SPEAKER_04And dress rehearsal was tonight, so I figured so is so is this what you wear in the play? Is this what you're wearing in the play?
SPEAKER_00I'm a I'm a gangster in the play, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Wow, wow.
SPEAKER_00Actually, I have two roles. I'm I'm a gangster and I'm also like a director, like a Cecil B. DeMille kind of director.
SPEAKER_03Uh-huh. Oh, yes, Cecil B. DeMille.
SPEAKER_04Oh man, you're taking me back. Um, of course, most of the audience watching this have no idea what we're talking about because they weren't alive. Uh, the the is it the same play that you do every year?
SPEAKER_00No, no, it's a it's a different play. Like uh a couple years ago, it was a it was um 50 shades of gray hair. And it was it was basically 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_03That's fantastic. I love it.
SPEAKER_00So you do something different every year, it's it's really ridiculous. We do um song parodies, and the guy who writes the guy who writes the lyrics for song parodies is a genius, like really good stuff.
SPEAKER_04That'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. I'm not really allowed to talk about it much, I don't think.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I just thought I thought we were gonna, I didn't realize we weren't gonna talk about well, you know, you know what they say, man.
SPEAKER_04Like the first rule of first rule fight club is don't talk about fight club, right?
SPEAKER_00Right, exactly. Yeah. Um and we all know we all know you have a hard time keeping secrets.
SPEAKER_04I'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 hit is there a waiting list? Is there a waiting list that we are sending people to for this thing just yet?
SPEAKER_00Is there from a message from Emily that says we're just getting I can share I can share links to the wait list.
SPEAKER_04Great, all right. And does that mean the cat's out of 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 slash 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_00Let's not say anything about it, let's just see if people sign up for it without us talking about.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_04All right, no idea. No, 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 VI's just broken out. There, Goldie's just tearing someone's eyes out at the moment. Jaden, you do not need to join, my friend, because you are in Mavericks 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 don't need to join because you're in the family.
SPEAKER_03You're in the family, if you know what I mean.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that's right. Um, so uh it is there is something coming, and um uh and uh remember, remember the first 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're already doing. That's right. Make more revenue for the work you're 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 first 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_00Yes. Is that what we're here for? That is right. I hope you've got the screen ready because I don't.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I've got it all prepared, mate. I've got it all, I've got it all prepared. I've been awake since three 3:30 this morning and I've got it all prepared. Um, before we do that, I want to know people who are watching, uh, 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. I don't even know where to go. I want to 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 going to 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 hired a project manager, Pete, how would that change your day?
SPEAKER_00Uh it would free me up to do more business development type stuff. Because I I am I am still holding on to the strings, the puppet strings a little bit. Um, so yeah, the next next position is definitely project manager for me.
SPEAKER_04So let's talk about a project manager for a second because 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_00Well, 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 and 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 canned 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. I'm setting you up here.
SPEAKER_04Thank you, brother. I appreciate it.
SPEAKER_00Trying to come up with the right answer though.
SPEAKER_04No, I want you to come up the wrong answer actually, so I could look even smarter.
SPEAKER_00Well, that's what I mean by the right answer.
SPEAKER_04The so I believe I'm we're hiring project success managers at the moment. So I call them a project success manager. We're hiring project success managers or PSMs as they're affectionately known for clients at the moment. Um, because uh so 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 uh 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 uh an art gallery down on the ground floor with their boardroom, and then all 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, 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 because 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 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 managers. She was literally like the gatekeeper, right? She was she was a horrible person. Sorry, too. She was like, I would have fired her in a heartbeat because 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? And it 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 glass 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 manager 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. 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 request comes in from a client, they basically need to do like a mini go wide, go deep, right? And uncover, oh, 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 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 want to consider this and you might want to consider this, and how does it tie in with social and it's going to impact what we're doing in search and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. 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?
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_04So 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 ClickUp to manage all of this. The way that we manage ClickUp, I I kind of think there are three big chunks in ClickUp that you need to be aware of if you've never used it, and this is certainly the way that we're 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're recruiting for. And just be clear different model to us to you know what other people do. 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. Uh, the first thing we do is have this documentation with all of the templates you need to roll out this process. And so this is just like a really a cover page of 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 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, because we give a 30-day guarantee on candidates. And so this really is just like 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 template for a job scorecard. So, the first thing we do when we start recruiting someone is we develop a job scorecard. It's 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 going to be measured. Let me show you an example.
SPEAKER_00Do you have any examples?
SPEAKER_04I do. Well done. You just teed me up and I hit that one out of the park. Thanks, Pete. Uh, so here's an example. Here's one I prepared earlier. Fresh out of 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? If 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 going to come work with you. 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 going to pay them and the flexible work hours. So this is really important because it gives them a reason why they should want to 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 because 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_00So I think something something I learned from you on this is um this mission. I wrote one for a client and then I then I cheated and read a few of yours. And uh 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 or our customers are focused on what is this person going to do for me? What is this new hire gonna do for me or my business? And that's the wrong way to go here. You have to take it beyond that to what impact will this person have on the impact we're trying to have on our clients?
SPEAKER_04100%. 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, your 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 internal, 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, 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 going to 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. And what we do is with outcomes, is we also have a separate column which tells us how we're actually going to measure that. And so all clients are happy and feel well supported. Well, we're going to measure that with a customer satisfaction survey of four plus stars out of five. And that's an ongoing metric that this role is responsible for. So every time we launch a project, we're going to send a CSAT to our client and ask them to rate their experience with the agency based on a bunch of criteria, and they're going to 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. We don't tell them to use Asana. We don't tell them to use Zapia. 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're hiring an experienced project manager who knows how to actually do the job. What we're 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 let me 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. Get them happy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Right. Communicate all aspects of a project to the team for successful execution. Well, you can't get a four out of 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 going to free up the CEO. Make sure the team has everything they need to succeed. That's also going to free up the CEO. It's going to 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 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. We're a little bit overwhelmed, rack capacity, we need another designer. 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're 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. Uh again, this is literally a copy and paste of the uh mission, uh, the you know, some summary of the mission of the company. Then here in the job ad, 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 paste. 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 paste that into a job ad, right? There we go. Bang, there it is. Experience. You should have past experience communicating with clients across. 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.
SPEAKER_00And um so that stuff gets in there. We figure out how to get that in there because that's important.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that's important, but it's not we 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 clusterfuck. We're now going to do it this way from now on. And here's why I go, Yippee, thanks very much. Because 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 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 just get out of the way. That's right.
SPEAKER_00Better than you, smarter than you. Yep.
SPEAKER_04How we will help you succeed.
SPEAKER_00Ultimately, you want them running your business. Correct. At least parts of it. So they've got to be better than you.
SPEAKER_04I'm the coach of a soccer team, right? Guess what? I don't want to have to get on the field and kick the goals. I'm gonna be up in the coach'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, uh, which is a favorite of mine, uh, just to make sure people follow instructions. So, what we do then is we then go and post that job ad, and uh we get a whole bunch of talent. Uh, we call it uh smoking out the talent. We get a whole bunch of talent. We then pre-vet 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 it's 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 uh international money accounts are set up so we can pay them if they're international, and then company mission and values, that really, that really kind of should be up here, right? That's got to be done there. And then once we have, you know, a bunch of candidates that we like and that we want to 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 a lunatic? Can you, you know, we talk in 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? They need to make their case there. What makes you confident that you will succeed in this role? What work achievements are you most proud of? And what failure has taught you the biggest lesson? Whole bunch of questions here which tell us a lot about the person and their experience. When are they available to start? Now, anything else you want to 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, they're full-time in the Philippines, 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-vetting 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 owner 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 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. Oh, how do I do that? Well, 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. Would like to schedule a 20-minute Zoom call to get to know you a little better. Please find a time in 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're 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? 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 situations.
SPEAKER_00It's like one of those word math questions. Like it's one of the it's a it's an essay, it's a short essay question.
SPEAKER_04Correct.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, hey, it's not go build this thing or go do this stuff. It's not at this stage. How would you handle this situation?
SPEAKER_04That's right. At this stage, I just want to understand, I just want to understand a little bit about their resourcefulness, their resilience, how creative they are.
SPEAKER_00You know, and that's not just because they're a project manager. If they were a designer, developer, same whatever, same same questions, same basic questions. Yep.
SPEAKER_04Same 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 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 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 want to 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. And the competencies interview is where we start digging into the scorecard. And I'll 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 not you have a 90% chance of succeeding in this role based on the fact that these are the outcomes you're going to be responsible for. So, what I want to do is I want to talk about your past work experience and I want to ask you questions and I want you to tell me stories that will tell us both whether or not you're going to succeed in this role. Because here's the thing: you don't want a role that you're not going to succeed in. And I don't want you to be in a role that you're not going to succeed in. 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 going to 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 is going to look like. This is what you're going to be reporting on. These are the numbers you're going to 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 competencies interview based on the scorecard. Again, there's a bunch of questions that you can ask here, a bank of questions you can ask that relate back to 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 dome, 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're 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 want to 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? The into 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 what's the likelihood that this candidate will be with a company in five years' time and that they can grow into a leadership role? Okay. So I want to have a conversation here about what their short-term career goals are, what their long-term career goals are, if they want to step into a leadership role, what are their salary expectations, how will they look at hiring people, where else are they interviewing? Uh, I just want to get an understanding if they can elevate into a leadership role, right? And again, there's one final bit of homework after this that they complete and they should be able 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're if you're 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 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. So we want to make sure that we can all, you know, get along. I don't do that because I think it's a bit creepy. Uh, but um what we're looking for here is the level of commitment that we're going to 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 them 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 glad you asked.
SPEAKER_00Can I back you up? Yeah, of course. Let's let's let's pick some of this apart. So I have questions. I'm uh I'm the only person really truly in a leadership role in my business. So do I do all these interviews?
SPEAKER_04Great question. Uh I would suggest I've made this mistake in the past, uh, more than once. 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're and and you don't have anyone else locally, then I would suggest you find a colleague. I would suggest you get Christina Hawkins or you get Johnny or you get a Maverick to do a culture interview, someone who knows you really well 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 for 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 and this person's going to 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_00And just to, I know the answer, but I want you to focalize the answer, you don't combine the interviews. Nope. Nope. Okay. 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 and they're not a good fit? Do I keep them going through the process? Yeah, if they're not a good fit. If they're not a good fit, where do you end it?
SPEAKER_04At 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 adcmavericks.com. We reason we really appreciate your interest in joining our company and we want to 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 if 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'd just go wish you all the best. That's it.
SPEAKER_00Have a nice day.
SPEAKER_04Um we're out.
SPEAKER_00So 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_04If I know they're out, if I'm doing the competencies in terms of it. Yeah, yeah, 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 all this, all this stuff is like beating. So 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 uh I'm out. No, I'm gonna tell you I'm out during dinner. Right. Right, right. I'm gonna say, hey, look, you're lovely, but this ain't gonna work. I've got to, you know, I got somewhere to be. I'm gonna hedge my bets. I've got to play the numbers game and you're not winning. Uh so I would just um I would just wrap up the cult the competencies in a minute and I'll say, hey, this has been great. Thank you so much for your time. Uh, I'll let you let you know. I wouldn't give them the homework, I would just say, we'll let you know in the next 24 hours. And then I'd just send them the rejection email. Now, if they are right, we make them an offer. Here's a letter of offer template we have, which is just an email. They just come back 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 uh an example that we've 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.
SPEAKER_00So don't can can somebody get that if they want it?
SPEAKER_04No.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_04They 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 want to get fat and eat good food, you've got to pay for it.
SPEAKER_00Finally, he's listening to us. Finally, he's listening.
SPEAKER_04Don't give anything away for free. So um uh that's the contract 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 them 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, which 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. And these uh you might say, Well, how do I run that check-in? I'm glad you asked. We have 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 going to 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 in the 30-day period, then we just replace them with some more candidates in the interview pipeline and we start the process. 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 uh so Troy.
SPEAKER_00I'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? I won't, no. No, me neither.
SPEAKER_04Absolutely not.
SPEAKER_00No, um absolutely not.
SPEAKER_04Absolutely not.
SPEAKER_00That's uh now it doesn't make sense. That doesn't make sense for us to do that or the or any of the interviews. So we're what I would do. We don't do that stuff. We coach you through this process.
SPEAKER_04That's right.
SPEAKER_00And I'll tell you what we do, and we'll get you the three candidates.
SPEAKER_04I'll tell you what we do, do right? Yeah, we do this. We help you write the job scorecard, we collaborate with you to write the job scorecard, we collaborate with you to write the job ad, which is pretty easy once you've written the job scorecard. We post the job ad into our private talent pool that we've got in the Philippines. At the moment, we just focus 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 disc profile. We check their internet speed, we do a background check on them, we put them through communication tests, we put them through online development tests 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'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're 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. Make sense? Um if you want to chat with us about becoming a customer so you can get your hands on these processes, click below to request a call, agencymaverics.com slash clarity call. Uh have a chat with one of our team because 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 staffing agency, we're not an outsource agency. This is going to be someone that works for you in your agency. You're going to pay them direct, you're going to manage them. Uh, jump on 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 Clicker, 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 list at agencymavericks.com slash agency in a box wait list. We might just bring that up on the uh screen at some point if we can. There we go. Uh join the wait list at agencymaveric.com slash agency in a wait in a box wait list. 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 because it is quite a big uh job for us to turn your agency into an agency in a boxing clickup. But what we basically do is build out your click up workspace. Um, there is a wait list. So if you want to 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 next one that we talk to. I'm loving ClickUp. It's so it's such a great, we still use Asana for a lot of stuff in-house, but the more I use ClickUp, the more I like it. We're actually building out uh our team uh in the Philippines to manage all the processes in ClickUp. 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 is 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 and onboard them and manage their team, the reality is most people are time poor and they just Want some help doing it. So that's what we're doing. We're just going to recruit people for them.
SPEAKER_00And most people have, you know, most agency owners have come from not running a business. Right? They they didn't start out running a business, 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. But 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_04Yeah, it's it's a swipe and deploy. Like it's uh uh by the way, for those of you who are in Mavericks 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 Mavericks Club. And our job, I had someone on the call yesterday who was asking about Mavericks 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. Because 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 we're hearing this a lot. We're hearing this a lot lately. 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_00And and for those of you that are mavericks, even if we're throwing at you, 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_04Correct. Unless Troy says it's a good idea, of course, and then of course you should play.
SPEAKER_00And then you come to Pete and he tells you to ignore Troy and you move on. Stick to the plan.
unknownStick to the plan.
SPEAKER_04When's the play, Pete?
SPEAKER_00When's the when's I play Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings? Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And where is it?
SPEAKER_00Is it at like a local theater 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 D we have we have a lady who plays uh keyboards to the song parodies, right? Because 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 and what's the what's the organization that the Kawana, the Kawanis Club, which is an it's an international organization, Kiwanis Club.
SPEAKER_04Okay, I w a n I S. Right. What and what is Kiwanis? What is it what is it?
SPEAKER_00It'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 forty thousand dollars every year between this this event, and we also run like a 5k, a 5k and a 10k. Wow. Thanks to amazing sponsors, and um we do we with that money, about half of that money goes towards scholarships for universities. Wow, 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_04Wow. I've just found the the Kiwanis Australia District website. Kiwani's is a global organization of 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.
SPEAKER_00So for all you who want to see me in some crazy costumes, if you look up Kingston, Kingston, Kiwanis Capers, you will find me as Fred Flintstone, and you'll find me as Cousin It, and you'll find me as split down the middle. I was Chaz and Chastity Bono in one scene. Singing I've got you, babe, to myself.
SPEAKER_04Oh my lord, golden. All right. Uh hey, uh, I'm gonna bounce out of 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'll let uh Pete go back to rehearsals. Uh so tomorrow. Opening nights tomorrow for you.
SPEAKER_00Opening nights tomorrow, tonight's dress rehearsal. Yep.
SPEAKER_04Fantastic. Right. So you've been the retrohearsal on your back.
SPEAKER_03No, no, it's tonight. You're about to go. Okay.
SPEAKER_04About an hour.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Have fun, my friend. Oh, yeah. Thanks for being here, everybody. Pleasure.
SPEAKER_02Chow, ciao. Bye for now.
SPEAKER_03Till we're done.
SPEAKER_02Thanks for listening to the Agency Hour Podcast. Subscribe at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocketcast, Audible, and wherever you'd like to listen, you can catch all of the Agency Hour episodes on our YouTube channel at youtube.com slash agencymaverics 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.