Quadruple Your Capacity – How to Hire a Virtual Team Member For Your Airbnb Business

0:00So I saw this opportunity posted on an online job platform and I went through the you know the usual recruiting process. I was asked to submit a video introductions and I went through the the interview and if I may share a funny story to to this and I don't know if you if you remember but when I was interviewing for this position the recruiting agency after the initial interview informed me that the client will move forward with another candidate. So was I was like okay then maybe this this job wasn't meant for me.

0:34But on the same day I received another email from that same recruiter and she said that oh the client changed his mind and he'd like to meet you. So fast forward to today I'm sitting you know right now here on your podcast. So I'd say it's it's it's been a roller co roller coaster ride. And looking back, I'm really grateful that you, you know, changed your mind because the last two years are the the best, years of my career and I really love working with you and Taran. — That's that's funny.

1:08I I actually do not remember that. I I don't I don't recall. You know it was a little bit of a blur because we were hiring we hired all four team members at the same time and we were looking for one for the management role your role and then the other for you know guest services and and relations and so yeah there's a lot of discussion back and forth but that's interesting how that how you found that was there anything that stood out in our job description that you would recommend to somebody if they're going to like go through the the hiring process that that made it more attractive or made you think this was legit compared to maybe another scammy job post or something like that.

1:51— Yeah, I guess what stood out to me was how clearly the role was defined. I mean, I knew what I was applying for and I understood the responsibilities and what the company expected from the person who's coming into that role. So, the hiring process itself made a huge difference because I've seen the other side of hiring where someone submits an application and then you're going to wait forever for an update or you're not going to hear back from the recruiter because I don't know if everyone is just busy and they haven't had a chance to to look at your application.

2:25But that wasn't my experience here. The communication was clear, the process moved along and yeah I guess you know for for business owners who are trying to attract highlevel talent that's one of the biggest things that they can do. They have to be very clear about the role that they're hiring for and what this person actually will own. What decisions will they be able to make and you know define what success would look like for them.

2:57So you you have to sell the opportunity not just the job because you know just like what you mentioned earlier someone with experience and initiative isn't only looking for a list of tasks to do. They want to know if they'll be able to contribute or have room to contribute. You know they can be trusted and their ideas can be heard. Yeah, that's a that's a great point. And I knew nothing about, you know, hiring someone overseas at all or, you know, working in the Philippines when I started this.

3:30I I have some friends who have worked with Filipino-based team members and had great things to say and gave me advice. But I actually so I decided to work with LTG Assist, which I'll put a link in the the show notes here if you want to reach out to them. But they're it's a Naval Academy grad who's a friend of mine who started it because he was he had a ton of success working with his virtual team. And so, they started a company where they help find higher level talent.

4:01Not, you know, not like part-time VAS that just do tasks, but more of like somebody who's going to be an actual full-time team member in that in that business. And so, so we worked together and crafted the the job description and then they went out and posted it and did the initial interviews that Maria was describing. So so that was kind of a godsend for me because I would not have known where to start or how to how to go about that process and and it worked out well. Then I just basically looked at the top candidates and and then had an interview with with Maria and the others and and went from there.

4:39So but I I was nervous. You know, I think everyone's had had experiences with call centers overseas where it's like a terrible experience where someone's just reading from a script and you get very frustrated. And so I was like, man, if that's what our our guests experience, you know, when they reach out with a problem or something and it's just like reading from a script, like that's going to be a major issue. We're going to have terrible reviews. And so I was kind of envisioning the the Verizon and Comcast call centers that you know and that that being the experience, but that's it's totally different.

5:17Like what I didn't realize is the the level of talent or the spectrum of talent that that you can tap into. And so, especially if you're looking for someone full-time, I think it's really, you know, it's really helpful to to hire someone full-time because that's, you know, more talented, like you mentioned, more talented people are going to want to own a role, not just, you know, read from a script or, you know, do tasks that are that [clears throat] are given to them. So, so I think that's a good distinguisher. From your perspective, when when do you think it's right for someone to hire?

5:53Because I I mentioned earlier, you know, you don't have to have everything like totally refined, but at the same time, like, you know, you probably shouldn't hire before thinking through a few things. So, like as someone working, you know, virtually in a in a business, what what like where do you think someone should be if they're thinking about hiring a a virtual team member? I think for a business owner, it's when you notice that you're spending most of your day on doing repetitive operational work instead of spending your time growing the business.

6:28I've worked with businesses, sorry, business owners before who waited too long to hire and they were so busy putting out fires that they never had a time to build processes. So, every time a new employee comes in, they had to learn directly from them. M — so I would say that before hiring you don't necessarily have to have the perfect SOPs but you should know how you want things done the the clearer the the expectations are it's going to be easier for the onboarding to to come along. — Yeah, that's a good point.

7:01Yeah. And from a I think from a my perspective just you know as a short-term rental business owner you know you came in right as we were launching our Florida property so it was our secondary market where we weren't going to be living anywhere close we live in Indiana and so we were figuring out the secondary market together and so you really helped us I mean bring on new cleaners find you know all the different resources that we would need in a new market like right basically from day one cuz I remember like talking to you for the first time.

7:35I think I was in Florida you know and we were setting up the property so it was like you jumped right into it. So but we we did have some systems in place. So I always recommend like four to five properties is really when it becomes you know you're you start to go beyond that and it's just you as the business owner it starts to become a little bit overwhelming. So, that seems to be from a short-term rental perspective, I think that's a good tipping point where it makes sense to bring on your first virtual team member.

8:07So, awesome. So for for people who aren't familiar, with the Philippines and with like why this has become such a a big partnership country with the US in terms of virtual team members. Can you talk a little bit about like the the language? I I learned this how there's different dialects and like — most people speak English. — yeah, — and that's why it works really well. — Yeah, I think that's one thing that's interesting about the Philippines because we don't really have like just one language that everyone grows up speaking at home.

8:45Like Filipino is our national language. Tagalog is the main language it's based on, but we also have other Philippine languages depending on where someone came from. So, some if someone came from or grew up from Cebu, he would speak I don't know, Sabuano or what else? Ilano. Like there are so other dialects here in the Philippines. So, it's very common for a Filipino to grow up speaking one language at home, like Filipino in certain situations and then English if they're at school or at work.

9:25And I guess because historically you know America the American period played also a really big role in why English became so established here in the Philippines because you know English has been widely used in schools and that continued to have an influence even after the the Philippines became independent. So, not trying to be you know, a history major here, but I would say that fast forward to today, English is still one of the one of our official languages and it's used extensively in education and government media professional settings.

10:04So, most Filipinos right now are exposed to English from a very young age. However, I wouldn't say that every Filipino is automatically, you know, fluent in English. There's, difference between someone who's being exposed to a language and being comfortable speaking it. I guess it depends a lot on someone's education and where they grew up, as well as their environments. So, for for many Filipinos, switching between languages is just part of, our everyday life.

10:40You might be speaking your regional language within the family setting and then when you step out and you go to school or when you go to work you're speaking or you're talking English. So you don't necessarily think about it. It's just like a switch depending on the the situation. And I think that actually helps when Filipinos work with people from other countries because we're already used to adjusting how we communicate depending on who we're talking to.

11:12So when you add English to that, it can be a really it can become a really useful skill, especially for people working in international companies or remotely. And that's that's actually one of the reasons I think the the Philippines has become such a strong market for for remote work. There is obviously much more than you know than the language but our expos sorry but our also our exposure to English language combined with the ability to adapt and communicate across different cultures.

11:51— Yeah. Yeah. That's that's such a great or interesting nuance. And so if you like compare that obviously you can work with virtual team members across the world now like you can you know with the the virtual setups that that that people have but you know just I mean for like just comparing it to my experience like living in Japan you know like Japanese is is the official language that everyone grows up speaking and if you're going to learn English it's like a secondary — process as opposed to being integrated into the process of just growing up.

12:23You you know kind of it's it's part of day-to-day. So I think it lends itself so much better in the Philippines and you know Filipinos are generally like very customer oriented and like you know very friendly and so it's like you know I think it just is a kind of a perfect setup if you're looking for a a virtual team. And there's something else as you were talking I was going to say on that and I totally totally slipped my mind, but but yeah, so I I think it's a it's a great place to start if you're looking for a a virtual team member.

13:00And oh yeah, I was going to say like in our job description, we actually specifically wrote like you need to speak English perfectly because, you know, again, like there's a huge spectrum like you said, not everyone's going to just naturally speak English even if they have some English background. And so, you know, you can be that specific and it's going to obviously eliminate a lot of people that don't speak perfect English, but if you're, you know, looking for a higher level talent and and you're willing to pay, you know, a little bit above average in terms of what, you know, you would pay if if you didn't require, you know, perfect language skills, then, you can be that specific in the job description and, you know, you can, and it's it's totally fine.

13:47So that like you know our team can pick up the phone and call any of our guests if they're having an issue with the the lock the keypad you know trying to get in or any other issue and speak just fine without any you know language barriers or anything like that. So can you [clears throat] talk about like the the the cadence like the training cadence? So a lot of people ask about this like how often do I need to meet with my virtual team? How much training does there need to be in the beginning and then what does it look like in terms of regular cadence going forward.

14:23So you know what what do you feel like is is a good setup for that. — well when I first came into Dune Dwellings one of the first thing that I worked on was the onboarding process and the training plan because I already knew that we are going to be adding more people to the team fairly quickly. So I wanted to make sure that we weren't just bringing people in to the company and figure things out as we went. So at the same time I started looking at the existing processes and asking where we could be you know more efficient, what was working, what was taking too much time what wasn't clearly documented and what we could change so that the team wouldn't have to you know keep reinventing the the wheel.

15:10So if you remember I was telling you in the early days about I mean I I remember that you were telling about the early days of the remote team when you first brought in the the remote team member. Both of you were you know learning the vacation rental business at the same time. So there's a lot of you know figuring things out together. You had to create processes that you encountered on different situation that made sense at that point. But when I came in, we already had a lot more clarity I guess around the business or where we want the business to go.

15:46And during that transition, you're very clear about the areas that you want us to focus on and to to improve. So I didn't I didn't really have to spend weeks trying to figure out, okay, what am I supposed to to do on the first week after we brought on these two new team members. So we we already had that conversations prior. I just basically I guess took those priorities and built on them and you know added things that I noticed that just needs more structure what needs to be tightened up on the existing process and start documenting because that's one thing that is is really missing but by by that time.

16:29So what do you call this? As far as training goes, I don't think there's really a magic number or or weeks, you know, where you want to train someone intensively and when it will be completely done. I guess in the beginning I think the the communication should should be more frequent because you're you're learning the business you're learning the system and the the owner's expectation at the same time but as the team members become you know more comfortable with the process the training should gradually shift from teaching them what to do into more discussing the the problems reviewing their performance and looking ways to to improve.

17:18So, that's also I think why on boarding for me is is really important because the the goal here isn't just to have someone depend on this person forever. And we want to make sure that you know we're able to get them from one point that they're comfortable making decisions, asking better questions and you know eventually identify things that you know didn't even think about to to ask them about it.