My last post titled “Getting started today” was really just a brief summary of three things you need to do to get started with a remote team. In this article I want to focus more on the second point which was finding your team, being the whole process of recruitment and interviewing people that potentially could be employed as part of your team.

There are three main sources that I know o,f and have used for finding my team that I’m going to talk about. There are of course other directories and systems for recruiting people but these are the ones that have worked for me in the past and I have had success from.

 

1. Referrals.

I choose to highlight this one first because I believe it to be the most effective and most efficient way of hiring new staff. Whenever you recruit a new team member there is a lot more that goes into the process than just finding and interviewing the person. Aspects around induction such as training people in your systems, your processes and understanding the way that you communicate, adapting to the culture and the behaviors of your team and learning to work with your other team members.

I have found that this is generally the most time and resource consuming part when inducting new team members. I have also found that the best source of finding new staff is to ask my existing team. My existing team members already understand what it means, and how it operates to be a part of my working team. They have already been trained in the different attributes, they understand the behaviors that I’m looking for, and they also understand the quality or level of expertise that we need.

Therefore, if they refer someone for a position within our team, not only that they are putting their credibility on the line, they also are aware of the type of person we need and are looking for. This saves a lot of that work in finding, recruiting and inducting people into your team.

Another method of referrals is to ask your colleagues or other people within your industry if they know anyone looking for work. They may be downsizing their team, they may have used someone previously as a contractor or even one of their team members may have nominated a person or friend who is looking for work. Once again, it’s the referral that comes with from someone that you trust and that is the key here.

 

2. Freelance websites.

There are quite a few large freelance websites that you can use to recruit team members but also to get project based work done. Elance, oDesk and Freelancer are the three that I have previous experience with. This method is really suitable for contract, project or any type of short term employment situation, as the majority of participants on these sites are freelancers and are not looking for a permanent position.

Elance would be my personal pick from these three simply because of its size and very sophisticated and streamlined system for working with your contractor. All the communication goes through the Elance workroom and therefore is recorded.

As a client, you have the protection of being able to fund an escrow payment and only release it when the work has been completed. As a contractor, you have the assurance that your client will pay as Elance holds the payment in trust through Escrow.

There are also great mediation services available plus the ability to look at the contractor’s work history and reviews from previous clients. It’s a very safe system if you are looking at starting with a remote team or just simply have a short term project you need assistance with.

 

3. Recruitment websites.

Predominantly, I have used two; easyoutsource.com and onlinejobs.ph. Both of these are great websites, but the advantage of easyoutsource is that it does not cost you to use the site. Online Jobs is a fantastic resource and I did use it for a couple of years, but it does incur a monthly fee to be able to use the service.

These two sites are the perfect resource if you are looking to recruit full time or any permanent staff member that are located in the Philippines. They both work in the same way with two different methods; you can post a job and attract potential team members to apply for your job, or you can browse resumes and contact individuals.