Afternoon everyone,
The countdown begins again >
Today we talk about building a killer team on a shoestring budget.
Not because that’s your budget – but because that’s a powerful way to think about how to grow your team.
I want to walk you through what I’ve done to build an agency that has a dedicated:
- PR department
- Web Design department
- Web Development department
- Operations department
- VA department
- Commission only sales department
- A team of sales reps
- A lead-generation team
- Client relationship team
- SEO team
- Content team
- Several joint-venture development partners
We’re barely a 7-figure agency but yet we have over a dozen high-performing departments.
50% of this team is dedicated towards non-revenue generating activities but rather long-term development projects.
Let me tell you how we’ve done this:
- Use a global workforce – don’t just hire from your own doorstep
- Develop bases of power around the people that you do hire
- Once you identify talent you can afford – nurture them aggressively
- Have a placement programme
- Be prepared to ultimately be a part-founder part trainer
- Have a very tough recruiting process that weeds out the majority of the unmotivated
- Make the recruitment process mimic what it’s like to actually work at your organisation
- Lead aggressively by example.
So.
Let’s now go into each of these points in more detail:
Table of Contents
A global workforce
We hire very talented people and successfully so from these platforms:
- Workinstartups
- Angel.co
- Internshala
- Onlinejobs
- Handshake
- Indeed
- Friends and family
These platforms are places where young, ambitious, and hardworking people go to find work. And it’s on these platforms we’ve found a lot of success.
Develop bases of power around the people do you do hire
When you do find good people – ask them every month if they know anyone who’s a good fit for your company – to please introduce them.
Our head of web-development’s brother joined us. My cousin, his mother, sister, and other cousin joined us. Several of the Filipino team have come through referrals.
It’s just good recruitment sense to ask the people that already work for you if they know anyone who is a good fit.
The key that people forget though is to ask REGULARLY.
It’s typically (much like sales) on the 2nd – 4th ask that someone has come through
Once you identify talent – nurture them aggressively
Sounds simple but most leaders don’t do this well enough.
To be practical here’s what we do at Pearl Lemon:
- We have sh*t-tons of video-based training that our people must slowly work their way through to reach a leadership level within the organization
- Whenever a new process is established – there HAS to be video based training to show the people that will follow what they need to do
- You’ll notice at the top there’s 160 videos – this is part of the weekly company wide training we engage in every Friday:
Furthermore, anytime one person is being shown anything – it’s typically recorded and uploaded for others to watch.
10+ of our company leaders are having business training with a management consultant currently also to help drive their development. This is 1x per week over 6-weeks.
Furthermore, we’re continually asking the question –
What problems are there at Pearl Lemon?
The culture of innovation is strong.
All of this means our people develop extremely quickly.
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Have placement programme
Some of our best people – in fact many of them – started as placement students:
Lydia – our operations director
Pearl – our head of PR
Akhila – our head of HR
Lokesh – our head of AI.content production
Celeste – our head of content
Oni – our head of AI content creation
And we have new and exciting people coming through all the time.
You can check out how much time we’ve invested into this at Pearl Lemon Placements.
Be prepared to ultimately be a part-founder part trainer
Much of my time, probably 40% of it – is spent training and developing our people. Of course, this is because organisationally I’ve chosen to find untrained but talented people and then work to develop them.
With this in mind – if you’re growing an organisation – one of the best investments you can make is into growing your team.
Practically this means regular training sessions, a dedicated commitment to improving your team and – when it comes to recruitment – having a stunning onboarding experience/
Have a very tough recruiting process that weeds out the majority of the unmotivated
is an excellent place to start.
The process is similar to ‘Top Grading’ in some respects but with a Pearl Lemon twist as follows:
We have an:
- Initial response on the job platform
- 25 question form to fill in
- This includes a video introduction
- Whatsapp interview process
- 3-day trial
Before a person can successfully start with us.
As you can imagine – this has quite a high cut-off rate.
Which is perfect.
It means that by the time someone gets past a three-day trial – they’re already a good potential candidate for the Pearl Lemon Group.
This ensures the quality of the people we find is high.
Make the recruitment process mimic what it’s like to actually work at your organisation
Our questions being on Whatsapp is primarily because it’s where we work. And then the video upload that’s required as part of the application process is using loom.com – again this being central to our work.
This ensures that once people begin with us there are no surprises with the work – and that the way your company works is a match for the candidate.
Lead aggressively by example
This is ultimately about leading from the front.
Everyone has different ways of doing this – and perhaps different approaches.
But if you ask alot of your team – you must also give alot.
This is a must because you can then set the standard.
This means being accessible. Being available and more.
Final Thoughts
I guess I forgot to mention that Pearl Lemon Placements as a website is an EXCELLENT recruitment portal for us – as it documents the experience that people have with us.
So effectively building recruitment case studies of success and all is another powerful way to revolutionize the recruitment process.
Right, that’s it for today!
