As we continue our conversations on hiring remotely, we asked Jim Bartek – CEO of Growth Heroes – how he hires and manages his 100% remote team. Growth Heroes is a boutique Salesforce.com consulting firm with the mission of partnering with companies to optimize business processes and integrate systems through digital transformation – all with the goal of helping them scale and grow earnings.
When asked what strategies and tools Jim utilizes to manage his team remotely, he said, “Ultimately working 100% remote is about trust and good communication. You need to be able to trust that team members will stay focused and get the right work done without micro-managing them. Everyone on the team also needs to communicate really efficiently and spend time documenting work. We use a tool Teamwork.com. We also include our clients in our project management tool so they can see all tasks, estimates, files, hours logged, and conversations.”
As for hiring remotely, Jim discussed how Growth Heroes conducts their search and interview process. “Our remote hiring process is pretty much the same as a local hiring process, we just do Video calls for all interviews instead of on the phone or in person. This helps us connect and see how someone is going to act on a video call. As a remote company, all of our team members regularly participate in video calls with clients, so it’s important. We are starting to get more sophisticated with our hiring with the help of FullStack. At first, we were just copying other job descriptions, posting on Indeed, and tracking responses in a Google Sheet. Now we have tailored job descriptions that align with our core values and ideal candidates. We’ve also worked with FullStack on how to focus our recruiting on high ROI activities like LinkedIn and employee referrals.”
Jim also has suggestions to make the process run smoothly. “Communication skills, problem-solving, and being self-driven are really important characteristics to seek in candidates. Also, time and language barriers are major problems, so keeping everyone within the same or a few adjacent time zones makes it a lot easier.”
We asked Jim about the pros and cons of hiring remotely. He said, “The pros are you can hire from anywhere in the world or United States, giving you a larger candidate pool. It also allows you to hire people outside of city centers. The bad part is it’s a lot harder to get to know a candidate and make sure they are a good fit, which we are working on. To be a great remote employee you really need to be awesome at both written and verbal communication and keep your work well documented.”
If you’d like to learn more from Jim and the Growth Heroes team, reach out at http://growthheroes.com/. If you want to have a conversation about remote hiring and see how FullStack can help you like we helped Growth Heroes, schedule a call with us!