This article was written by HireSmart for their newsletter and blog post.
Cup your hands over your eyes, and now take them away. What do you spy? More Monkeys in Hats — they’re everywhere.
Colleen Lloyd-Roberts and her husband, Richard, love how their digital marketing and website design business, with the catchy moniker, keeps growing. Monkeys in Hats is now completely referral driven, “which is amazing,” said Colleen.
Many ingredients go into the stew of success. But Colleen says staffing through HireSmart Virtual Employees is truly a secret ingredient that more people should add to their business plate. She sees proof every day.
Brenda and Abby are stars in Colleen’s eyes. The two Filipino staff members handle many responsibilities with true professionalism.
“Brenda is like, I can’t even imagine,” said Colleen. “If I could have 10 of this girl, my company would be so big. I can’t even keep up with her. She’s so smart, and she’s so fast and so good. And I just love her…I could walk away and go on vacation, and I know our business is in great hands with Brenda and Abby. And Abby is communicating with all of our clients; our clients are communicating with Abby. It’s beautiful. It’s wonderful. It’s perfect.”
THE VALUE IN HIRING FROM ABROAD
Colleen has long seen the value in hiring office assistants from abroad where the cost of living isn’t as high as in the U.S. She turned to virtual staff because she couldn’t scale Monkeys in Hats by sticking solely with local hires.
“I had initially hired the girl across the street who has a social media background and she was working for us, but every time I needed her to do more and more, I had to pay her more and more,” she said. “And I was paying her so much. I need more done, but I can’t keep paying you more.”
Virtual workers through HireSmart cost employers $9 an hour, which allows business owners to hire highly vetted, qualified employees at a fraction of the cost of an in-person hire. HireSmart clients save an average of $27,000 per year, per employee.
Colleen said she’s thrilled with the value she gets from her investment, which has allowed her business to grow. Her company doesn’t have the overhead costs of office space, utilities, and equipment for virtual staff. Meanwhile, employees like Brenda and Abby receive health and dental benefits through HireSmart at no cost to the clients.
“We’re able to service our existing clients even more, which is really good,” she said. “We have grown. We’re a marketing agency, and we don’t even market ourselves. We’re 100 percent referrals. So the fact that we’re able to add on even more service to our existing clients, they’re getting better results, so then they’re telling more people, so we’re getting more clients.”
WHAT MAKES HIRESMART DIFFERENT
Colleen tried other virtual assistant services before she learned about HireSmart, but she wasn’t satisfied. She then met with Anne Lackey, HireSmart’s CEO.
“That (other) company had a pool of staff, and they were just trying to farm out staff as opposed to ‘here’s what I’m looking for,’” she said. “When I met with Anne and I told her about my experience, what was different about HireSmart for me was, I felt like they put our needs first a little more, so she was like, ‘What are you looking for? What do you need?’”
Colleen appreciates the time HireSmart puts into developing employees before they come on board. HireSmart provides 40 hours of basic skills training for every employee a business selects.
“I love that my assistants have to work for HireSmart first for a whole week and pass (HireSmart’s certification), and I also love that Anne is going to be exposing them to a little bit of what they’re going to be doing for us initially,” she said.
A TIME-TESTED PROCESS
Over the past eight years, HireSmart has paired hundreds of business owners like Colleen with quality staff members from the Philippines. The company has the best placement success rate in the business at 98.7 percent thanks to its exhaustive vetting process, developed and overseen by Anne, which eliminates all but one percent of applicants seeking employment. Only the best make the cut.
HireSmart works closely with business owners to determine exactly what they need in a remote employee, and the company then conducts extensive evaluations of potential employees to match the right skill sets with the specific business need. At the end of HireSmart’s vetting process, a client meets with three skilled potential employees and chooses the best fit for their company. The employee then works with HireSmart for a week of certification.
