FROM: Dave Fogg, company owner. I will link my LinkedIn page here so you can look me up. I live half the time in Pompano Beach Florida and the rest of the time at my 2nd home in the Dominican Republic.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dave-fogg/
I typed this page to help ensure you understand my company business model and how this can fit in with your business. And, to cover most of the common questions/answers.
I am going to use a staffing and recruiting firm as a sample USA company that we work with.
A staffing firm in Tampa hired people through us for the following jobs.
1 - Recruiter trainees
2 - New Hire On-Boarding for high volume temp/contract worker hiring
3 - Accounting and Payroll
4 - Personal Assistant to the company CEO
I will explain what happened good and bad to help you avoid these same mistakes
With the accounting staff, at first the CFO was not interested in using Zoom or Teams video call and preferred to communicate by messaging. Too much messaging sets the stage for misinterpretation. 5 people can perceive the same email 5 different ways.
And, sometimes the CFO would travel and be difficult to reach so the accounting staff were stuck unable to work as they waited on further instructions.
After a few conversations the CFO agreed to be a better communicator and began using MS teams video call with screen sharing to make it same as if the Dominican accounting staff were in the same room with the CFO.
This turned into a 7 year relationship where the Dominican staff have become this company's accounting and payroll staff.
Recruiter Trainees - This was a problem and important to learn from.
A - Using LinkedIn and Indeed as candidate sourcing platforms just to make a point with; most companies have limited budgets to pay for job postings and resume search and message credits. So, it cost money to play the numbers game.
B - An ideal situation for a recruiter would be to specialize in a city. An example is to focus on accountants or maybe manufacturing workers. When a recruiter specializes in a city 100% of their candidate sourcing budget is applied to their specialty and city. This is how a recruiter can build up many important client and candidate connections over time.
The more a recruiter is properly networked the more clients and candidates flow to them and success becomes easier.
However, many staffing firms make the mistake of trying to cover all types of clients, all jobs and in different cities. The recruiters cannot become expert or well connected at anything.
And, here is the big problem to be aware of. In this scenario the recruiting director created activity metrics based on a hopeful outcome, not based on proven data.
An example is wanting to grow sales revenue and profit by X yet this was just on paper and was never proven in reality.
The recruiting director created daily and weekly call, interview, submit and hire metrics based on Made Up activity metrics which set the recruiters up to fail.
Let's dissect this because same thing happens with sales.
A - In order for the recruiters to make X calls per day the company must provide access to enough candidate resumes with phone numbers for this to be realistic. Recruiters or salespeople cannot blink their eyes and magically have enough people with valid phone numbers to call.
B - LinkedIn does not show phone numbers. With Indeed, the recruiter can send an INmail and only if the candidate accepts and replies does their contact information show.
C - As you can see, the recruiters have zero control over these candidate sourcing tools, the number of qualified people who are active on these platforms and to the contact information. Yet, the metrics imposed high pressure on the recruiters as if they did have such control.
D - During meetings the manager often talked down to recruiters and salespeople for not achieving their numbers yet never rolled up their sleeves to dig deeper to learn the facts and truth.
When a manager treats people this way the side effects are workers learning to fake their numbers just to look ok on paper. And, become de-moralized and privately start looking for other jobs.
I warned the CEO to realize this recruiting director was a big problem. For a year the CEO defended the recruiting director until all I just shared was flushed out into the open and the CEO admitted I was correct and terminated the recruiting director. When hiring a new director all of these root causes to failure were addressed and improved.
Finally, this recruiting director never once had video calls with screen sharing to train and show newly hired recruiters how to become better and more experienced. Or, if a recruiter claimed they could not find enough people to call and make their numbers, the Director never did a screen sharing call to see what the recruiter was seeing. OMG, such terrible failed leadership!
We are living in a world were too many company leaders look at numbers on a computer screen and then communicate by messaging rather than use video call with screen showing to SHOW people how to do their jobs and be successful. If this one problem is addressed and solved a company can be so much stronger.
Another way to say this is if a manager is going to complain and blame a worker for failing to deliver expected results, I would hope the manager can get on a Teams video call and show the worker what the manager would do differently. Maybe the manager can do better or maybe the can't and the problem was never the worker!
Other problems to avoid
I am not hiring people as my employees to rent them to your company. I am finding people in DR for you to interview and select. I hire the people you select through the HR company so they are legally paid in the DR while working for you same as long term career employees.
Do not make the mistake of thinking of these people same as if you are renting them from an offshore company. It is critical that you think of them same as long term career employees and treat them this way. Get to know them, build real relationships.
The ideal situation is where you benefit from the lower cost while also creating a good job and career for the people assigned to your company.
Some of the companies I have worked with think this way and they did build large and successful teams in the DR. The Leaders fly to the DR to spend time with their DR teams.
Other companies treated the people as if rented from an offshore company. The CEO perceived the people as cheap and expendable. Let's just say this did not last very long and is not how to create success.
It's simple: Make sure you provide the training, tools and leadership for people to succeed.
If a person works at an average level they should produce average results. If a person must work at an above average level just to reach average results something is wrong and this will lead to failure regardless where the people live and work.
Use video call with screen sharing to see and talk to people live. You cannot build relationships over email, you must see faces!
Treat people like USA career employees except they live and work from a lower cost location.
Consider creating PTO, holidays, annual evaluation and maybe some career planning and if is doable, some advancement.
And, understand positive is a better management philosophy than negative. Lift people up, show them how to succeed and make them feel good about themselves.
Anyone can talk down to people and make them feel bad but this never solves problems or turns into positive results.
People react the same way they are treated!
Dave Fogg