subject: Actual Interview Samples For Virtual Staff Applicants [print this page] When you have found a likely employee for your virtual team, you can interview them on Skype. You should be recording all of this. It's like content, you're creating it for your virtual staff. If you're going to have a project manager come in, they can then listen to all of those interviews that you've done, listen to the way that you do it, model the way that you do it, then they can do it. If you're creating it anyway, most of these things, if you do it once, you only have to do once. Once you log a system, then you can look to outsource it.
So in the interview process, we've got a series of questions that we'll ask. The main thing l look at, and this comes from Topgrading, an excellent book on the subject by Brad Smart, at the start of the interview, I want them to talk through their work history. Tell me about your first virtual office support job, what did you like about it, how was your boss, was he a good boss, bad boss, whatever? I don't like to call them bosses either, but the people who you work with.
The next step, where did you go to, what was your next job like? Tell me about that, why did you leave? What you'll find is, if you ask someone what they liked about it, what they liked about their boss, why they left a particular position, you'll find recurring themes and that's where the gold is when it comes to interviewing. You're looking for recurring themes, you're looking for someone who left because their boss was dreadful and he always overworked them and he expected too much of his virtual staff. They might say that two or three times.
Then you think, maybe it's not the boss, it's they're taking the same problem to every job that they go to, they're taking themselves. That's the same problem to every job that they're going. Maybe that's what's causing the recurring theme, not that it was the job. Obviously, there are going to be times when that is the case, that's why you want to identify recurring themes.
Then in addition to that, we have a whole series of questions that we ask as well. One of the questions I like to ask is a little bit off the wall and I'll say, this question I ask and it is quite broad and I ask it deliberately so it's broad, what do you like most about business? The reason I ask that question is ultimately, they're going to be working in business.
I want a virtual staff who's excited about the idea of building business and being involved in business. Even though they might see themselves as a content writer, they're involved in business. So I want to make sure that they see business as important and not just say, oh, I'm not really interested. There are a few other questions like that which we have: what are your strengths, what are your weaknesses? So there are a few questions that we go through.
