2328 - Overcoming Skepticism in Hiring Senior Talent Overseas with Rekruuto's Sid Jashnani

0:04Well, hey, Thoughtful Leader. Welcome to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur. On this show, I interview purpose-driven founders, experts, and change makers who are making a real impact in the world. Want to be a guest? Simple. Go to upmyinfluence.com and click podcast. I'd love to promote your story to our audience of over 100 ,000 and across over 2 ,300 daily episodes and counting. Want to get booked on other great shows like this? Simple. Go to podverified.com and get your free guest authority score. Thousands of hosts are looking for high quality guests and Podverified connects you the right way. Now let's dive into today's episode.

0:58With us right now, it's Sid Joshnani. Sid, you are the founder of Recruito. You also happen to be a certified EOS implementer. But for Recruito, your website is Recruito.net. It's got some funny spelling. So to our friend that's listening, best thing to do is just kind of click in the show notes or click around in the description for this episode. You'll find a direct link to follow along. Sid, it's great to have you. Josh, good to see you and a pleasure to speak with you here. Yeah, absolutely. You are in London. I'm in Orlando. We're coming together. And Sid, before we get talking about your superpowers, what you do in the world, tell me, I always love kind of finding out what our guests, you know, high-level leaders kind of do in their free time when they're not at work, hobbies, games, movies, that sort of thing.

1:49What have you been into lately? So lately, it has been playing golf with my 14-year-old son. And it's interesting because his past two years, he was going through a life-changing illness and he was diagnosed with aplastic anemia, which is essentially requires a bone marrow transplant. And throughout his treatment, all he wanted to do was just hang out with me and play golf. And magically, he was out on the course every other day with me. So a lot of bonding. And over a period of last few months, his health started recovering, he started becoming better, the medication helped him and he doesn't need a transplant anymore.

2:30But we still continue to play golf together. And that's just become one of those things that we love doing together. And it's just brought me a lot more closer to him than anything else. Yeah, I can imagine. And obviously, you're kind of creating some core memories, you know, and I think all of us can can say, you know, certainly in the United States, I think we have some concern over our young men right now that these are these are important times. What are there any kind of surprising things that you've seen either in your son or maybe in your relationship that it was kind of an added benefit when you just started kind of committing to like, hey, buddy, we're gonna do some golfing together on a regular basis.

3:21Yeah, I think I just learned a different way to communicate with him. Because as a parent, I've just been putting on that father's hat, always advising, always telling him to do this, do it this way. Oh, you're swinging it incorrectly. Oh, you must do it this way. But what I realized was when I was just not responding and just being curious. And instead of saying, oh, great shot, I started saying, hey, how did you do that? And instead of him just looking for validation from me, I just gave them curiosity. And I think that was a pivotal moment where our relationship changed. And instead of a dad and son, I feel like he's more like a friend to me, where I can just ask him questions, be curious, and not really look down on stuff that he's not done well.

4:07While at the same time, when he does something well, I don't want to give him external validation. I'm very happy for him. And I just seek just curiosity and ask him, hey, that's amazing. How did you do that? Tell me more. And that just gets him talking. He's got a twinkle in his eye. And I just love it. Yeah. Yeah. It's always, you know, speaking as someone who my youngest is now 20. So I've been through those stages. And it's an interesting walk to be had for us as parents in that transition of, hey, they're adults now, or they're kind of getting moving on to adulthood. And we have to change, obviously, evolve our relationship with them.

4:51Thank you so much, Sid, for sharing that. Well, let's talk about your work with Recruito. What is Recruito? So we started Recruito as an offshore talent agency where we were just helping business owners find talent from the Philippines. And it came about in my journey as a new US implementer when I was working with my clients. They were always struggling to find the right people to sit on the right seats. And when it started, it was more about helping them get junior talent like a marketing assistant, sometimes an executive assistant. But over the past year or so, I saw this trend where people were demanding and asking for, can we get more managerial talent?

5:37Can we get some more senior talent? And I wasn't comfortable or confident with that. And I said, hey, I've never done this before, but I'll give it my best. And we started placing senior finance managers, senior marketing director sort of positions. and recently we placed someone as an integrator of a business, which is essentially like the COO or the president. And I was very surprised when I spoke with those businesses. They all seem to do well, and they've cut their payroll costs significantly. Yeah. Well, you and I were talking about, and I think this is really, listen, And I think everyone listening probably has experience with hiring overseas talent.

6:23Obviously, I think our first thought is, well, let's definitely outsource, you know, kind of more of those frontline, you know, repetitive tasks. And that's, I think, usually where our brain goes as leaders. But one thing that you have had quite a bit of experience with is actually staffing at some of those mid to higher levels. Would you mind sharing how you see that working and help our friend who's listening with some skepticism that they may have around that in thinking that that has to be a job that they give to their neighbor or something like that? Again, I'll speak for folks in the United States.

7:06I think my experience is generally for more senior level positions, we tend to think of like, well, I'm in the United States. I should probably stick with US, Canadians, Europe, that sort of thing. Give us your little mini TED talk here on the opportunity we may be missing. Well, opportunity is massive. And I think what I realized was post-COVID, I mean, we went in this hybrid remote sort of world. And surprisingly, no one or very few people want to come back to the office work five days a week. So there is a bit of hybrid which has crept in everywhere pretty much, especially in places which are professional services, which doesn't require people to be together in an office.

7:47So for those kind of companies and listeners who are in those spaces, what I found out was it doesn't matter whether the person is in Europe or in America or in the Philippines, as long as they're the right person for the right seat. Which is, A, you need to judge if that person has the character, the integrity and sort of the values that you're seeking. That's number one. You just want to make sure you have the right rapport with them and they understand the context. and that's a good part in the Philippines because most of the country, some of these senior guys have worked internationally for multinational companies.

8:24So they may have worked for a marketing agency, which is part of the Ogilvy group, which is again a global WPP group. And so they have that context of working internationally. And so that's just getting the culture right. And then the other part is, do they have the skills, the talent, and the experience to deliver what's expected? And that's where I found the big surprise. And I found people who are very senior in the Philippines, who can deliver the same quality and the same output that one expects. Now, the challenges that I've seen are, especially in marketing, there are some challenges because sometimes people don't get the context of advertising and marketing and the local culture that prevails.

9:07But that being said, that's very different, even in different states in America. I've lived in Texas for a very long time. I went to UT Austin for my university. And when I was traveling in America, I mean, from Texas to Oregon, the culture changes quite a bit. Right. And it's interesting, but we still get the big picture. And my job in the Philippines was to help them see this big picture. Right. And that's why we start them out as mid-level managers where they get a little bit more experience, understand the context, start working in the organization. and then over a period of year or two, they are ready to be promoted because they have the skills.

9:45And so anyone who's listening, what I'm saying is that there is an opportunity to be considered if you explore the Philippines and if you're hiring, great. If you can find someone local who can do that, that's wonderful. But the challenges that I'm hearing from some of my clients are that we can't find anyone local in the US who can get on board at this cost and with these conditions. And that's when these people start looking overseas. And that's the experience that I can share. And I would probably start out with mid-level managerial positions and kind of see how that goes. And if you use an operating system like EOS or one of the other business operating systems, it's very easy for them to plug into this ecosystem because a lot of those guys are very process-oriental and systematized.

10:37They love doing process.

10:41You posted something on LinkedIn that I really liked, and it's about thinking of the founders that are listening right now. And likely most of us are engaged in activity or work that we know we should probably be delegating. and you go through a simple exercise that I think helps one get a lot of clarity on exactly what those tasks are. And maybe we've just been doing it because it's easier to just keep doing it ourselves. I mean, again, read E-Myth if you want a list of all the excuses. We all do it. But would you mind sharing your process for simplifying and making our lives easier so that, again, as founders, we can be spending time doing the things that we should be doing and making sure that we truly are developing a team and a system that is not so dependent on us for the day-to-day.

11:49Yeah, absolutely, Josh. so the way it works is i collect time audit and as a founder leader works is you log everything that you've been doing for the past two to three weeks and log it in an increment of 30 that's every 30 minutes you write it down if it's like okay i watched netflix over lunch while I was taking a break at noon, write it down. I got in a meeting with my supplier, write it down.

12:26I had a call about, and then all we got to do is - Sid, I'm going to have to, yeah, Sid, let me stop. I'm going to have to ask that question again. You're breaking up really, really bad during that one. I don't know that there's anything we can do about the connection, but let me at least try to ask that question again. Let me start over. so sid one thing i'm seeing on your social media i would love to hear you comment on and that is the trap that many of many founders find themselves in we we may know that we're doing work that we probably shouldn't we were violating the e-myth rules like uh you know and but sometimes it can be we just find ourselves stuck in routine and you go through a process to help us get clarity over how we can be continually identifying activities that we can be delegating and then process for how to get that done.

13:18Do you mind going through that? Absolutely, Josh. It's really simple. All we have to do is start logging what we do on a daily basis, our work life, in 30-minute increments. Imagine I take a two-week period, and in over two weeks, I'm logging every 30 minutes of my work time. I say, okay, nine o 'clock, come to office, 30 minutes, a stand-up meeting. Next 30 minutes was a call with the supplier. Then another meeting, or maybe you worked on social media, LinkedIn, or whatever your day looks like. And you've logged your day, a typical day across two weeks. And then once you've got that data, all we have to do is tag it.

14:00and the tagging options are so, I mean, we have four options. The first option is I love it and I'm really great at it. So for example, if you're doing supplier negotiations, you love doing that stuff and get at it, tag it, I love it and I'm great at it. Then there could be some stuff that you are good at and you like doing it. It could be, you know, procuring inventory or it could be, you know, thought leadership stuff on LinkedIn or podcasting, whatever, you're good at it and you like it. Those are the two positive things that you kind of start logging. Now on the negative side, you'll start logging stuff, which you are good at, but you don't like doing.

14:47So for example, I used to be a web developer 20 years ago. I'm pretty good at web development, but I don't like doing it. So when my dad asked me to build a Shopify store for him during COVID, I did it grudgingly, but I was like, oh, that's a waste of my time. And so that's the good, and I don't like doing it. And those are tasks that you feel that you're just going to be faster than everyone else, and let me just do it. It's just going to be quick and dirty, but if I outsource it, I'll have to explain it to someone, and it's going to take a bit of time. So you just roll up your skills and do it yourself.

15:23The fourth tag is the stuff that you don't like and the stuff that you're not good at. Right? So we've got four tags, love, and I'm great at it. I don't, I good, and I love it. Those are the positive ones. So those are the two tags we should have 80 % of the times. unfortunately most business owners are stuck in the third tag which is i'm good at this but i don't like doing it and what one has to do is build this awareness that how much of my time am i spending in that quadrant or that tag am i spending 50 60 70 percent of my time doing stuff which i'm good at but i don't and that's what happens to business owners as they grow their business, they start doing a bunch of things, and then it comes to a point where they're doing everything, and that's the firefighting mode.

16:20You don't like doing it, but you're good at it, and you can't find someone to do it as quickly as you can, right? So our job as, you know, if we want to truly elevate ourselves, we have to start finding people whom we can delegate those tasks too and that's the first step in the shoot audit get this awareness as to what are you working on on a typical day-to-day um you know day in your life and then you will spot opportunities where oh i'm good at this but i shouldn't be doing it if this is the ten dollar an hour work but i'm the founder i should not be doing this and that's just low-hanging fruit that you can find people, you know, you can outsource it, delegate it or hire for that even, you know, so that I would kind of go through the process using a system.

17:14Sid Joshnani, your website, recruito.net. We have just a minute left. To our friend that's listening to us, they're identifying with a few things. They're like, yep, yep, yep. I need to simplify. I need some backup. I need some help. You can help them. What is the process like? Where do they go from here? Josh, the simplest thing to do is to go to that website, recruiter.net. It's funny because it means recruitment in Dutch, and there's a random way of coming up with it. But people can just go to that website. They can just put, there's a contact us or book a trial. Give a trial to people because we know that this is a new concept and not everyone is comfortable doing it.

17:57And we say, hey, try it out. And it's a risk-free trial. So if you don't get the value you want for a week, you don't pay for it. It's free. You see, then you pay and continue on a simple month to month engagement. And for listeners of this podcast, if you just mentioned that, hey, I found you from Josh's podcast, we'll give you a special offer and we'll give you 20 % off on a monthly ongoing basis. Yeah. 20 % off for life. Just mentioned Josh. I love it. Sid Joshnani, again, you're the founder of Recruito. Again, your website, Recruito.net. Again, look at the description of this episode for the correct spelling and the direct link.

18:43Sid, thank you so much for the conversation and enjoy your continued golf outings. Josh, thank you. A pleasure.

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