Ask IH: How do you hire tech support staff?

Hi @cavalheirov!

I have some experience hiring people but for eCommerce, I'll give you the process I used, will probably give you some insights.

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0) FIRST
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💬 Language. If your support is in English, you'll be able to hire someone in the Philippines, which is my #1 reco for hiring people! I had amazing experience with PH people so far, and while it's not the cheapest compared to other countries, you usually get very hardworking people

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1. PREPARATION
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## Scorecards:
For the hiring process the first thing to do is to define clearly the job. By clearly, I mean with numbers.
"Doing customer support" is vague.
"Handling 100 tickets per week" is precise.

You can create a scorecard describing what would be peak performances in the job.
The scorecard got two things:

• Mission: A quick summary of the job
• Outcomes: A few things the employee needs to accomplish in the role. It needs to be quantifiable.

## Job post:
Once you've defined the job, you'll have to write (and publish) a job listing.
Reminder: You're trying to sell the job, so make sure it's both interesting and compelling to read!

Here is how I structure my job posts:

• Introduction: who is is job made for, who is this job NOT for, salary etc.
• Job description: details about the mission + outcomes
• Benefits: Remote, paid vacations, flexible schedule, etc. Any benefit you give your employees
• Expectations: What you expect from your employees
• Application: How do they apply for the job

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2) SELECTION
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## Filtering applications

If you've done a good job post, you can now filter through the applications! Depending on where you posted and how good the job is, you'll get more or less replies. How picky you are will depends on how many replies you have and how much time you can allocate to interviewing people.
I used to receive 200+ replies so I had to filter BEFORE getting on a call.

The best for that is to eliminate as much people as possible as soon as possible.

For that, I usually send an email to everyone who replied quickly with a 5-10 questions that help me eliminate who don't have the personality / skills / other I'm looking for.

It also allows you to test how fast people answer. I send multiple batch of questions if I still get too much applications.

Ask question about them, what they like, what they read, their plans in life, and usually a quick practical case (something very short tho, respect their time. Can be a customer ticket example to see how they'd answer)

IMPORTANT FOR LATER: Ask them to send you their "work history". Doesn't need to be a C.V, just a list of their previous jobs.

## Interviews

So, here is the time-consuming part. Depending of how many candidates you have, you should make more or less interviews. Ideally, you want 10 people max, since each interview is very long.

If you have more, you can also do a quick screening interview to filter out. Just ask questions similar to the ones you sent by emails, or ask more precision to see if their answer is aligned with the job.

For the final interview, it takes around 1 hour for each person.
Basically, you're going to go trough every job they had, and ask them those questions:

What were you hired to do?
The goal is to understand what was the "scorecard" of the job. Try to get precise numbers on what was expected from them.

What accomplishments are you most proud of?
Here, you want to hear stories talking about their accomplishments, not what they liked or the people they met. You want a candidate who achieve what was expected from his scorecard.

What were some low points during that job?
Try to see which issue they had. Ask them to be specific, don't settle for "My boss was an asshole", ask for specific instances of what happened. Don't move to the next question until they give you a real answer.

Who were the people you worked?
This is where you get their references. Get at least one person for each job, and WRITE DOWN THE NAME + their contact informations. Tell them you're going to contact them (which you'll do, just not for all). Ask them what would each person say about them.

Why did you leave that job?
Try to see if it's a "push" or a "pull". Push means the company they worked for got rid of them. Pull means another company hired them, which is a good sign, only good employees get pulled.

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So, once you're done with that, you should have a better understanding of the candidate and his history. Send a few emails/call some references of the candidate, ask them what are the good thing about them and areas for improvements.

Then, you'll have to make a choice!

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Obviously hiring is a very depth subject and there is way more to it, but it would take hours to write it here haha. But that gave me a great idea for my next articles in IH, as I have a LOT of things to say about that haha

Also, the formatting of this answer is probably not the easiest to read, it's 22:00 here and I'm mainly taking stuff from my HR operation procedures, but if you need any clarification, let me know!

You can contact me anytime, my contact infos are in my IH bio! :)

P.S. If you're finding yourself always answering the same questions, I'm currently working on an A.I to handle customer support, if you're interested, feel free to check it here, as I think you're totally my target audience, I'd love to get your feedback! 😄