The pandemics and the growth of eCommerce in recent years have benefited many companies that may have experienced exponential growth in the last years. Although it is a very positive trend, it is also extremely complex and challenging because it means growing their operations and scaling teams and capacity.

Having never-ending interviews with candidates, or not getting enough responses to a recruiting process are common situations that reveal the cost of scaling a team, without considering the part of training the new hires to reach the required level to provide value to your team. Even if it is possible to outsource recruiting, it is essential to have documented processes and effective project management to get the operation scaling with the team.

That is the case of one of our customers, Marknology; an Amazon Brand Accelerator that has been in the market for 7 years. They have been helping brands to succeed in Amazon, and as a family business, Andrew Morgans and his sisters Veronika and Brooklyn have been scaling their business to attend 220+ clients with all types of products.

Their approach was creating a cross functional team In-house before outsourcing talent. In addition, their multicultural background facilitates the process of scaling their team with professionals working remotely from different countries.

Marknology shares with Sharkhelpers being a business with a purpose that creates value for people and their lives, so we could move forward in our partnership to help them find qualified talent in Colombia. Their initial need was finding virtual assistants for Amazon Seller Central account management.

Considering that in Colombia it is difficult to find people experienced in Amazon; our approach was to recruit talented virtual assistants with other related skills like data management, general e-commerce, and customer support, and provide initial training. Then Marknology took over for specific training about Amazon Seller Central and its operations. We have been working together for six months; they started hiring two virtual assistants, and they have been progressively adding to their team three more virtual assistants to be trained for Amazon Central, PPC, and copywriting.

We support them to guarantee that the learning process is not a burden, and also that the VA´s is complying with the activities they get assigned. Each customer has a project manager following the process every week, identifying opportunities for improvement, and being a mediator in their relationship with the VA´s.

We also share the cost of training; they pay for 40 hours a week and we provide four extra hours for training; as our goal is to help their collaborators to improve in the mid and long term. We believe in building relationships in the mid and long term, and therefore our recruiting process focuses on finding reliable professionals and identifying key hard and soft skills that help us to build the specific profile that they are requiring.

We offer a guarantee when the virtual assistant chosen is not reaching their expectations, and we can either replace him for a better fit or terminate our contract. In such cases, we have been on their side willing to contribute to the cost of training a new hire. They don't have a long-term contract, and they pay as they go, renewing our relationship each month.

We understand the cost of hiring a new employee and also the cost of replacing the good ones when they quit; so we have been partnering with them in the process of finding and hiring good people, onboarding, and keeping them happy.

Marknology is a good example of the potential of outsourced virtual assistants as sources for scaling your business. They first created a cross functional team, a leadership structure and clearly defined roles and responsibilities, before hiring our virtual assistants. And then, they provide them with the tools and knowledge to make them productive members of the team.

What do you think is the best approach to scale a team? Comment below to share your thoughts on this blog post

Are you looking to scale your team in a sustainable and cost effective way? Check the examples of the talented professionals you can hire with Sharkhelpers.