How do you hire and manage?

Employee/client managemant and the online employee

[klick2kall]

So here's the question. How do you guys hire your new sales force, customer service, SEO, accounting etc...

Do you use online methods? offline? Local? International?

I have pretty much done the majority of my full time hiring through my personal connections offline. But, I manage the people that I work with via online and they get to work from wherever they wish. I built an employee management system/database into my backend of my website so that I could keep track of the salesforce calling, transactions, logged hours and comments etc... A little like salesforce but without the financial analytical stuff...which I use myself and quickbooks for.

I really need to start expanding quickly. Have any of you had some success with some of the online hiring methods like monster?

Do you guys mainly out/in source and buy freelance time? That has worked fairly well for me in the past.

How do you manage the people you work with and their productivity? What are some of the reasons that your employees wanted work with you and your company?

Would love to get a good discussion rolling on this proccess.

[andye]

For employees - i.e. long-term work that's not project based, and where quality issues are subjective - I go with local, because I want to meet them face to face regularly.

For project-based work where I can build quality standards and timescales into the contract, outsourcing / offshoring works well.

Just my experience.

hth, a.

[gpilling]

craigslist has worked well for me. I have hired some salespeople in other towns and not met them for months afterward. Seems to work ok.

At least as good as hiring them in real life :)