Interview with Anna Shcherbyna From Remotivate

Hiring remote staff can be a time-consuming and costly exercise, especially if you don’t get it right. This is where Anna from Remotivate can help in finding and hiring your A players.

Hey Anna,

Thank you for joining me in this interview. I was referred to you by Nate Ginsberg as I was looking to hire for my super greens supplement business.

Realizing that I am terrible at hiring staff it really was a no-brainer for me to jump on a call with you to learn more about how to hire key remote talent for my business.

I am excited to learn how you got into recruitment for remote businesses and key things to consider when looking to hire for your team.

So, Anna, let’s jump straight into this with my first question.

It would be great to get a little background information from where you were born to where you live today. What’s your backstory?

That’s a great question Adam! I was born in Dnipro, Ukraine, but moved to the US with my family when I was 5. And we stayed in the Boston area until I was a teenager.

My family then decided to move back to Ukraine (that was fun lol), and I spent the rest of my upbringing there.

Because my family is from the East part of Ukraine, I grew up with Russian at home, and really struggled when we returned, because you need Ukrainian to study, go to school, do your exams, get into college/university, and so on. And because of this, I actually had a hard time with school.

That’s why my family eventually decided for me to finish up my high school studies at a music college, where I specialized in Jazz and Opera Vocals.

I didn’t end up finishing in time for my associate’s degree but got an amazing job at 18 sending students and young workers abroad all over the world. I fell into online recruitment and operations at that stage, and within 5 years was heading many international programs, opening new offices, leading job fairs of hundreds, and sending people to all corners of the world.

After 5 years in the business, I got quite bored to be completely honest. I’d learned everything I could there, and I couldn't stand the lack of ethics in how things were run.

By absolute chance, I got a job offer to help with Operations and Hiring for a Remote Company – that being Nate himself. 😉

And the remote world inspired me in ways I never imagined. It gave me the opportunity to connect to a global community that changed my life, and in return, I got the opportunity to give back and help many business owners with their remote hiring needs.

I started traveling, visited over 30 countries between Asia, Latin America, and Europe, and have helped hundreds of employers fill online jobs with the incredible team I have built at Remotivate.

Currently, I’m finishing up the Winter Season in Bansko, Bulgaria – It’s been a dream of mine to learn to snowboard so here I am doing just that every weekend on the Pirin mountain.

After this, I’m heading over to build my base in Barcelona.

How did you get into the remote hiring business? You started your remote hiring agency Remotivate in 2019. What led you to start this agency?

A lot of how I got into it comes back to my background (mentioned above).

I worked as an Operations Manager and Head of Operations for various remote companies once I got into the remote workspace. There I helped businesses grow their remote teams.

Throughout my travels, I also met a lot of online business owners, especially in the Dynamite Circle community. Many of whom struggled with hiring for a variety of roles.

After taking on numerous projects, receiving many requests, and getting overwhelmed with the workload, I decided to take it from one-off projects, to an agency and started building my team.

Remotivate was officially registered in 2019.

Related: Things to know before starting your online business

I assume hiring your team for Remotivate was a breeze. Can you give us an idea of the size of your team and where you’re based?

Many would assume so!

But bootstrapping a business without capital, loan or investment, especially growing a productive and professional team is actually a very challenging endeavor.

I’m sure a lot of small businesses can relate, but what made my agency even harder to hire was the fact that I was trying to bring on sourcing and recruitment specialists who understand how to hire in the remote space.

It’s such a new space, as recruitment is still very much behind as an industry, and many are doing things the old fashion way. From cold calling to headhunting to charging extremely large percentages of salary.

What I’ve implemented with the business, and our practices, are usually quite unheard of.

I’d say the Agency’s success is due to two main factors. First and early on, my family actually came on and helped me grow it. I’ve been very fortunate to have such support.

Second, we spent many months investing in our internal training. We’ve been able to build a successful, hardworking, and fun culture because of the work we’ve put in to set processes, videos, training, KPIs, and an overall fun experience to work on a daily basis.

And though it’s still a challenge to find people that will be able to meet our requirements for most of our internal jobs, I’ve learned a great deal throughout the years that has helped my team and I identify who are the best candidates for us. And this too has provided me the opportunity to help small businesses, not just from my operations and recruiting perspective, but also as a bootstrapped business owner.

Many entrepreneurs or agencies would first think of hiring from the likes of Upwork or OnlineJobs, what are the benefits of working with Remotivate?

To start, I’d like to say platforms and job boards are great – but there are a few reasons why some businesses might want to avoid going down the road of building a team on their own.

Any freelance platform like Fiverr or UpWork, or job board like AngelList or Indeed doesn’t provide you with a positioning strategy, job description, or vetting process to actually identify a great candidate.

If those aspects are areas you haven't had experience in, that’s more of a risk for the entrepreneur trying to do it themselves. Aka a lot of financial and time investment in potentially hiring the wrong person for the job.

Platforms like UpWork are great for junior candidates. I always say you don’t need to hire a recruiter to find a candidate you will be teaching up (though there is still the hardship of identifying the right personality).

Finally, doing it yourself is great if you or your team have the time. Working with a lot of agencies and online business owners, one of the biggest challenges in tackling all these platforms is the time investment that goes into it.

As an example, we had a very successful company come to us, they received hundreds of applications on LI, and it would have taken them hundreds of hours to comb through those candidates.

On top of that, it was a C-level role – and most companies that do have an HR or internal team handling the recruiting process, usually don’t have the experience hiring, vetting, or interviewing for top leadership or C-level candidates.

This is where our agency is really about to shine. We save our clients time, we provide strategy and expertise and are able to help bring on top management and leadership talent that are remote ready.

There are many remote roles that require different skills and in some cases geographical locations, what roles do you focus on and why?

Through the years, we’ve come to niche down into working specifically on non-technical roles, with a large focus on Operations and Marketing for management and leadership positions in the remote space.

Our multi-step hiring process enables us to have a very data-driven approach to sourcing and vetting the best talent, and we found we’ve been best at identifying those soft skills needed for great leadership that are generally the hardest for most companies to vet for.

You have a proprietary vetting and filtering process for hiring remote staff, could you outline a little about this process?

We have built our own ATS system, and share the system with all our clients as soon as we start hiring. This provides our clients with a level of transparency that most recruiters aren’t being as open about.

We start with the vision for any role, first understanding what our clients need, and what success looks like. We put together a job description that aligns with that vision and start our sourcing efforts.

What’s quite unique about our sourcing is that it's data-driven. Instead of trying to headhunt a few average candidates that tick the boxes of a role, we focus on inviting hundreds of qualified candidates and finding the best fit for the job.

We’re inviting anywhere between 300-and 1000 candidates to apply for each position we hire.

Candidates go through a simple questionnaire, an online video screening, and a thorough interview with our team, before being sent for a final chat with our clients.

We screen for personality fit, relevant experience as well as long-term motivation and alignment with the company they are being interviewed for.

We help facilitate final interviews, test projects, and conduct reference checks.

Overall, our process currently takes 4-6 weeks, but we are actively working on cutting that time down, so we are able to provide a better faster service for our clients.

With the recent global events have you seen a push towards more remote work and do you think this is a continuing trend for digital nomads/entrepreneurs?

Absolutely!

One of the most common realizations professionals all over the world have had is that they feel they can have more of a work/life balance with this new work style. And not only are they able to be with their families more, stay healthier through more regular exercise and gym, eat healthier at home, have more fulfilling breaks, but they also are able to be more productive!

And employers are seeing it too. Because of a more flexible schedule, some team members work weekends, or nights, to make up for taking time during the day or mornings. Often, they get to choose the hours they will work, meaning they can put in the time where they are most productive and get the most output.

Now whether more people start traveling as a result of remote work – I can't say one way or the other for sure.

And this is because, remote work has created more balance, for people to spend time on things they love – but generally that means moving to a better town or city for living. Having more time with family. Taking kids out for sports and activities. Having more time for self-care and activities that light someone up.

One thing I am sure of – this new remote work world, will definitely create more joy and balance for many who have made or will soon be making the transition.

Related: Making money online as digital nomad

Where do you see Remotive in the next few years?

Ultimately, I’ve seen Remotivate as a company that creates and will continue to create impact in the remote workspace.

At the moment, we are a small growing agency, helping entrepreneurs hire remote staff internationally.

As we grow, my team and I want to create content and educate more businesses and candidates about remote work and remote hiring.

We want to find more ways to help connect clients and candidates, as well as help create more work opportunities.

We are advocates of and believe that the future is remote. And this is only the beginning.