BluShark Digital 0:00
Seth, welcome to the SEO Insider with your host. Seth Price, founder of BluShark, is taking you inside the world of legal marketing and all things digital.
Seth Price 0:11
Welcome everybody. We’re so excited to have you back on the Insider. Here today, we have Raquel Gomez from Staffy, co-founder there. Welcome, Raquel.
Raquel Gomes 0:19
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Seth Price 0:21
So look, you guys have made great inroads in bringing the global marketplace to law firms in the US. Talk to me a little bit about what that process has been like. Right? There are lots of opportunities to hire people from overseas, but you guys seem to have added some value add in a way that others haven’t. So talk to me about a little bit about how you position staffing in the market.
Raquel Gomes 0:43
Yeah. So yes, we do things very differently over here, starting with the hiring process, and how defining the role with the law firm. So, a lot of law firms, the first mistake they make when working with offshore Remote Staff is that they’re rushed into it. They’re desperate to hire. They don’t take the time to define the role. So yeah, that and then just jumping ahead. The one thing that we do is that we constantly coach everybody that is placed with the law firm, because, you know, it doesn’t end after you offer the talent, okay, you have a great match here, you interview them, you hire them, but then there is a whole new stage and a whole new process that you have to have done right in order to be successful. Right? The onboarding has to be done, right? You have to continuously train them. You have to coach them. You have to mentor them. They have to feel integrated into your law firm in order for you to be successful. So I’ll stop there, because I’m talking a lot.
Seth Price 1:48
There’s a lot there. So you know, law firm hiring is not easy, no matter what, domestic, international, etc, and sort of my whole take on it is, and this is going back even before Stafi was in the game, was that hiring internationally if you don’t have systems and processes in place, you’re dead in the water. Forget about it like you just did. the difference between culture, sometimes time zones, and expectations. So, as you’ve gone through this process, right, you’ve seen what are some of the biggest mistakes you see law firms make when bringing on global talent? I hate the term VA. I think it should be put to the side. To me, it’s tough because even around the table, I have people, they keep reverting. I’m like, no, like, for us, does it really matter where on the planet somebody sits. now, there are times where the people you’re getting have different education for lower level tasks. And yes, it’s a different category, and I get that, but the more that it’s thought of as a global workforce. Because if you have a person in Omaha that moves to Copenhagen, do you really care if the person is seamless and they check on and they do their hours? Does that matter? But I’ll digress. Talk to me a little bit about the mistakes, because I see a lot of people hire international talent, and it crashes and burns. And look, they hire domestic talents, it crashes and burns as well. That’s not special. I talk about the rule of three, like in domestic hires, where very often the first person is right, the second person’s not right, it’s a third. I think that the rule of three is probably analogous to some of the issues you see in that people don’t even know what they need.
Raquel Gomes 3:25
Yeah.
Seth Price 3:25
And what you talked about in the opening was putting stuff together. So what are the biggest mistakes you see law firms make?
Raquel Gomes 3:31
So that’s the first one, not knowing what you need before you hire, and just jumping too quick into hiring the person.
Seth Price 3:38
And there are times when you think you know what you need, but it’s not really what you need. meaning you think you know what it is, right? You think you need this, but when the and Okay, so first is knowing what you need, because I’m going to come back remind me, which is, what are the things that would allow people to not you know? Again, the corollary to what the mistakes are is understanding that you have to know what you need. Is there a way that you think law firms could do an exercise to figure out what it really is?
Raquel Gomes 4:09
Yeah, I think whoever, if you’re hiring for yourself, audit your time. Write down everywhere where you’re spending your time during work hours. if it’s someone else, if it’s another department, have the manager, like, what are the things that you need that person to take on? What are the things that are either overloading yourself or other team members that you need to hand over, and those should be broken down into tasks. So that’s why that’s we’ve built this
Seth Price 4:40
International labor, you’re saying, and it could probably be good for both, but if you can get it down to tasks, you have your best chance for success.
Raquel Gomes 4:47
Absolutely. Yeah, that’s nothing
Seth Price 4:48
For smaller firms, that’s difficult because they don’t have that necessarily, and they’re hoping the person comes in with enough experience and gumption to be able to create that. But that’s not really what you’re getting with a global workforce, especially at the rates you’re providing.
Raquel Gomes 5:03
Right exactly. And a lot of law firms, the smaller ones, they think, Wow, I’m just going to bring someone in. They’re going to figure things out on their own. They won’t figure things out on their own. You have to have a process. You have to have an onboarding, as you said. And you know, you work with offshore
Seth Price 5:21
BluShark and Price Benowitz, and I see the BluShark clients’ success. What looks like we’re now at the point of Price Benoqitz, we have a full-time onboarder. It sounds like that some of what Stafi has figured out, though, is that you try to bridge the gap, knowing that many of the smaller to midsize law firms don’t have that it’s not perfect, meaning it’s not perfect in that you can do so much, right? You’re trying to make up for some of the things the average law firm doesn’t have.
Raquel Gomes 5:46
right? So I would say, define the role that goes down to the task level. Then you have to put the right person to format to match for that role. So if you need someone to do client-facing an intake is a different personality, different soft skills than if someone to do paralegal work, you know? So that’s why we assess using a lot of assessments.
Seth Price 6:09
What do you like? What are your favorite assessments?
Raquel Gomes 6:12
The Cultural Index we use.
Seth Price 6:14
How do you do cultural versus predictive? Is there? You
Raquel Gomes 6:19
You know, we looking to predictive years ago, I think I don’t know if they’re I would be live I say, are they super similar right now? They are pretty similar right
Seth Price 6:33
right. there, there’s there’s there, there’s definitely pieces there. And I think that for international culture might have a slight advantage, because the biggest issue is there’s an elephant in the room, is that you’re coming from a different culture, and can somebody fit in
Raquel Gomes 6:47
right? Absolutely. So then the assessments. But also, you know, finding that making sure that you’re hiring someone who is honest, who’s ethical. So I think calling those job references, calling universities to make sure that they’re not lying, you don’t want to hire liars.
Seth Price 7:04
No, of course not. But it’s easier said than done. Are you? This is a thing that I think that is much more challenging, is getting real references from international talents. You know, it’s sometimes they’ve been with other US employers easier, but very often you’re
Raquel Gomes 7:22
That is true. That is true. I mean, we have a whole department doing that right, and they’re speaking oftentimes in Spanish with the companies, or Portuguese, because all of the talent is in Latin America. But it’s true when you’re a smaller company. Also, how much time are you really going to spend doing that and tracking down those references? What we do is we don’t; we go over the job references, and not your personal references. So let’s say, I said, Okay, references, no, I’m gonna call the places you worked at, and I’m
Seth Price 7:54
sorry. I apologize for cutting off. Didn’t mean we have a hard rule for myself, which is, I don’t want a peer reference. It’s got to be somebody reported to,
Raquel Gomes 8:03
yeah,
Seth Price 8:04
Domestically, this is bigger. I don’t like judges because they want their law clerks to be employed, and law and university professors, because their job is to get somebody a job. It’s nice, but it doesn’t really, it doesn’t differentiate, and that’s always like it checks a box, but is it worth checking? What are your feelings on backdoor references? Jack Newton, I think at Clio, we had a great podcast years ago where he talked about making sure that you find out, not just the people on the list, but if they’ve been with an organization, can you find out, you know, for real, what’s going on, what’s your feeling on that
Raquel Gomes 8:46
So well, in what specifically like
Seth Price 8:50
meaning, there are people that you’re given as references playing the LinkedIn game, and or, you know, if they’ve been within an organization, you may be able to get a reference that’s not listed there. If there’s a job they had without a reference listed, that may be a good place to see. Oh, I know somebody at that organization. Do they know anything?
Raquel Gomes 9:10
Yeah, I think, I think anyone that you can contact that is not a peer or is not their work, co-worker, best friend, I think the way we start is really by just finding out and calling that organization and trying to find out, Okay, who were the supervisors? The supervisors still have the right to be able to talk to a supervisor, but also to validate with HR that the dates where they say they were there. They were actually there, because sometimes they inflate the resume and the roles that they describe are actually what they actually did, like we’ve had, had people saying they were COO when they were a paralegal. You know, this is like hiring a VP of fine success for ourselves. So it’s, it’s almost like an investigator type of social media and things like that. I. As well.
Seth Price 10:00
Very, very interesting. When you’re going through that process, do your I think we’re gonna go back to mistakes in a second. But do these people generally sit at home, or do they have offices that they go to in their countries?
Raquel Gomes 10:16
Good question. They work from home, but with that, in their workspace, we ensure that they have a private office. We don’t allow for colocation, you know, we make sure that they have a closed-door office where they’re working from, where the internet is high speed, all of that.
Seth Price 10:35
Yeah, so look, these are for anybody out listening as a guy who’s built my own internal international labor twice, you know, mistakes we’ve made, making sure that when you do your it check with first for speed and and for wet, for Wi Fi, that we end up, you know, early days. Oh, they were in a cafe, where it was, where it was great. No, it needs to be at home. Do you, you know, things that I have struggled with, and I’m curious, in a home environment, which very often they’re in where there’s, you know,
Raquel Gomes 11:12
the dog barking, well,
Seth Price 11:14
dark barking. I’m not even going there yet. Let’s assume we get some decent headphones. But he’s that, really, that really gets me is, if the kids come home from school and they’re on Netflix, is that taking away bandwidth from the job? Yeah. And so, figuring that piece out again, I’m giving you stuff I’ve struggled with. I assume you guys are much more advanced, and sort of get a sense of making sure that stuff like, not, you know, learning from mistakes. Like, what are the things you do to make sure that you have a fighting chance with the person?
Raquel Gomes 11:48
Yeah, absolutely. You have to find out who’s who else is in the household, if there are kids, and things like that, and if sometimes you need to have a second connectivity. You know, especially if you’re doing intake and you need to have you, you’re going to be on the phone that quality, voice quality, not choppy, or it’s super important, right?
Seth Price 12:08
Are there countries that are more difficult, like, we really have trouble? We love the people in Venezuela, but we couldn’t get consistency
Raquel Gomes 12:17
Absolutely. Yeah, we don’t. Unfortunately, we cannot. Well, right now, my husband’s actually from Venezuela, and, like, we had a call yesterday, and he’s like, I cannot. This is like crazy, you know? So Venezuela is the
Seth Price 12:34
entrepreneurs, my EOS coach, Cesar, who I’m sure you know, from Miami. Yeah, amazing guy. He is our coach for both BluShark and for Price Benowitz. is an amazing guy. But, you know, another, another testament to the talent that’s in Venezuela that come, that has come out of Venezuela, and that we can’t get a stable internet connection. Maybe, maybe,
Raquel Gomes 12:57
I think it’s going to change now
Seth Price 12:59
With, maybe, Musk’s satellite base, that would be pretty cool. Yeah, talk about, you know, we have seen something, and we’re bouncing. I know we’re gonna come back to the mistakes, but we have seen pricing go up for talent. You know that, you know, numbers that used to be really cheap have become more expensive as people know their worth, and there’s competition, etc, but like, it would be great for the global economy if you ended up bringing an entire country of highly trained talent to the workforce where the biggest factor was connectivity.
Raquel Gomes 13:34
Yes, yes, absolutely.
Seth Price 13:37
Okay. Other mistakes,
Raquel Gomes 13:40
not having a onboarding process like a set, good onboarding process. So a lot of law firms, they think I’m just going to bring. Okay, let’s say you define the role, you get a person who has a perfect match, but they come in, and you just let them try to figure things out on their own. That’s a big, big mistake, because you’re going to be let down. You need to have an onboarding process. You need to have SOPs, depending on how the person is better trained, because what you want you can also learn from assessments. If someone learns better from data, reading SOPs, and things like that, or if someone works and learns better from shadowing and from experience, so either a deductive or an inductive type of learning. So, for example, if you’re hiring someone to do intake, it’s very important that the person can shadow someone else and listen to those calls and see how you’re doing things, but also very important that you have scripts right for them to follow and how to deal with objections and things like that. So a lot of small law firms, they don’t have SOPs, and they say they don’t have time to create those what we help them do is guide them through. First of all, we’ve created a formboarding process where we handhold the law firms and we have the. Give them homework. We keep them accountable week after week to ensure that that’s done successfully. But also, we help them. Okay, so if you don’t have SOPs, record everything you’re training this person, and our coaches will help ensure that this person is creating manuals for the law firm and creating SOPs. Obviously.
Seth Price 15:21
Do you start with if somebody has no essay SOPs, right? The big problem, right? Nobody has them. And it’s too much of a pain to even do these video ones, because by the time you do it, you’ve grown. It’s different. You know? It’s evolved. You have off-the-shelf ones where somebody could say, Yeah, this is good and make this one change, or are there SOPs that can be adopted by these firms?
Raquel Gomes 15:44
We have, since we have the stuff you live service that is a full intake and service for law firms, we have a lot of scripts already created, depending on the type of law you do.
Seth Price 15:55
You do a bunch of proof, because it’s so much easier for an entrepreneur lawyer to be able to say, Love it or love it, change this and this versus I got nothing, and starting from zero is really, I mean, ChatGPT has helped us with some of that stuff, but it’s the idea that you guys have seen the inside of hundreds of law firms and get a sense as to what works. And it’s almost like, here’s one for family law, here’s one for trust and estates. You’re able to provide some insights.
Raquel Gomes 16:25
That’s great. We don’t do that because a lot of our law firms have shared the SOPs with us. It’s highly confidential, so we are not able to do that. But what we do is we advise the lawyers. So anytime you’re talking to your offshore hire, and you’re training them on how you want things done. We are creating SOPs based on that training,
Seth Price 16:45
right? And my sales pitch to you guys is that if you had a generic one that didn’t violate other firms, but was a generic starting point, because I think that’s what law firms struggle with, is. Look, some people know what they want, and there are others that don’t. And if you have one that’s a best practice, go change it to what you want. But at least here’s something, because right now you’re doing it on a page. I think that is where I’ve personally struggled, where somebody starts
Raquel Gomes 17:12
And we do that for intake. I think it’s a good idea to have it for, you know, a case manager, a paralegal. We advise them. And what do we think? Oh, why don’t you do like this or like that, where we don’t have those documents right now off the shelf? But that’s a good idea.
Seth Price 17:28
You know, what do you think is your advice for people when it comes to, you know, look, there are different price points, I assume, based on experience and anything in life. Do you think that experience within the legal space, having worked inside another immigration shop or personal injury shop. Is it significant? Or can everything be trained? You know, is it worth paying slightly more to have somebody, especially for a firm that doesn’t really know what it doesn’t know?
Raquel Gomes 17:56
I love that question, and I say, No, it’s not. It’s not worth it. I think when you’re hiring the right person with the right skills, the right traits that you’ve assessed correctly, anything can be bought
Seth Price 18:08
Hire for trades, not for skills.
Raquel Gomes 18:09
Hire for traits and skills, but not for experience. There are so many hires, and we’ve been doing this for 11 years, a lot of people paying, like, extra and extra because, oh, they came from this PI law firm, or X, Y, and Z, and they would be terrible. You know,
Seth Price 18:26
no understood. But let me ask you this the other because it’s the there’s a saying Woody Allen Groucho Marx is saying, why would you ever have a member? Why would you ever be a member of a club that would have you as a member? So if somebody was willing to work for you, if that other firm gave up on this person, How good could they be? Like, that’s the joke, right? So, but one of the things I would say is that with experience, like, when I’m hiring, there’s a bunch, like, when you look at baby lawyers, new lawyers, right? And there’s a type of law you’re doing, there’s a risk that the person’s not going to like it. If you’re doing intake, and the person’s done intake for four years, there’s a pretty good chance they know what they’re getting themselves into,
Raquel Gomes 19:05
right?
Seth Price 19:06
You know, forget about the learning curve. How much of a risk is it that, you know, we’re looking for, what’s, what’s a win to you, three years? Somebody’s working for three years, that’s, that’s a, that’s a solid run, yeah.
Raquel Gomes 19:17
So let me reframe that. So having some sort of work experience is important, not necessarily in a law firm, and not necessarily doing the type of law that you’re doing. But yes, like do they
Seth Price 19:30
Like it? Because, again, it’s one
Raquel Gomes 19:33
out of college, who didn’t have any work experience. It’s a risk. It’s higher.
Seth Price 19:38
But okay, somebody who’s 10 years out of college, right? 15 years out of college, and you’re like, they’ve never done intake before,
Raquel Gomes 19:45
right?
Seth Price 19:45
You train them, they could do it. And again, there are positives, right? Is there? Is there a risk factor as to whether they will click in general? Now, I mean,
Raquel Gomes 19:57
to put up with the volume, if you’re higher, if. Like being able to be on the phone seven hours out of eight is not for everybody,
Seth Price 20:05
no.
Raquel Gomes 20:06
So
Seth Price 20:07
That’s a risk.
Raquel Gomes 20:08
What I would do is I usually would put them through Stafi live first, and yes, so that is not the risk on the client
Seth Price 20:17
How long is the live?
Raquel Gomes 20:19
huh?
Seth Price 20:19
How long is Stafi live? How long do they are they in it?
Raquel Gomes 20:23
So it depends. It could be three months. You know, could be…
Seth Price 20:27
That’s amazing. You’re doing a three-month training program.
Raquel Gomes 20:29
I mean, we’ve done it. We’ve done for Step five. Because I wouldn’t put someone who’s never done intake to with a client that does high volume intake. Now I will put someone that has never done intake, but they can. I’m talking about full blood intake all day, right? That’s different. But someone that has had admin experience has had client service experience, but it could be a hybrid role, but Stafi live could be one month, two months, three months. It all depends. We’ve done it, we’ve done it. We’ve done it, and sometimes we just keep them for ourselves too.
Seth Price 21:03
And as I know, I’ve been passionate about, I thought about building out myself, the idea that you’re doing, you know, the before training was either non existent or at max a week, and the idea that people are seeing the value that, that if you take global workforce and really give them additional training. Part of it was there wasn’t a curriculum to give, but over time with expertise, it’s there anything else before we move on, that mistakes that you see law firms make, you wish they didn’t make.
Raquel Gomes 21:33
So integrating a lot of law firms, they hire someone, they call them VA which you dehumanizes the person, which is not good. So you’re kind of setting yourself away for failure before you even start. Because language really matters. If you’re if you’re thinking, Oh, it’s a VA, someone who’s going to be isolated, I’m just going to send them tasks whenever I feel like it. That’s not going to work well. So you have to fully integrate the person into your law firm and consider them as important of a hire as you would an in person staff, right? And you said that, and,
Seth Price 22:07
you know, I get it, but let me ask you this, agreed. And look, we’ve gone as far as we fly a number of international workers in for the office party every year. We do. It’s tough as you get bigger, but we try to at least do that as a reward for some of our great talent. Not that they’re not, but it is different, right? There’s a difference domestically when somebody is remote, and there’s a difference when they’re internationally remote, especially if it comes to coming to on, you know, all hands or on sites. How do you how? What are some of the things you think that can be done, that understanding, that you can do zooms, you can put everybody on there, you can treat people there. But there is a difference in that, even if you want to, you can’t always get people here. We’ve had issues with the visas and just coming for a visit. How do you differentiate you’re having a holiday party? They’re not there. What are some of the best practices that help understanding you’re not calling them VAs and you’re not you’re not isolating them, and you’re including but there’s a certain things that can’t happen. What are things that help you push furthest to truly making it part of even though there will be some differences?
Raquel Gomes 23:18
Okay, so first of all, we include them in any communication that you have for your company. So you have Slack teams, whatever that is, have that person part of it. Have the person part of different groups. Have the person participate in team meetings. Have other people from, let’s say, from hiring someone to work with me. Have other team members work with that person you know, have them feel part of a team. We also do like you can you have to make an effort to sometimes do some virtual activities. Like you can make you know, scavenger hunts, or you can do karaoke, things like that.
Seth Price 23:57
Anything that you love during covid, we hired comedians. We did a bunch of online things, but when covid was over, sort of gave up on that. What are some of the ones you like best, as far as international team building type activities?
Raquel Gomes 24:14
So via zoom, we love karaoke. We’ve done three truths and a lie. We’ve done, like, Okay, you have to bring pictures of when you’re little, and the other team members have to guess who’s that person. There’s, like, a big list that you can do, like, once a month, you know,
Seth Price 24:32
on the clock, correct? You’re paying for it,
Raquel Gomes 24:35
Yes, yes. And it’s part of the team-building integration. Now, we just came back from Medellin, we flew 20 people to maintain to be part of a training. And so you don’t have to do if you’re serious about investing in offshore and you want to really and you can grow and scale your law firm by leveraging offshore talent. I don’t know how many people you have in turn. Leader that are working everywhere, but you don’t have to bring them to the US. You can find somewhere else too, and you can do some,
Seth Price 25:09
Agreed, but then you don’t have all. You have some of your people. It’s not the same. And that’s what I was getting at,
Raquel Gomes 25:14
right?
Seth Price 25:15
We’ve talked about,
Raquel Gomes 25:16
or you can take everybody to do an off-site, right? You know, it’s more complicated, but you can do a lot of things remotely, to make someone feel part of a team. You can meet with them daily in video. Doesn’t have to be you, but people from it’s just like this that we’re doing right now is like, okay, let’s hop on a Zoom. Let’s all hop on a Zoom. Let’s all hop on Teams. You know,
Seth Price 25:39
That’s happening to a certain extent. It’s the next stage, which is, there is a, oh, we’re doing our summer kickoff party. You know, we’ve done things where, you know, we’d love to be able to Uber Eats, but that doesn’t always exist everywhere. But we’ll get a budget for if we’re doing a coffee here, here, you here’s a budget to go bring in lunch or do whatever you’re going to do.
Raquel Gomes 26:03
And I think you can make that person special by sending something to their homes, you know, like, if you can do an activity, like, Oh, everybody received, so let’s say something in the office. Like, everybody received the wine and the cheese. We’re going to do a wine and cheese happy hour. You send,
Seth Price 26:22
right? And it’s, it’s like everything else, it takes effort, so now you need a person to do
Raquel Gomes 26:27
That’s absolutely.
Seth Price 26:28
a couple of little things. One, one, just a blip. We’ve seen this both domestically, but we’ve all seen it internationally, issues of people double-dipping, you know with international work. What are some of the things you’ve seen that can help prevent you know, again, hopefully you’re testing, and it’s you’re getting the right people, but you know, some nominal percent are going to abuse the system, right? You know, some people think, hey, if they’re hitting their KPIs, who cares? You can do whatever the hell you want. But you know, that’s, that’s a real something out there. I assume it’s making sure the KPIs are being met, because if they are there, it’s harder to game the system.
Raquel Gomes 27:08
Yeah, that’s one. I think it’s very easy to measure intake and sales, right? Like, for example, we use a money task internally. Everybody has, uh huh, but my sales team doesn’t need to use money tasks, because I know if they’re performing, they’re selling, right? I in this is true for anyone working remotely, you know. So you’re nailed on, you’re nailed on the KPIs. If you have good KPIs and you’re monitoring them, you know, monthly or every so often, you’re going to see if the person is performing. But you can also use tools like Money Task. We usually use the money task in the first three months of someone being assigned,
Seth Price 27:52
measures mouse strokes and keeps looking at the
Raquel Gomes 27:55
They measure all the activity.
Seth Price 28:00
One of the things that we don’t look at it regularly. Unless there’s a problem, we never look at it, right? It’s an activity
Raquel Gomes 28:06
exactly
Seth Price 28:07
the last thing you want to measure. That. Said, when you do see somebody using a machine to do it, which we’ve seen, that would be an indication there are more problems. You know, I’m saying like it’s you’re not even to one extent, you’re not using it because you’re like, Oh, you work five minutes less or 10 minutes left. That’s not the game. But when you see it’s just another tool to determine is there’s something that’s not right, going on
Raquel Gomes 28:32
exactly. And usually you will only check if there’s a problem if you see that the person is not being productive, like you said, nobody is micromanaging or being there watching, but it’s very useful. When you know you say, interesting, this person is not responding as quick, or this person is not or the deadline passed. Then you check and you’re like, or you’re saying, maybe they’re focusing on the wrong things. Maybe you can learn you use as a tool to learn how is that they’re working and to coach them, because that’s the other point to coaching and mentoring. It. That’s why we implemented the methodology of having coaches assigned to each rep, assigned to the law firms. It’s, you know, people that they’re talking to, because it also helps them feel integrated. It helps them, you know. So you train them. You select, you select the person, you select the tasks, and you put the person to do the tasks. You train them. You have a university. You train them for the tasks. But now it’s time for real life. So people, they have questions, they get stuck, and sometimes the team, or many times the team, is very busy, and you don’t want someone to be sitting there doing nothing, specifically, especially in the beginning. So it’s important to have key people that they can go to. In our case, we have coaches assigned to help and support the law firms. But if you’re doing this on your own, it’s important that they know who to go to, and they have an open office, open door opportunity to be able to, you know, not to get on. Stuck so that productivity is not affected.
Seth Price 30:03
One thing that I’ve seen, and there are two final questions, one thing they’re sort of tied together. One thing that I’ve seen is that people sort of sometimes try to put tasks with a global workforce that might not be easily done from somebody, especially coming in off the street, who’s not highly experienced. case manager, versus a legal assistant. Legal Assistant, you give somebody tasks, it’s their case managers forward facing, have many, many different responsibilities,
Raquel Gomes 30:35
yeah,
Seth Price 30:35
well beyond what you could train in a week, a month, or even two months probably. What is your feeling on creating a bench with your international team so that you can figure out who has the potential to go to the next step, and that through osmosis and learning the firm and learning the language, that they’re able to get to the point where they can be elevated? Now, somebody’s been a case manager somewhere, you can evaluate it, but you talked before about somebody coming in with skill with traits, not skills, right? You know, I do you see people trying to put people in a position that’s unrealistic,
Raquel Gomes 31:12
yes,
Seth Price 31:12
without those touch points, and it’s it’s destined to fail
Raquel Gomes 31:16
Absolutely. So it all starts with not so that’s why. So we have a dashboard where you choose the tasks, and you can have different categories. So the case manager, for example, they’re going to be doing client-facing, they’re going to be doing some legal, they’re going to be doing some admin tasks. It’s important they get trained specifically in how to do those tasks. And yes, to your point, we have a bench of like they are there, and
Seth Price 31:41
Hopefully you have, you know, your utility infielders, if you’re and then
Raquel Gomes 31:45
They’re going through the training while they’re waiting, and we’re assessing them throughout the whole time.
Seth Price 31:52
move up to those pieces we’ve seen that in, like the intake space. It’s one thing to do intake, it’s another to do sales, right? You’re doing intake, and it’s being passed off to somebody else to sell, like in criminal or family, great. With you, it’s one level. But when it’s somebody who’s closing a PI case, that’s a lot to a lot is going on, and you probably don’t want that as a first job coming out,
Raquel Gomes 32:15
right?
Seth Price 32:15
Rather, somebody who’s done other things and has been elevated to that, which sort of pivots. My last point, when I’ve been sort of giving a lot of thought to we, this was a domestic hire, but I think the analogy could be made for any, any global person, which is, we hired people and two of them didn’t work for within a short period, you know, you know, 300 employees between two organizations. We have a lot of hiring experience, and we made two mistakes and reflected why one person left and one person we pushed out, and what it looked like was we didn’t pay enough to get the talent that we needed for that position. And that there’s, you know, there’s one thing about saving money, but there’s another that when there’s a marketplace, and there’s more and more of a marketplace, more than when you even started Stafi, that there’s people out there that know what they’re worth, that there starts to be a point where that if you try to pay too little, that you’re going to you, there’s a good chance has happened to me that things are not going to work out, versus understanding that there are, you know, if an expert tells you, like a staffing, hey, you need somebody at this level trying to pay less may seem like a way to save money, but very often, will end up with, you know, there’s a reason it didn’t work out we put too little expertise behind what we needed.
Raquel Gomes 33:44
Yeah, yeah.
Seth Price 33:47
What are your thoughts on that sort of, you know,
Raquel Gomes 33:50
I think in the in the case that you the example that you mentioned, so it seems like it was like you didn’t put enough thought to define exactly what the person would be hired for. Was it
Seth Price 34:01
knew what it was. We just paid too little. Oh, you got somebody like, we knew what we wanted, yeah, we know that, right? And we thought that like, and sort of, you know, when people come to a global talent group, they’re, like, price sensitive, potentially trying to save money off of domestic labor.
Raquel Gomes 34:19
I would say, I would say that you cannot be cheap. You know you you have good talent. You have to, you have to be abundant in the way you think. And you have to, obviously pay well for the talent. People have to be People have to feel appreciated. If someone is feeling like they’re taking advantage, being taken advantage of, or in any way, payment is one of the ways you’re going to have high turnover. So it’s really important to treat your people well, right? In different ways. Payment is one of the ways, you know, sending little things, like we’re we’re saying, like including them in the in the potty, like even if they’re in via zoom, or sending them gifts to their house so they can feel. Appreciate it is another way. I think the more the better you treat your staff, the more rewarded you will be back and you know,
Seth Price 35:09
look, I know that money is not the first thing,
Raquel Gomes 35:13
But I think if lawyers are going into this saying, I’m just gonna get cheap and get squeezed the most out of it, the most that I want, they’re going to find that it’s not going to work for them.
Seth Price 35:23
agreed? And I’m going one step further, which is when, not
Raquel Gomes 35:26
Only is, it’s not right now, we’re at a point that it’s not about the money. It’s about having great talent, loyal talent, hard working, as you said, prices are going up. People are like, it’s getting this global workforce that, you know, there are law firms that are like, they don’t even know, and they overpay, and then somebody else now wants more. You know what’s, what’s happening in the market? So it’s beyond the price, but having and finding good people. People who are loyal, they’re going to stay a long time working for you, you know, and what we hear is that that’s harder and harder to find in the US.
Seth Price 36:06
right? And that’s, I think, where, as much as the international number has gone up the Delta, that as groups like yourself have helped figure out how to create those systems for law firms, right, and train and cultivate and give best practices and keeping people happy that it becomes, you know, as what I’m looking at is I want to be able to retain my US talent, and then as I grow at an in global team member, so that I’m able to cover more and grow that way, rather than, you know, have two people at a mediocre salary in the US, where they’re going to break, I mean, they’re not going to get the right people, or I have the right people, and they’re not going to stay, but maintaining the people, keeping the people I want to keep, and while at the same time, giving an opportunity at the other end. And that the combined number hopefully works, even though it’s not, you know, when we started, the Philippines talent was two to $5 an hour. Was crazy. But the idea is, if you’re looking at it as I need a job done, and what’s that entire team going to cost me, then you’re looking at it from a what does it take to get the job done? Rather, because I would argue that at the lowest end, the risk is that the pure task based people are the ones that are going to be at risk for AI job loss, and that as you get people that are integrated into your team that help solve your the widget, yes, you’ll have AI, but that’s going to be for the stuff at the bottom, and hopefully that allows Your team members to excel, and that’s where balancing domestic, international and technology, sort of, that whole mosaic is what’s going to give you profitability.
Raquel Gomes 37:49
Yeah, makes sense. I think the higher levels you can hire for some roles in the US, you can get the support for them from Latin America, and then you have a magic, a magical formula.
Seth Price 38:03
Raquel, this has been, this been fascinating. Thank you so much for your time. You’ve been great for the industry. I know that when people started off with international labor, it didn’t pale in comparison to what Stafi has put together. So congratulations for all, all that you’ve done, and thank you for what you’ve done for the industry.
Raquel Gomes 38:20
Thank you, Seth. It’s a pleasure to be here, and you’re such a smart guy, so great talking to you.
Seth Price 38:26
Thank you so much for your time. And guys, we thank you for listening, and we can’t wait to see you back here.
Raquel Gomes 38:31
Thank you.
BluShark Digital 38:32
Thank you for tuning in to the SEO Insider with Seth Price. Be sure to check back next week for fresh insights into building your brand’s online presence. Episodes are available to stream directly on BluShark Digital’s website.
