Looking to hire first dedicated support employee - any tips on where to find?

Discussions
#1

Hi all,

After several years bootstrapping and handling all the support tickets myself (I like the harsh edge positive & negative feedback and think this is priceless in dictating the direction of the company in the early days) the support queue is getting really busy. As such we’re looking to take on a dedicated support person. I’m wondering if anyone here has any experience finding somebody from a bootstrapped company point of view? All other staff have come via my network so this isn’t really a problem I’ve had to solve before.

We’ve looked around at the job boards but all the other jobs posted there feel a bit corporate, which is not what we’re about. Our style is friendly and helpful so we’re basically looking for somebody passionate about helping others and keeps up with the support blogs for latest best practices. Anyone got any tips or experiences on this that they could share?

George

#2

Hi,

There are a ton of under-employed people in the US. Stay at home moms, for instance, who have some spare time. When one of our freelancers posted this, I got hundreds of resumes:

http://moneysavingmom.com/2011/07/liberwriter-editing-opportunities-available.html

And many of them seemed like they’d be good people to work with.

I’ve filled our support needs via oDesk, by taking on first one person, then subsequently another long-term.

I should do a blog post about it…

#3

The first place to look is in your user base. Do you have any really passionate users, people who are answering posts on your forums for you, etc? That’s where we got our first (and still only) support person. I’ve know many other companies who went this way also, it’s a great way to go early on when you only need to hire 1 support person.

If that’s a no go I’d post over on http://jobs.supportops.co/ for a less corp setup.

#4

Thanks for the tips guys. The Support Ops site looks awesome and exactly the kind of thing we’re looking for. Will knock up a post for their tomorrow.

I also hadn’t considered the part-time/stay at home option so will look into that as well. We’re all remote but would have a slight preference for someone UK based as we like to meetup once a month. That isn’t critical though - finding the right person for the role and our company is more important.

#5

You could take a look at Virtual Staff Finder.

Theoretically (I haven’t used them) they can help you find the right person according to your requirements.

#6

I’ve had good experiences with Authentic Jobs and have heard nothing but good things on the hiring side as well.