Episode Summary
Many businesses aim to operate as media companies and focus on creating a variety of content including podcasts. But producing a podcast is more than pressing the record button and talking to a guest. Therefore, it is critical for every company looking to create a sustainable and results-oriented content strategy to partner with professionals. However, sometimes finding quality requires diving into the global talent pool.
In this episode of Recorded Content, our host Tristan Pelligrino shares segments from his appearance on Kickoff Sessions, a podcast hosted by Darren Lee. One of the things he talked about were the steps, challenges, and benefits of hiring internationally.
Guest Profile
Name: Tristan Pelligrino
What he does: Tristan is the Co-Founder of Motion and leads the creative execution for all of the shows produced by the company.
Company: Motion
Key Insights
- Hiring is one of the hardest things to do in any business. The changing business climate along with increased internet use and advanced technology allowed companies to find employees worldwide. However, even with access to the global talent pool, hiring is still challenging for many organizations. Tristan has found paid test projects effective in these situations. “It’s just very hard to figure out if someone is going to be a fit. The biggest thing that I did on the creative agency side is we tended to do paid projects with people first.”
- Creative work is a balance between speed and quality. When a company uses different types of content for marketing purposes, it must create them within a particular time frame and writers, video editors, and designers must follow a specific schedule. However, quality requires time. “You can get something cheap and fast but it’s going to be shit quality or you can get something high quality but it’s going to take a while for an average price. And if you pay a lot for high quality, it’s going to take a long time. So it’s trying to balance those three things — that three-legged stool: speed, quality, and price.”
- We aim for long-term collaborations. One thing that differentiates Motion from other similar companies is transparent pricing. Any organization that goes to motionagency.io can see what the packages include and the prices. As Tristan explains, Motion does it because of transparency, which is the prerequisite for fruitful business collaborations. “Our focus is much less on a project and it’s much more focused on a long-term relationship and that’s why we develop our packages.”
Episode Highlights
Technology enables access to a global talent pool
“On the video production side, you can work with anyone in the world. Like you mentioned, back then you could only work with someone a mile or two away, whereas now you can transfer footage pretty much for any project you have. We do a lot of that where we filmed for days and days. You can get everything up in the cloud overnight and someone can download it on the other side by the morning.”
Paid test projects help you find the right people for your team
“We’re developing video content. We could always craft out a project and say, ‘Hey, we need to fill in this gap. We’ll need some editors down the road. We’ve got a lot of projects. We’re going to have to probably hire someone full-time in maybe a month or so. So let’s bring someone in maybe one to two days a week. Let’s have them work on some of these low-risk projects. Let’s see what the intangibles look like. Are they organized? Can they follow instructions? Can they set up a project in Adobe Premiere like we set up a project and can someone else come in, pick up their work, and make sense of it?’
And so that’s what we did a lot of times to eliminate those risks with full-time employees. We would try to bring someone on the scope of a project and figure out if they’re a fit from there.”
Transparent pricing sets your business up for long-term success
“We have a month-to-month agreement. You can sign up with us and cancel if you want, but we put our money where our mouth is and say, ‘Hey, we have to earn your respect each and every month. Our goal is to have you never leave. We want to give you that freedom upfront, but in exchange, we’re going to be very clear as to what we provide and build that relationship.’
Podcasting is a long-term commitment. You can get a lot of short-term results and some impact right away, but you start to get that compounding effect as you move forward. And so our whole pricing structure reflects that mentality. And it’s worked out well for us.”
