Hiring Assessments with Tyler Leber of Coconut

Josh Haynam

Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the Interact podcast. My name is Josh Haynam. I'm the co-founder and CEO at Interact. And I am here today with Tyler Leber, who is the co-founder at Coconut.

They have a very cool quiz set up. That's a branching logic quiz for their applications for their business. I'll let Tyler talk more about that, but thanks for being here, Tyler. I appreciate it.

Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me. I'm excited. Yeah. So you came on my radar because I found this quiz that you guys have set up.

Tyler Leber

And it's, as far as what I can tell, just looking at it, it's like a branching logic quiz that helps you screen applicants

Josh Haynam

for virtual assistants. Do you want to take it from there and just kind of share like what the impetus was behind doing that? Yeah. Yeah, of course.

Tyler Leber

So we've been around for about three and a half years. And so even from fairly near the beginning, we have quite a wealth of like, I guess, resources and benefits tied to the people that work for us. And so we got onto like the VA radar pretty quickly.

And we started getting a lot of applications coming in every single month for people that they'll want it to be paired with US -based clients. And so with that, you know, yeah, like I said, from very early on, we were getting probably 500 to a thousand applications every month. And at the beginning, you know, it was very, very basic form logic that we were using, or even really not even much logic at all at the beginning.

But then we got to a point where we said, hey, we need to actually start, you know, cutting off a few of these people that we know are just not qualified. And so that's where the logic and the branching logic became really important for us because we really needed like a way to almost kind of score each applicant based on every answer to every question and said, okay, with this combination of factors, that means you are now a potential, potential good fit for Coconut.

We might be able to find you a job with one of our clients. And then there's tons of other scenarios that will go down. Like, you know, if they're not in the Philippines for us, that's like a non-starter, right? So like that has to be an automatic disqualification.

There's a few other that are like, you know, automatic, just DQs. And then others, it's like, well, that's kind of like a negative thing, or that's a positive thing. And each one of those kind of combines into this composite score.

Josh Haynam

So how many, how many branches are on that quiz? I'm always curious. Oh man, great question. I don't even know.

Let's see. You can go ballpark if you don't want to.

Tyler Leber

Yeah. I mean, we've got, yeah, I don't even know actually. Yeah. I shouldn't even know. I don't even know. I have no idea, but every single question that we have on there contributes to it.

And so however long the quiz is probably, I think we try to keep it fairly short. Right. So like maybe six to 10, somewhere in there.

Josh Haynam

Yeah. No, it's great. And like, you know, that scenario that you just outlined, you know, if you're not in the Philippines, it's not the right fit. It's just funny to me.

And I'm sure you did your research on this when you were looking for a solution. It's like funny how hard that is to actually just have like a no, route. Like if you answer this, then auto end. Right. That's, that's wild.

How much time do you think you were spending or someone on your team was spending sorting through those applications before you had this

Tyler Leber

implemented? Yeah. I mean, it's, it's really like the benefit of just not having to have somebody look at it at all. So before we would have, we still have dedicated team members that do this, but obviously just trying to control that volume before it even gets to their eyeballs. So yeah, beforehand it was, we would kind of accept all applications and then people could go through and just manually, you know, check these little boxes.

Right. And, and take them out of our flow. But yeah, that was, you know, probably 30 seconds to 60 seconds per application. And so it doesn't sound like a lot. And once you get going, like it does move pretty quickly, but it still adds up because you're now dealing with, you know, today, like a thousand to 2000 applications per month.

Um, and so every single, you know, second really is, is valuable and there is a cost to that. And so if we can cut a lot of that off beforehand with some kind of automation or even just giving our people like a better feel for how good of this person, how good of a fit this person will be, then they can know, okay, I'm going to spend a little bit more time really like going through this application very closely because they scored so well.

And so it's like, yeah, there's got to be something here. So I'm going to really like watch their entire video. Right. So we have like a 60 second intro video that every single person makes. Um, but again, that's 60 seconds right there multiplied by, you know, 1500, that's a lot of time.

So anything that we can do to avoid somebody having to, to get into the nitty gritty of every application, it's helpful. And like, we want to make sure everybody has a, has a fair chance. Like we want to make sure that if you're a good fit, we look at your application. Um, but there's a lot of people we know just, we just can't accept.

Right. Yeah, no, I like that.

Josh Haynam

And I mean, just, you know, napkin math there, you're still looking at like a thousand to 2000 minutes a month minimum, which is like, right. I'm not great at math. That's like at least 15 hours a month.

So it's like, okay, there's a material cost. We actually do the same thing in our onboarding. We have a qualifying quiz that routes you to a human or to an AI, depending on whether or not it actually can work for us. Cause like we want to offer the best service to everybody and we can't be talking to folks that are not going to really, be able to spend a lot.

And so, um, it's a disservice to everybody. And I'm sure you found that too. Like, yeah, exactly. Can't offer the best service to like the most qualified people.

If you're spending all this time, you know, sorting through the ones that are not qualified. Um, so yeah, exactly. I really liked this use case. Um, I feel like I, I wish I saw it more often cause it's so smart.

It's like automation feature. Do you have it tied to anything on the backend or like, where's the, where is the data going as far as like the filtering, sorting?

Tyler Leber

Yeah, it's, it's actually changing right now, but historically, I mean, for the first three, three and a half years, um, we had these applications, like again, if they scored above a certain threshold, they would go into monday.com actually. So we kind of, it was like Frankenstein version of monday.com that we threw together. Um, and that, you know, filtered out into these separate groups of, again, like this person was really high scoring.

They're like, you know, top talent or, or top potential. And so that's where our like hiring, managers and the sourcing team would actually go through each and every single one of those applications. And then of course we've got other automations in the backend, uh, there. And, uh, so now we're actually moving to more of like an, a traditional ATS applicant tracking software.

Um, but, but same thing, we have literally every single person go through interact before they go into any other system.

Josh Haynam

Nice. And then you have it tied with a Zapier, like a zap or something. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Tyler Leber

Nice. That's really cool. That's really cool. Yeah. We love that. I think we're, we're, we're to the point now we have unlimited zaps.

We still have a lot of tasks going every month and yeah, it's crazy. We've got a lot going there. I like that.

Josh Haynam

And how many people are on your team at coconut? So we have about, uh, 15 people. 15 people. Yeah. Cause I was gonna say like, you have all these automations going, you must be able to run pretty lean.

Like it's, it's nice. Yeah. Yeah, no, we can.

Tyler Leber

And, and we kind of, I don't know, um, practice what we preach or either on dog food. So we actually have all of our people based in the Philippines. So it's only us co-founders that are based in the U S everybody else, like including CEO, she runs the day-to-day ops.

Like everybody is, is based in the Philippines. Whoa. That's cool. Just the two of you, right. Or is there.

Yeah. Yeah. There there's three total co-founders. One is more just the silent owner, uh, right now, but yeah.

Josh Haynam

So two of us like actively in the operations. Wow. That's awesome. Well, I have a lot of questions about that. Like how obviously, so first of all, how did you recognize this need?

Like, were you already running previous businesses in this way where like everything was outsourced?

Tyler Leber

Is that how you got into this? Yeah, pretty much. So my original co-founder just right out of college actually during college is when we started the original first business, which was Venture Validator.

So that was more of a market research company and we would be vetting out, uh, other startup companies to see like, Hey, does your target market actually want what you're building before you go spend thousands of dollars building it? And so we, with that business, we had a lot of like reports that we were trying to, to run for these people and a lot of surveys.

And so we would, uh, that's when we've hired our first VA, uh, to help us build the surveys and then also to analyze all of the data because we had a lot of quantitative and qualitative data, uh, to, to comb through. And so like we had to categorize each and each and every response into a bucket basically.

Um, and we didn't have chat GPT yet, you know, just even a few years ago. So a lot of that was very manual. Uh, a lot of that could even be automated, but we were able to do a lot of that. But yeah, that's, that's when we've hired like the first VA, we hired a few more.

Um, and then we ended up selling Venture Validator and trying to find, figure out, okay, what's the next thing that we're going to go into? Uh, and that's when we, we were kind of going through like all of these different ideas and we recognize that, Hey, like a lot of our clients at Venture Validator ended up asking us like, Hey, like who did this report or like, Hey, how did you find that VA that did my report?

Like, this is fantastic work. And so we noticed that there was a need there of people that wanted a VA or wanted to, to be able to outsource, but they didn't know where to start. They didn't have, you know, a, a trusted source for that.

And that's what we've noticed is like the VA staffing business is so trust-based. Like if, you know, if you find, if you just go off a cold email or, uh, you know, a cold pitch on LinkedIn, like you don't have a great, you know, trust relationship there, you know, or even a parasocial relationship with that person.

So you don't know if they're going to find you good talent. Um, and so the staffing industry in general, like if they know me, if they've seen my LinkedIn content for a year, two years, um, then they're going to trust me to find really good talent for them. Um, so yeah, that, that's kind of how it started.

We, we just noticed that there was a need for that, you know, trusted source, uh, for, for really good talent and that's kind of kicked us off into, into coconut and, uh, yeah, it's been great since then.

Josh Haynam

A hundred percent. I mean, I can see that in the conversations that I have all the time, like it's, it's a common topic that comes up. How are you, uh, automating?

So you have the quiz at the front end to do like some of the applicant screening, but then how are you automating or not automating whatever it is that you're doing from there to make sure you can say like, okay, this is somebody that coconut vouches for. Like how, how are you handling that?

Yeah, it's, it's interesting.

Tyler Leber

I, I think it might be a little while yet until we can automate, you know, the entire process or some key parts of that process, because right now we do have hiring managers. They know like, Hey, these are the, you know, 30 clients that we have, like that are searching for a VA right now. And these are the different roles.

And so I'm going to go through each and one of these every, you know, applications. Um, so we can, we can automate it based on, you know, the experience that they have or English proficiency, for example. And so we can filter those, that data, uh, you know, appropriately. And then with that, like subsection of applicants, then they can go in and say, Hey, this person is a good fit because I know the client's personality and I know this person's personality.

I can, you know, hear their confidence on the intro video, right? Like they have a good zoom presence and this is the SDR role. So like they need to be able to talk to us clients, you know, over the phone or on a zoom call. So there's all of these little nuanced aspects of each and every role, because again, it depends on the culture of the company and of the, the founder or of the, you know, COO, whoever it is that's coming in for VA.

And so the hiring managers need to come in like with that context and then screen their applications, um, with that in mind.

Josh Haynam

Right. Yeah. It's gotta be personalized for each role. Yes. It's like legitimate hiring that you're doing. That's what I'm hearing.

Josh Haynam

Um, yeah. Have you seen any trends or changes in terms of, you know, how things have gone? We had like this crazy run-up during the pandemic and then some, you know, wishy washy stuff after that, like how has that affected people's demand for outsourcing or, uh, the ability to do this stuff? Yeah, I mean, I think if you're, you know, hopefully not taking, it have you seen any changes in the market in the last

Tyler Leber

three and a half years yeah i think the only big change i've noticed like i'd say overall the demand that we're we're getting it's still about the same like people are asking kind of for the same same you know types of roles they're asking for the same um you know a lot of the same criteria uh is still coming in um sorry my screen just went black are

Josh Haynam

you still there yeah okay sorry my screen went black i have no idea what happened there all right so yeah what was i

Tyler Leber

going with that so um yeah so so a lot of the people that are coming in are still asking for about the same types of roles um but the only difference that i have noticed is that the there are are more teams that are strictly in office um and so the the fact that they're trying this outsourcing thing i guess there's a little bit more i don't know a little bit more hesitancy i'd say like because they they have more of the option of like hey we have you know 10 people that are working in office i could hire this u.s based you know executive assistant and like they could actually go run errands for me for example like actually do physical stuff or or talk to this you know supplier and go meet with them in person or i could hire this offshore you know executive assistant and the talent you know could be the exact same but then there's a

big cost savings right so that's what i have noticed is more clients will come in with that like frame of mind and they're going to be able to do that they're coming in with the comparison of what would it look like to hire this person in person versus you know what you're offering me which is more strictly remote like you know halfway across the world right or all the way across the world um and so we didn't get that as much like in the very early days because everybody was working remote uh so that's that's really the only big change i've noticed i could see that yeah because during the height of the pandemic it was like everybody's going to be remote

Josh Haynam

forever and obviously that hasn't played out it hasn't played out it's kind of a mixed bag now but makes sense i mean what you're saying like comparison shopping essentially like comparison hiring or whatever you want to call it like who are you going to hire and why what is the rough price differential and do you guys have data on that yeah definitely so it's about half the cost of

Tyler Leber

a u.s a u.s hire so i could be going for executive assistant um in the u.s and if i chose to go through through coconut for example it'd be about half the cost and like even you know we we have a slight premium just because we're doing a lot of the legwork for you to to find the people and run everything on the back end so you you could even get people for for more of like a an arbitrage there right you can even get people where it's 30 the cost of a u.s hire if you hire directly but of course now you're having to do all of the work of that all of the you know sourcing vetting and making sure that that person actually sticks um and then also having to replace that person if they ever if things don't work out right and then also running the international payroll trying to figure out benefits trying to

Josh Haynam

navigate all of that which is complicated yeah i could imagine i could imagine yeah so what's your let's run through that scenario because that is actually kind of fascinating to me like somebody's comparing the two so if i was to come in and ask you how do you go through this process of like knowing the vetting part of it like how do you know like that you can vouch for this person they're gonna hit the ground running and be able to deliver at the same level as you know x person down the street where it's like well there's some social accountability they know people that i know you know there's there's gonna be some skin in the game for them if this doesn't go well right whereas someone overseas i don't know like there's no real accountability uh for

them like they don't really lose that much other than um the job if it doesn't work out so what's your how do you do that and then also how do you communicate that to the client because i would imagine those are kind of two separate buckets

Tyler Leber

that you have to figure out it is yeah no it really is it is it is very two very separate buckets because on the on the talent side for the vas and the people that we're finding the philippines like we really have to make it an exclusive exciting opportunity here at coconut and to make that an exclusive opportunity for them to be able to like something that you really don't want to lose and then um obviously there's like a little bit of network effects like now we're getting referrals from you know friends and family like yeah we've had some jokes like there's there's been you know families that have like it started as as one member of the family and then the sister joined and then the brother-in-law joined and then the cousin joined and so like there's a little bit of that accountability as well as like if he goes to coconut like we know how to get to you right or like we know how to we know like who you are and how to get back in ever and so like that's i think that's a really big key thing on the talent side like we

have so many benefits and so and like above average pay you know that is not typical of other agencies who are really like trying to lowball their talent and trying to get the absolute cheapest talent to get the biggest profit margin like we know that we're not getting as big of a margin as the other agencies but we know we're getting incredibly dependable talent who will treasure this job and who will not want to give it up and they know that if they if they really do screw up or if they're just not communicating with us or they're not transparent with us like we won't find them a job ever again and like that's that's a thing that's a big thing to lose right uh because we find them really great clients here in the us or even some international clients as well so yeah it's taken a while because we really have to do a lot of reputation building um to actually

make that happen and make that something that is actually worth something right um and we're not just like a faceless nameless agency to them like we're coconut right and like you want to work for coconut uh so that's that's kind of the talent side and then the client side i mean there's a lot of like checks and balances we can do to make the to put the client at ease one of them is like basic personality tests so we get a lot of founders that come in that are more like big idea or visionary type founders the one common question i ask is like how many emails do you have in your inbox and most of the the big idea founders it's like ten thousand fifty thousand one hundred thousand thousand thousand thousand thousand thousand right like just absolutely wild and then we're getting the people that are kind of the opposite more like operator execution type talent and so they are inbox

euro like they have one unread email from just five minutes ago you know and so we're trying to that's that's one of the first ways that we can really differentiate the the talent and make sure that it's paired up well with the client they're actually complementary and then another thing that we do uh that's like very practical or or the tactical to is hiring tasks so somebody will come in and say that they have you know eight years of experience as an executive assistant they've worked for these ceos we have a new client coming in and we know exactly what they're going to be doing so we'll give them a few hiring tasks even before we send them over to the client to make sure that they can actually do the work that and they can do it well um and then also we have like a trial period so a client can actually work with a va for a full week of

work and then we have like a trial period so a client can actually work with a va for a full week of work before committing to to anything long term and so again it's like a great testing period where you can just give them a little bit here a little bit there to kind of test their skill set make sure that what they're saying on their resume in their interviews actually lines up with real world expertise real world like projects completed nice yeah the that first part that you said jumped out

Josh Haynam

at me like where you have a network within the community sounds like i was listening to stripe can you talk about that one because i've been listening to that on a regular basis you know we have a lot of people on the podcast recently and they were saying like one of the big values for them now is that this trusted network they basically have seen every credit card get tried and so they have this network that says well this credit card's good this one's not because we've seen it before kind of sounds like that's what's starting to happen on your end it's like well we've worked with this person before you know that's how we know we can trust them rather than yeah starting from scratch

Tyler Leber

to that point. Like we've had clients that for whatever reason, you know, they're, they're moving in a different direction. They're, you know, they're even sometimes their business is going under, they're struggling just as a business in general. And so we'll have really great talent.

Like the client had nothing but good things to say about, you know, Aubrey, whoever this person is. And then we know that Aubrey is good vetted, like high quality talent. The client raved about her, like, yeah, let's go find her a job. And sometimes we'll even do like kind of, kind of cherry picking, like, Hey, you know, we'll reach out to our network, people in our network.

Like, Hey, I can personally vouch for like Aubrey. Like I've worked with her. I've trained her on X, Y, Z. She was crushing it here.

Like, you know, do you, do you want her like, this is a very exclusive, like kind of golden egg opportunity. And that's, that's always really fun to do. Cause then it's very custom like matchmaking, right? Like I know this person is going to be fantastic.

Like I know them personally and then pairing them up with somebody on the U S client base side. That's, that's really fun to do.

Josh Haynam

Yeah. That's nice. Then, then, you know, it's going to be a win from the beginning. Yeah. It's like guaranteed to be a win. Right. And then you mentioned the trial period for the ones I would imagine that's like when you're trying out a new matching for the first time, like you want to make sure it works before you get somebody to commit to anything longer term.

I'm curious to get your insight on this.

Josh Haynam

What areas of business tend to have the most success with hiring VAs?

Tyler Leber

Yeah. I mean, our big focus, uh, has really been around executive assistants. Um, and so like pairing up again, like those more operator type personalities with the big idea of visionary type personalities. We've seen a lot of success with that. Like we probably get most of our rave reviews from, from people like that.

Uh, there's also been, you know, the classics like customer service is another big one, uh, social media managers. That's another really big one. We'll have people that are very.

Conscientious. Uh, they're very consistent. They're on top of things. They, they can keep a schedule. They can keep a content calendar.

Um, and they're often paired up with, you know, founders or, or CMOs that have so many other things going on that they can rely on this person to like make sure that, you know, a post goes out every single day or three posts go out every single day on these channels. And then they can repurpose that content as well.

So those are the three things that come to my mind. Like, you know, basic customer service is great. Social media managers is like a step up of like how much that really takes. Off, uh, these executives will like plate and then executive assistant.

Like if we can find a really great executive assistant for a founder or executive that, that feels like they're drowning or they've just got too much going on. That's, that's like a really satisfying, satisfying thing to watch. Nice. I like that.

I like that.

Josh Haynam

Switching gears a little bit on the growth side, you guys have grown pretty nicely. Um, what have you found to work really well? What are things that haven't worked that you've tried? Cause that's always really interesting.

Yeah. From, um, yeah. What are the, what are the wins and losses?

Tyler Leber

Yeah. I mean, yeah, to your point, I think we've, we've probably learned more from our failures, but, uh, what's, what's worked really well, uh, has been the content, um, like LinkedIn content posting almost every day for the past two, three years on like LinkedIn, uh, is fantastic. Like that's been a huge part of our growth.

Um, and then also referrals. So, you know, kind of like the talent side, right? Like if a U S based client can, say that they hired an amazing executive assistant or, um, you know, there's, there's all sorts of like kind of use cases that are more like public facing.

Um, so if somebody, if you're having an interview with somebody or just chatting with somebody and you say like, Oh, like, how did you do that? Or how, how can you stay on top of your podcast? How can you stay on top of your email?

Or, you know, for example, it's like, Oh, well I've got this great executive assistant. I hired them through coconut, right? Then that's like a great testimonial for us. That's just kind of built into how they operate.

Um, and even, even for us, like we run a founder community, uh, called Highline and that's like a very exclusive founder community. And we've thrown a few events and a lot of people will ask us like, like, how did you, you know, you're running coconut. Like, how did you also throw this like big intricate event?

And I can say like, Oh, well it was my coconut, you know, executive assistant. Like I did the public facing stuff, the, you know, I did the, I don't know, talking head moments. And like, I was, I showed up to the event, but my executive assistant booked the ticket and she sent me the menu and, you know, she, she was the one that sent you that follow-up email and she called to confirm your attendance.

Like all of these little things that just kind of show, you know, the, the proof, right. That, that it's actually working and that I can actually delegate all of this stuff, uh, to somebody else. So, uh, yeah, yeah.

Anyway, that's, that's a great example, I guess.

Josh Haynam

Yeah. And just like showing it in real life, like this is what it actually does for us. And that's powerful. And then the LinkedIn stuff is. Yeah. Like founder led stuff.

So it's you guys posting on there. Is that the gist of it?

Tyler Leber

Yes. Yeah. So it's mainly the founders, uh, posting on LinkedIn. Uh, and then we've got a few like automations in the background, you know, like sales navigator, uh, is, is great. Um, that helps us do quite a bit of outreach and then, yeah, there's a few tools that we've tried out.

Um, but really it's, it's like the inbound stuff, right? Like the, the trust-based thing, the content that's really the most. beneficial. Um, yeah. And then I'm trying to think the only other, the other things that we've tried that have not worked as well have been, um, like paid ads.

That's, that's like a very competitive space, uh, with like the virtual assistant industry. If you type in even Coconut VA, like six competitors will show up, like in the sponsored, you know, in the ad, uh, section of ad results and it's, it's a very expensive keyword and we've tried going after it, but yeah, it's difficult to do, and it does take a lot of work, a lot of effort and a lot of budget to be successful at that.

And we've just never wanted to, to spend that time because we have the content marketing, which is basically free. Um, So yeah, the, the ROI has been a lot better on word of mouth obviously. And then the, the LinkedIn content.

Yep. Yeah. Um, I hear that Yeah.

Josh Haynam

content and word.

Josh Haynam

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, I hear that content and word of mouth. Yeah. Yeah, I, I hear that content and word of mouth. mouth has always been bread and butter for us and everything else yeah very expensive yes exactly yes um last one before we kind of wrap up here but i'm always curious like are you guys implementing ai into your workflows are there is there ways that it's saving you money or helping you with additional automations or even things that you're thinking about that are just like cool ideas yeah oh

Tyler Leber

totally um and yeah it's constantly evolving right um with all the tools that are coming out i mean one one thing that we're we're trying to do right now um directly with ai is we have all of our virtual assistants kind of submitting like rough end of day reports of like what they accomplished every single day uh for their client and so being able to like gather that data is one piece um but then being able to like analyze that data and see okay all of our executive assistants are doing xyz tasks every single day um they're asked being asked to do these unique tasks we can kind of see the trends over time right and so ai being able to help us like analyze that take that data apart is really helpful um and then the only other

thing that i can think of right now is um like parsing resumes is really helpful like we can give you know chat chat gpt or whatever tool uh you know 100 resumes and it can kind of it can parse that data for us and pull out like the exact thing that we're looking for and look through these 100 resumes and find somebody who would be good at xyz right uh and it will go out and find like the exact person that fits that exact criteria um which is really really beneficial that's

Josh Haynam

cool yeah you can do like an auto auto like sort through a bunch of resumes and be like all right this is the best fit for for this yeah request that's cool yeah exactly i like that one yeah yeah it's nice cool awesome well thanks for chatting with me this is great i've learned a bunch and i'm sure everybody listening did as well so much appreciated and um we'll

Tyler Leber

have to we'll have to do a follow-up at some point yeah i would love that awesome thanks for having me all right thanks tyler