Pre-vetting in a Nutshell | Benefits of Pre-vetting | Disadvantages of Not Working with Pre-vetted Specialist | The Process of Pre-vetting | Your Options
Pre-vetting in a Nutshell
Pre-vetting is a process to ensure that the person that you're going to deal with or engage with in a commercial transaction has had prior experience in the task or the outcome that you're looking for them to achieve.
A pre-vetted person has a demonstrated track record of high-quality performance and the ability to get results for clients or customers over an extended period of time. This group of individuals are experts in a specific subject matter, i.e. digital transformation, and play a crucial role in the right sequence at the right time that you need them to. They can add value to the project by bringing new ideas and perspective, and they can work collaboratively with other team members, understanding exactly the role that they need to play, what their responsibilities are, who they need to report to and what the final outcome they are responsible for.
For busy professionals, this extra step can be a bit daunting but that little bit of extra time you spend pre-vetting a person, or working with platforms that take the pain away by doing the pre-vetting for you, will not only save you time and money, headache and hassle, but will also help your project get a much better return on investment in a lot less time and achieve better quality result.
The Benefits
Disadvantages of Not Working with Pre-vetted Specialists
You buy cheap, you buy twice.
You may actually get to a situation where you have to restart that component of work because the quality is just simply not good enough to go out to the market. This can cost you time and slow your progress. Moreover, mistakes on the project could result in you losing customers or losing market share to competitors because of incompetency. Basic errors that would not happen if the person was pre-vetted and has extensive knowledge at what they do.
Over promised and under delivered.
Non-vetted individuals may under quote leaving you in a big mess having to restart the process only to find that you need to go back to a pre-vetted option from the outset. This could lead your company to completely miss a deadline, a campaign and may put a lot of pressure on your business if it misses opportunities in the market. Or worse, it could cause reputational damage to your company.
The Process of Pre-vetting
To understand if someone is truly a vetted option, you need to spend time researching and methodically look at their previous experience to ensure that what they are telling you is factual and that they do have the capabilities to deliver the task and that the person is going to be a great asset to have on your team.
The process of pre-vetting someone is a process that takes time and has to be done in a meticulous manner. Some of the steps that we do here, at JO, includes:
- We check the experience level of the person. On a scale of 1 to 10, how much experience do they have in the industry and at what level would you consider them to be? Are they Intermediate, Expert, Pro, or Elite? What is the quality of the work? Have they finished their projects? We, then, have a look at the previous work that the individual has done in their specific area of expertise.
- All the small details matter when reviewing a specialist's previous work so we also take the time to talk to previous customers to find out what their experience has been as well as read their reviews online. Were they easy to work with? Did they deliver their work on time? Did they communicate well with other team members on the project? Did they update regularly? All of these things add up in terms of the experience that you're going to have should you hire them.
- We look to see a variety of different outcomes and examples that they've produced for clients. In doing so, we review the last five projects they've worked on, as well as, the largest project, the most challenging projects and the projects that they are most proud of.
- The other thing that we assess when we pre-vet workers is the Key Person Risk. Does this specialist that we are vetting have a small team or a team of people behind them? Do they have redundancy? If this person was to not be available, would that be a detriment to the project? Do they have a backup plan within their team to ensure that the outcome or their component of work can still be delivered by their company or their organisation?
- Another important factor is having the right core values. Their core values should and must align up to our organisation’s, and our client’s, core values if we're going to have them work on our client’s projects. If there is a misalignment, it doesn't matter how good the experience level is. If the person is prickly or a toxic individual, they are never going to add value to the team and the team could implode as a result of this behaviour.
Your Options
If you are time pressed and you're unable to pre-vet specialists that are coming into your business to play vital roles in one or multiple areas, such as Software Development, where you may not have technical capability or have someone within your organisation or company that can interpret whether a person is the right fit for the role or has extensive experience in the task you need help with, you can either:
Hire someone to help you with the vetting process. Someone that you trust can sit in on those interviews when you're interviewing that person to join your project or your team and get them to ask key questions that relate to what we've covered in this article in terms of core values, technical capability, subject matter understanding and their ability to demonstrate that they have delivered these outcomes for other companies and show social proof.
Work with reputable platforms, such as Throttl, who has already done that pre-work over a period of time and has worked on building up an inventory of high quality pre-vetted people that work in specific areas to save you the time and have the brand promise that the person you’re going to hire is able to meet or exceed your expectations.
We hope this article has opened your eyes to the importance of pre-vetting and how working with the right people can make a difference to your company. If you're looking to rapidly condense the time that it takes to bring in pre-vetted digital marketing specialists into your business, click here now to create a free account or complete a Needs Analysis form to get started. We’ll then review your situation and have one of our account managers start selecting the right pre-vetted workers that can help you achieve your goals!
