- Sometimes it's time to branch out.
And when we had the opportunity to hire a new video editor,
meaning our old video editor messed up pretty bad,
when we had that opportunity, I knew
it was time to do a little experiment.
So in today's video, I wanna talk about
what our hiring process looked like
to find a new video editor.
Let's jump into it.
I don't wanna go into too much detail about
what happened with the other video editor,
but the main issue was he started increasing the prices
of his videos without telling us,
and just increasing the price on the invoices,
over and over gain.
So we were paying this guy
and that was a huge flaw in our business system.
Basically I didn't tell our CEO
that there was a maximum amount
that these people should be charging.
So he just kept paying the invoices,
and there were no checks in place.
Huge miscalculation but it could have been way worse.
I think we lost maybe 1000 bucks
where if it had kept going for months and months,
maybe we would have lost 100 grand, who knows?
So I'm glad we caught it when we did,
but in order to stop that happening in the future,
we have moved to Upwork,
and we're hiring video editors on here.
They're tracking all of their time,
and there's a maximum cost per video,
and a maximum number of videos they can do in a week.
The first thing I wanna show you is the job posting
we put up, which also goes through
how we're doing this test.
So it's very simple.
The post title was Video Editor for YouTube Channel,
and the description was looking for a video editor
for the Alex Berman YouTube channel,
a link to the YouTube.
Check out a few of those videos,
most of the content is blog style,
and we do three videos per week.
Here's an example of a finished video.
And I linked to one of our videos,
and the raw recording.
I linked to this video that we did,
15 Ways To Write And Personalize A First Line
In A Cold Email.
And I linked to the raw recordings
in DropBox, so that they can see it's a video file,
it's a screen recording file,
and it's an audio file all put together
into one finished video.
Please include the pricing in your proposal.
Looking for a flat rate per video.
Thanks.
I said $60 a video, and you will be asked
to answer the following questions:
Why do you think you are a good fit for this project?
And then to link a video that you've edited.
And that was it.
It's good to put a budget on Upwork,
because people will come in almost exactly
on the budget, as you can tell from this data here.
The high bid was only $100 per video.
And the average was right there, $59.67,
so all of the video editors, the 15
that applied for this job, all came in
around the budget, and the reason why
only 15 applied is I hired three video editors
within about 24 hours.
If we'd kept it running for longer, I'm sure
there would have been a lot more video editors applying.
So the proposals came in on Upwork,
and the first thing I did is looked
at the cover letter to make sure it was customized.
And if you're applying to jobs on Upwork,
this is a huge thing.
Hiring managers, or really I should say me
as a hiring manager, will look to make sure
that you've spent time on this proposal,
and customized it before sending it out.
So here are some.
Tudor, who I didn't hire.
Cover letter, "Hello, I can create you outstanding videos.
"I work really fast and close to perfection.
"My portfolio can be found here."
And it's 88% job success, so I didn't hire him.
We got Daniel, "Hi, may name is Daniel.
"I'm a top rated video editor in Upwork.
"I've read your job description.
"I can edit your video."
So I looked at Daniel.
This is what I did.
The cover letter was good, so I clicked
over to Daniel's profile.
And then he links to his Portoflio,
and I watched a video.
So if you're finding video editing work on Upwork,
the cover letter is important,
but even more important is the portfolio.
And I so I looked at this guy's portfolio,
and, not that I wasn't impressed,
it just isn't the type of video that we're going after.
(upbeat music)
This guy does animations.
So it wasn't exactly what we're looking for,
so I moved on.
Now let's talk about the ones that I hired.
Here are the three that I hired.
Notice two came in at $60 a video.
One come in at 45, and yet I hired all of them.
93% job success, 100% job success,
no job success, but he's been a documentary editor
for the last five years.
I ran the exact same process I just talked about
on all three of these, meaning I read the cover letter,
I went to the portfolio, I was impressed
by the work, and so I hired them.
Once I hired them, I sent this quick sentence,
here's the first video, look forward
to seeing what you create.
And I linked to the base files in DropBox
for a video that ran on the channel a couple weeks ago,
how my brother got his first job using cold email.
And that's the same as the sample that I put
in the job description, which is it has the main video,
the screen record, and the audio file,
all put together.
So, he accepted the offer.
They all accepted the offer.
I put three offers in, three accepted.
And they got to work.
Now, let's look at their videos.
And I'll show you exactly how quick I made this decision.
It's very clear to me as a video producer
who I chose.
Let me know in the comments if it's different.
But here we go.
Here's the first video from Dean.
Two of the video editors delivered rough cuts,
and one delivered a final product.
Just so you get a feel of how they work,
two delivered on Frame.io,
which is a video approval platform
that our old video editor used to use as well.
And one delivered on DropBox.
So, let's watch the videos,
and will turn them off when I assume
somebody watching the channel would also turn them off.
Recently my little brother moved out to Los Angeles,
and it was my mission to help him get a job,
and, not only that, not only was
it my mission, we succeeded.
We got him a job.
It was within a week of him.
I'm out.
All right, number two.
This is how fast it is.
Recently my little brother moved out to Los Angeles,
and it was my mission to help him get a job,
and, not only was it my mission, we succeeded.
We got him a job.
It was within a week of him living here.
And he's working in his dream industry.
He wants to be a D.J.
He's working at a recording studio.
And in today's video, I wanna go
through the actual cold emails that he used.
All right, I would bounce right there, a little rambling.
I liked the whole intro process, though,
that little picture of L.A.
Notice in this first video, this guy just let me run
with the pauses and everything.
Recently my little brother moved out to Los Angeles,
and it was,
It's a very stilted way of speaking,
with a lot of pauses.
I don't know why I talk like that,
but I don't find it engaging when it's in video.
So notice how this other video editor cleaned it up.
Recently my little brother moved out to Los Angeles,
and it was my mission to help him get a job,
and not only was it my mission,
Adding those images really helped move it along,
and, and, I'll say and exactly how it said
it in that other video, and,
so let's look at the third video.
So that worked, and then he put that other cut in here,
which kept you engaged in the video.
Let's look at number three.
Off the bat, the audio is not final on this one.
This is the only one of the three
that did not incorporate the audio file into the video.
I'm gonna give him this note, but ignore that for now.
Let's check out how the flow of the story is,
'cause anyone can be taught how to edit audio.
Can they be taught how to tell a story?
Possibly, but it's not what I wanna be doing.
Recently my little brother moved out to Los Angeles,
and it was my mission to help him get a job.
And, not only that, not only was it
my mission, we succeeded.
We got him a job.
It was with,
So he cleaned it up a lot more.
I like that he put the hands in there.
In a week of him living here, and he's working
in his dream industry.
He wants to be a D.J.
He's working at a recording studio.
Simple, and in today's video,
I wanna go through the actual cold emails
that he used to get a job.
A lot of these are based on what worked
for me when I first moved to New York City,
which, in turn, was based on Ramit Sethi,
and some of his teachings of,
I think this one, if you throw music
in it exactly like we have on the YouTube channel right now,
and maybe some of those animations, it's good to go.
Of the three editors, this one's my favorite.
We're gonna hire him.
The second favorite is this guy.
And this is V one, so he's open to notes.
This one I am going to not hire him.
So what I'll do on these two now,
the next step is to hire both of them
to do final videos, and that's it.
We'll have two video editors now.
One video editor was not enough
for the Alex Berman channel, as you guys can see.
We've got a good aesthetic now.
I've got this Basquiat Hoodie that are $275
on Whoa Hello dot com, we have this painting back here.
Thanks for watching the video.
If you want more content like this,
feel free to subscribe to the channel.
Give it a like.
Leave a comment below.
And if you want the actual contract we use
for new business calls,
check out experiment27.com/contract.
If you want the actual proposal we use
at Lorelia Pictures to sell documentaries,
that is experiment27.com/proposal.
And if you want more clients for your agency,
so if you sell design work or web development
or iOS in mobile development, anything like that,
corporate social media, and you sell
to billion dollar brands,
and you want more enterprise clients,
that is what we do all day at experiment27.com,
so check out that website, and let's talk.
I'm Alex Berman, thanks.