Enterprise Clients Academy | Thursday, Aug 6 | 1:00 PM CT

I get much better output when I pay more.

In the Philippines, I was paying $6-8 an hour, and doubling that was still cheap money but made a night-and-day difference.

Opus has 600,000+ candidates in its system.

At Opus we deliver 3 vetted candidates in 5 days, and 97% are still in seat after one year.

There is a lifetime replacement guarantee.

Open: “I run this process every week. Today I am giving you the whole thing, including the parts most recruiting companies would rather keep behind the curtain.”

Credibility: Land 600,000+ candidates in our system before teaching. It gives the room an immediate reason to trust the machinery.

Identity: Introduce yourself as Eddie Carroll, founder of Opus, and set the context: Enterprise Clients Academy, Thursday, Aug 6, 1:00 PM CT.

Frame: These four questions are the full hiring loop: where to find high-agency people, how to know they are good, how to ramp them, and when to cut.

Story: I was paying $6-$8 an hour in the Philippines. Doubling that was still cheap money, but the difference was night and day: more energy, real opinions, and solutions brought to the table instead of problems.

Proof strip: The system produces 3 vetted candidates in 5 days, 97% are still in seat after one year, and the lifetime replacement guarantee protects the hire afterward.

Promise: You will get the exact system and free tools to run it yourself, then we will bring one role into a live rebuild and Q&A.

Punchline: Once you know what high agency looks like, instruction-waiting gets very hard to tolerate.

Transition: “Before I show you where the good people are, I want to show you the trap that keeps agency owners hiring the wrong ones.”

THE TRAP | CHEAP FIRST

Most agency owners look in the wrong place, and they're too cheap.

There is a direct correlation between how much you pay and the quality you get.

ghSMART's US corporate research puts a bad hire at about 15 times their salary, and without a method the average manager gets hiring right about 50% of the time.

A cheap hire can keep you up at 11 p.m., midnight, and 1 a.m. while you help them, so the real cost reaches beyond the hourly rate.

Open: “Most agency owners do not have a hiring problem first. They have a cheap-first problem.”

Set the trap: Upwork, Fiverr, and BPO-trained talent can produce good task-takers. The failure comes when you expect cheap, early-career hires to think like owners after a career of receiving exact instructions.

Story: Tell the Philippines story exactly. I used to hire there at $6-$8 an hour. My wife's mom is Filipina, and I love the Philippine people. I would hear “yes sir, yes ma'am,” see the nodding, hear “got it,” and then a full day later the work did not match.

Detail: I was up at 11 p.m., midnight, and 1 a.m. helping, while the hire missed issues and waited for the next instruction. It was more nuisance than help.

Turn: Doubling the $6-$8 hourly pay was still cheap money, but the difference was night and day: more energy, real opinions, and solutions brought to the table instead of problems.

Compare markets: Pakistan brought more skill, but still came with excuses and a brutal time difference. Latin America is where it clicked: people cared, brought solutions, skipped the drama, and felt like a real team.

Land the number honestly: “ghSMART's research for US corporate seats puts a mis-hire at around 15 times base salary.” That is their US corporate research number, not a claim that every global hire costs 15 times.

Ground it: Even if the true number for a global hire is a fraction of that, a mis-hire still burns months of salary, your time, and client trust. The average manager gets hiring right about 50% of the time.

Rule: Doubling the pay was the historical experiment. The operating rule now is to pay about 25% above the local market for mid-to-senior, AI-fluent people with specific achievements. Hire people who use AI and can still show their own thinking. In Latin America, that stronger hire is still roughly half the price of the same US seat, sometimes less.

Punchline: The cheap hire costs less per hour and can consume more of the owner's life. Better pay buys judgment, not just output.

Transition: “Pay matters, but money cannot fix a search in the wrong place. Here is the board map we use.”

SOURCE | GO LOCAL

Look in other countries the same way you look in the US.

Region	Boards
Latin America	Get on Board · CompuTrabajo · Bumeran · OCC Mundial · Laborum
Philippines	OnlineJobs.ph · JobStreet · Kalibrr
South Africa	Pnet · Careers24 · CareerJunction · OfferZen
Eastern Europe	Djinni · Just Join IT · No Fluff Jobs · eJobs
India	Naukri · Instahyre · Cutshort
Remote-global	We Work Remotely · RemoteOK · Wellfound

Use whatever local board the locals actually use.

LinkedIn ads work at $8/day budgets.

Open: “There is no magic country. There are strong people in every market, and they gather in different places.”

Map: Walk through the actual board map. Latin America: Get on Board, CompuTrabajo, Bumeran, OCC Mundial, Laborum. Philippines: OnlineJobs.ph, JobStreet, Kalibrr. South Africa: Pnet, Careers24, CareerJunction, OfferZen. Eastern Europe: Djinni, Just Join IT, No Fluff Jobs, eJobs. India: Naukri, Instahyre, Cutshort. Remote-global: We Work Remotely, RemoteOK, Wellfound.

Rule: Use the board local professionals already trust. Do not reduce an entire country to “remote talent” and expect the best people to appear on a generic marketplace.

Budget: LinkedIn ads work from $8 a day. Owners do not need a giant ad budget to test a market.

Free-tier caveat: JobStreet offers free Lite ads and Wellfound offers free posting. CompuTrabajo's basic post exposes the first 10 CVs. Laborum's free ad exposes the first 15 applicants. Many other boards are paid, freemium, or success-fee, so check current employer terms.

Story: Share the move that worked for you: stop searching for “cheap overseas help” and start recruiting abroad the same way you would recruit in the US. LatAm is your favorite market because the people you found cared, brought solutions, and felt like teammates.

Global frame: The system works across every region on this map. The market changes; the sourcing discipline does not.

Sauce: Use Parallel and Exa to find A players and cold-email them directly. Hunt for craft-improvement signals, including people interacting with lead magnets in your niche. The best candidate may already be employed and getting better in public.

Punchline: A local professional uses a local professional board. Go where the market already is.

Transition: “The board gets you distribution. The money and the post determine who stops scrolling.”

SOURCE | SELL THE SEAT

You are selling the role.

A clear description of the actual day-to-day sells the role and pulls 200 good applicants.

I pay about 25% above the local market, and I post the number in the job ad.

Include the traits you want, the benefits, and the full interview process.

MY REAL EXAMPLE

Santiago is my operations lead.

I pay Santiago $5,500/month. The same seat in the US runs easily $150K, maybe $200K a year.

Open: “The post is a sales page and a filter. It should do both before you ever open a resume.”

Story: Tell Santiago's story with the real sequence. He served in the Argentine Navy, is earning his MBA at one of Argentina's most elite universities, and was a senior manager at Toptal overseeing a large team.

Context: He has startup experience and is in the middle-to-late stage of his career. Santiago owns work all the way through, follows up, makes no excuses, and finds an answer.

Land the number: Put $5,500 a month versus $150,000-$200,000 a year in the air and pause. That is the seat comparison.

Teach the post: Sell the actual day-to-day, not a vague title and a bag of duties. Post the salary about 25% above local market. That is the biggest single indicator of applicant quality.

Filter: Name the traits you require, such as detail orientation, ownership, and follow-through. The right people lean in. Include benefits because career-level people compare the whole opportunity.

Gauntlet: Publish the full process in the post: video assessment, interview, and take-home assignment. Lazy applicants should know enough to quit before applying.

Punchline: You are not hiring a cheaper version of a US junior. You are hiring an experienced operator in a different labor market.

Transition: “Two hundred good applications are useless if you change your definition of good for every resume. The rubric comes first.”

SCREEN | DEFINE GOOD BEFORE NAMES

Build the rubric first, before the job goes live.

An A player means at least a 90 percent chance of achieving a set of outcomes that only the top 10 percent of possible candidates could achieve.

Derive the rubric from a scorecard that names the mission, outcomes, and competencies.

Your own clear post can pull 200 good applicants.

When we run a search at Opus, roughly 500 total applicants become the 3 to 5 candidates we present to a customer.

Have AI grade the resume, English test, typing test, and 3-4 video answers blind, then interview the survivors with behavioral questions.

500 apply

Assessments

Interviews

3-5 presented

Open: “The rubric has to exist before the candidate does. Otherwise every polished person changes your definition of good.”

Global frame: Credit ghSMART and the book Who. The Who method was written for US corporate hiring. Eddie adapted the machinery for global talent markets. You are not poaching a staff engineer from Apple in Sunnyvale; you are finding the top 10 percent of the talent pool in Buenos Aires, Manila, or Warsaw for that seat.

Bar: The scorecard and structured screen work exactly the same there. The region changes; the bar does not.

Definition: Read the A-player definition from Who: “A candidate who has at least a 90 percent chance of achieving a set of outcomes that only the top 10 percent of possible candidates could achieve.”

Scorecard: Mission is why the role exists. Outcomes are the measurable results this person must achieve, with a number and deadline. Competencies are how the person must operate to achieve those outcomes.

Build first: Turn that scorecard into the rubric before the first application arrives. Make every candidate answer the same evidence questions and have AI score every assessment against the same bar.

Funnel: The 200 figure is what a clear post of your own can pull in good applicants. When Opus runs a customer search, roughly 500 total applicants enter our funnel with resume and contact information, then English, typing, and 3-4 video answers, then a blind AI grade against the rubric, then human recruiters probing survivors for behavioral evidence, then 3-5 candidates worth presenting to the customer.

Specificity: Listen for “I,” numbers, decisions, before-and-after results, and what the candidate learned. “We,” tool lists, polished generalities, and missing outcomes hide weak ownership.

Land the number: When Opus runs a search, 500 total applicants become 3-5 candidates presented to the customer. That is how narrow a real A-player search gets.

Shortcut: The work list is the pitch. Eddie's team already runs the rubric, form plumbing, AI grading, and human narrowing every week, producing 3 vetted candidates in 5 days.

Transition: “Now I will show you the free pipeline that turns every applicant into one gradeable row.”

SCREEN | FREE TOOLS, BUILD IT TONIGHT

Post the job and send applicants to a Google Form.

FormSheetAI grade

Pipeline step	What happens
Google Form	Collect all interview questions, the resume upload, an internet speed screenshot, a typing screenshot, an English test through EF SET on the CEFR scale, an audio sample through Vocaroo, and video answers through Loom links.
Spreadsheet	Responses land in the spreadsheet automatically.
AI grade	AI scores every applicant against the rubric.

Typeform works, but its free plan caps at 10 responses a month, so use Google Forms.

Use the EF SET English test on the CEFR scale, with C1-C2 for customer-facing roles, B1-B2 for developers, marketing, and accounting-type roles, and do not go lower than B1.

Open: “You can build this tonight without buying an applicant-tracking system.”

Plumbing: Post the job and send applicants to a Google Form. Responses land in a spreadsheet automatically. Typeform looks nicer, but its free plan caps at 10 responses a month, so it fails as soon as the post works.

Form fields: Collect every application question, the resume upload, an internet speed test screenshot, a typing test screenshot, an audio sample through Vocaroo, video answers through Loom links, and the EF SET result or certificate.

Tools: Vocaroo is free and requires no signup. Typing.com and TypingTest.com work for the typing screenshot. EF SET gives you a free CEFR-mapped English result. Loom supplies the video links.

English bar: Use C1-C2 for customer-facing roles. B1-B2 is acceptable for developers, marketing, and accounting-type roles. Never go lower than B1.

Question one, verbatim: “Tell us about yourself and your previous experience. What do you view as the greatest success of your career so far, and what was the biggest challenge you've worked through?”

Question two, verbatim: “Walk us through the tools, languages, frameworks, or systems you're most familiar with. Then pick one or two and tell us about specific features or capabilities where you feel like a real expert.”

Question three, verbatim: “Walk us through a recent piece of work you're proud of. What was the problem, what did you build or fix, and what was the outcome?”

Question four, verbatim: “Tell us about the hardest technical problem you've solved in the last year. Walk us through how you diagnosed it and got to a solution.”

Adaptation: Those four are a technical-role example. Change the role-specific language for other seats.

Grade: AI grades every row against the slide 5 rubric. Require a score by outcome and competency, quoted evidence from the candidate, and a clear flag wherever proof is missing.

Story: Riff through the candidate experience: speed screenshot, typing result, Vocaroo audio, EF SET result, Loom answers, and resume. The punchline is that you get proof before you spend human time.

Land the number: Typeform stops at 10 responses a month. A post built to attract 200 people needs Google Forms.

Shortcut: If you want to own the plumbing, build it. Eddie's team runs the form, sheet, grading, and handoff every week, turning that machinery into 3 vetted candidates in 5 days.

Transition: “AI can grade what they submitted. It cannot replace the human pressure that exposes ownership, honesty, and grit.”

SCREEN | PRESS FOR PROOF

Press for proof of past behavior and grit before you hire them.

The typical structured interview runs 30 minutes.

Ask how the last five bosses will rate the candidate 1-10 when you talk to them.

Check references and backgrounds for everyone. The bad ones get scared off.

Always use a paid work test, roughly a 4-hour assignment, with very specific outputs.

AI use is fine if the candidate can articulate their own decision process beyond what the AI wrote.

Open: “This call is not a vibe check. It is a controlled search for evidence.”

Method: Credit Who, ask the four screening questions in order, and spend the depth on the most recent roles. The method came from US corporate hiring; Eddie applies the same pressure and proof standard to global talent markets.

Question one: “What are your career goals?”

Question two: “What are you really good at professionally?” Ask for examples.

Question three: “What are you not good at or not interested in doing?”

Question four: “How will your last five bosses rate you, 1 to 10, when we talk to them?” Make “when we talk” feel certain, not hypothetical.

Follow-up: Use “What? How? Tell me more.” Go deepest on the most recent roles. Then ask about the hardest challenge they have overcome outside work. That is where grit was earned.

TORC: Tell candidates at the start that they will arrange calls with recent bosses. Reference check and background check everyone. Weak candidates and resume-liars often remove themselves.

Tells: Look for “I” ownership and numeric outcomes, not “we” answers with no personal contribution. Spiky excellence is useful; the person does not need to be well-rounded.

Career intent: Ask, “Do you want steady and safe, or growing, promoted, taking on new challenges?” Hire the grower for a high-agency seat.

Background: Prefer startup backgrounds over big-company backgrounds. Look for prepared questions, company research, professional presentation, good internet plus a backup, finished assessments, and thinking from all angles.

Red flags: Multiple jobs under a year, gaps between the resume and the story, and badmouthing past employers.

Story: Tell the skipped-reference-check story plainly. Early on, I hired someone without making the call. The person had been fired from the prior job, lied about it, and was working two jobs. One call would have saved the entire hire.

Work test: Always run a paid four-hour work test, pay a couple hundred dollars, and ask for specific outputs. AI use is fine if the candidate can defend the decisions beyond what the AI wrote.

Shortcut: The reference calls, paid test, and replacement risk are machinery Eddie's team already runs every week. That is the work you can own or hand off.

Transition: “The same clarity you used to screen them has to continue on day one, or you train a high-agency hire to wait.”

RAMP | MAKE OWNERSHIP NORMAL

A clear onboarding plan and scorecard define what success looks like at 30/60/90 days.

Give full access to systems and SOPs on day one, and give them a buddy.

Check in daily the first week, then taper to weekly.

Require EOD reports about what got done, what was achieved, plus questions.

They make mistakes early like everyone, but never the same mistake twice.

Open: “A good hire can still become an instruction-waiter if your onboarding teaches them to wait.”

Readiness: If you cannot define success with a number, you are not ready to hire.

Before day one: Write the onboarding plan and a numeric 30/60/90 scorecard. Assign a buddy. Prepare full system, SOP, and training access.

Week one: Give full access on day one. Check in daily, answer questions, and watch whether they take notes. Taper to weekly after the first week.

Great first day: Picture the pattern from your real hires: extra monitor, strong internet, already researched the business, eager, and asking about the career path. Readiness shows up before output does.

EOD: Require three lines: what was done, what was achieved, and what questions remain. They should report without bombarding you all day. The achievement line must describe a result rather than motion.

Days 30/60/90: Review the numbers and use staggered raises to reward performance. The business problem sets the target.

Team treatment: Treat them as a team member, never a disposable VA. These are career-level professionals. Include them in culture and team events, give them a career path, and communicate like you would with a teammate down the street.

Four-week rule: If they succeed through the first four weeks, fit the culture, and work hard, they will likely stay with you for life, especially in Latin America.

Two-week killers: Late arrival, repeat questions, excuses about health, family, power, or internet with no backup, AI regurgitation without critical thinking, and combative responses to feedback. When those patterns show up, Opus rips and replaces within two weeks.

Punchline: Mistakes are normal. The same mistake twice is the signal.

Transition: “When the signal turns bad, delay does not make the conversation kinder. It only makes the damage more expensive.”

FIRE | PROTECT THE TEAM

The same mistake on repeat is fatal.

Fire when there are multiple absences, anything dishonest, or the same mistake over and over despite repeated instruction. A new mistake is fixable when the person asks for help and wants to get better.

A hire who repeats the same mistake despite repeated instruction is more work than an empty seat.

Cut all access and let an unethical hire go the same day.

For a performance firing, provide no severance, and if the seat is business-critical, keep the person only 1-2 weeks while you hire the replacement behind the scenes.

Use a 60-day probation, and if a hire's performance slips and does not recover, use an aggressive performance improvement plan (PIP).

Open: “Firing gets hard when the standard was fuzzy. With a scorecard and daily evidence, you usually already know.”

Triggers: Act on multiple early absences, dishonesty including a hidden second job, the same mistake after repeated instruction, EOD reports full of activity with no accomplishments and excuses, or missed 60/90-day goals paired with blame.

Fixable versus fatal: A new mistake owned quickly is fixable. A bad email or broken process followed by a request for help is fixable. A skill gap paired with effort and improvement is fixable.

Fatal pattern: The same mistake on repeat is fatal. Dishonesty or hidden employment is fatal. Having the person creates more work than removing them.

Probation: Set a 60-day probation and tell them before they start. If they are crushing it at day 60, confirm they passed and consider the planned raise.

Fader: If a strong start begins fading, coach weekly and give real help.

PIP: If performance does not recover, use an aggressive PIP with explicit goals. The math lets them fire themselves.

Rules: Performance firing means no severance. A business-condition layoff is a different conversation. An ethics issue means cut access and end employment the same day.

Critical seat: For a performance issue in a business-critical seat, hire the replacement behind the scenes and keep the person only 1-2 weeks if the risk is controlled. Dishonesty still means cutting access and ending employment the same day.

Story: Tell the two-jobs firing in sequence. A recruiter promised the world and placed a few people, then went on medical leave early, became cagey, and stopped responding. I learned they were working two jobs and lying.

Punchline: I cut access before they knew they were fired and ended it immediately. Every problem from that hire became a screen for the next one.

Transition: “You now have the full system. Let us take one role from this room and rebuild the market, post, rubric, screen, and ramp live.”

BRING A ROLE | REBUILD IT LIVE

Bring me a role and we will rebuild it live.

At Opus, we have 600,000+ candidates in the system.

When we run this at Opus, we get 3 vetted candidates in 5 days, move from first call to onboarded hire in 14 days, and have 97% still in seat after one year with a lifetime replacement guarantee.

In the ECA thread after the session: the scorecard, the 6-line post, and the market cheat sheet.

Job Description Creator ↗ opus-job-description-creator.pages.dev A-Player Grader ↗ opus-a-player-assessment.pages.dev

The JD creator turns your messy role notes into a real job description. The grader scores a current hire on their last 90 days. Both are free and run in your browser.

Pricing happens on a 20-minute call, and ECA members get $500 off the first month at hireopus.com.

“We couldn't even find three people to show up for interviews. Opus just does it all for us.”

Jim Vito · Owner

Open: “You have the system. Now give me a real role and we will put it to work.”

Live setup: Ask for the role, current market, budget, and the business number the hire must move. Rebuild market, post, rubric, screen, and ramp in that order.

Recap: Read the whole system on one line: market, post 25% above local, rubric before names, form plus AI grade, human screen plus TORC, paid test, 30/60/90 ramp, then fire fast.

DIY route: The DIY route works. It is also a real operating system: rubric, form plumbing, blind AI grading, human screens, reference calls, paid tests, onboarding, and a plan for replacement risk.

Grader: Point people to opus-a-player-assessment.pages.dev. They can grade any current teammate on the last 90 days across ownership, learning, ideas, feedback, team impact, and readiness to lead. It is evidence, not vibes, and it is free in the browser.

Templates: Point people to the templates in the ECA thread as well.

Shortcut: If they want to own every part, they have the playbook. If they want the shortcut, Opus runs this machinery every week: rubric, form plumbing, AI grading, human screens, reference calls, paid tests, onboarding, and replacement-risk protection.

Proof: Opus gets 3 vetted candidates in 5 days, moves from first call to onboarded in 14 days, has 97% still in seat after one year, and includes a lifetime replacement guarantee.

Pool: Opus already has 600,000+ candidates in the system. That is the credibility behind the speed, not a substitute for the screen.

Story: Read Jim Vito's line: “We couldn't even find three people to show up for interviews. Opus just does it all for us.” The punchline is relief, not recruiter theater.

Commercial: Pricing happens on a 20-minute call. ECA members get $500 off the first month. The URL is hireopus.com.

Transition: “Who has a role they want to rebuild?” Move directly into the live segment and Q&A.