How to hire /recruit online for an online based company?

Specifically

•How did you find them? (craigslist-social networks-newspaper ads- etc)

•How did your interview them? (Phone/Skype video chat etc)

•How did you get passed the skepticism barrier? (online employer)

I’m based in Kansas but I want to hire people in Texas and Florida in the cities I plan to do business in. I want to hire people as a local representative/sales rep. But I can’t travel to these places or open an office. I have to hire/train/pay using the internet tools. If anyone has experience with this type of operation, your input is very valuable to me and I would appreciate it very much.

Sergio, I had a similiar requirement about 2 years ago for local sales reps for one of our B2B products. This is how we approached it and it worked well:

1. We placed ads in 35 cities where we were looking for talent, we placed our ads on Monster and craiglist.org.
2. We did phone interviews for all the candidates and explained the job and filtered them based on their sales experience. This position payed a small base 36k per year, plus commissions.
3. We then narrowed it down to phone interviews. We only needed 1 - 3 per city.
4. We flew everyone who was left to our Los Angeles office for a week long training, Q&A and team building.. After we started around 60% of the guys fell off, that is normal for commission jobs. Most of the guys are still selling our product.

I suggest you start using Twitter and LinkedIn. Both services allow your to search and connect with people from specific cities, after that you can start online conversations with the people you are interested on.

Also, you can join local groups (online) to start networking with people from cities you are interested on. For example, I have a LinkedIn group that is focused in tech geeks from the city of Austin, TX as well as a blog, these two are great resources for someone looking to connect with people from Austin with technical backgrounds (sorry for the shameless plug). You can find many LinkedIn groups and blogs like this just by searching in Google.

For interviews, Skype is all you need, keep it simple.

Regarding the skepticism problem, I think you can resolve this by forming an online presence for both yourself and your business. It might require sometime but it would be very beneficial for your business in the future if you start now. In the meantime, just be clear and honest with people on who you are, what your business does and more importantly what it is that you are looking for.

Good luck!