Hi Kevin,

It really depends on what kind of role you are trying to fill. I've interviewed staff for more data entry type roles and the best way to handle them, and these are tips I have gotten from friends that run their whole business on offshore assistants is to allocate a budget and a very specific task for them to do that is reflective of what you are hiring for. And this has to be SPECIFIC, as in allocate a due date, a process to handle questions about the task, a way to submit the task and also allocate a time bracket in which to complete the task. If you are not specific the following can occur:

• They may do a great job, but spend many hours on it costing you more money in the long run, if this is not disclosed from the outset you could be walking into a troublesome relationship
• They may take too long and not meet the scheduled date. 
• They may ask too many questions and not be proactive in finding solutions which ends up costing you more time managing.
• They may not submit the task in the right way.

All the above issues need to be prevented and clearly stated so you can concentrate on finding candidates with the right skill set and not try and fish out ones that can follow basic instructions and processes.

Hire 10-15 contracts at one time, and then evaluate the top candidates based on task performance. You may want to give an alternative task to complete before then hiring a team.

It's also great to have some backups to contact in case your original hire goes astray. If it's your first time hiring I highly suggest you use an agency, this will ensure that if your staff is sick or away or leaves you won't need to spend time retraining or finding someone to fill in - you may pay more per hour but these are the little things that I think are worth paying for.

Make sure you are clear with the Agency regarding what they look after and what they don't. At minimum they should cover training, sick leave management and replacements.

I haven't had any experience remotely hiring higher level management type staff so I can't comment on that :) Perhaps someone else here may give that questions a shot?