Blog Page

by Francis
(December 14, 2012)

Give a job opening some time and the applicants will come. Three more applicants have applied and I will take some time to check each of them quickly.

Roman from Bangladesh has a solid profile. He is asking for $1.23 per hour. These numbers come from the fact that oDesk takes 10% cut of all payments. So after oDesk fee, the payment is actually $1.11 per hour.

So if you want to penny pinch, you need to exactly tell what hourly rate you are able to pay after or before oDesk fee. The rest of his profile is actually really solid and if anything I would only think he might be ‘Over Qualified’. So he is a good candidate.

Abdul from Bangladesh is surprising me a little bit. He proposes a rate of $0.40/hr. He also tells me that he has German knowledge. This combination really surprises me.

Such a low payment is hardly ethical.

Also he has already worked 830 hours of work on oDesk, why would Abdul apply for such a low hourly rate. I am really surprised about it.

His work history was showing that he has already worked several jobs at a similar price. If I have would hire him, it would only be to make a big case study and asking him why he is working at these extremely low payments. He also has a great feedback and a lot of hours worked as well.

What’s the secret behind Abdul? (In the end, I rejected his overly low offer.)

Another provider is Jomu and she is also from Bangladesh. Depending on the time you post your job posting, people from different countries are more likely to find the same job opening.

If you really want to target a certain country, you can do so in the job posting or also by posting it at specific hours in time. Jomu’s application letter also passed most of the qualifications. The only thing was she did not pass the test.

So from this point of view, we would have to eliminate her for not reading the job description closely enough.

Only a few hours after the job posting, we already have five applicants and three of them would be qualified for the job.

It’s time to get into the choosing.

← Previous Diary Page                                                      Next Diary Page →

Comments for Screening Through Even More Applicants for the Project ‘Outsourced Job Research’

by Francis
(December 11, 2012)

I have four virtual assistants at the same time on my team right now. This is a new record for some time. Let’s see who we have on our team.

We have my main virtual assistant; then we have my main transcriptionist and then two web researchers from my project of outsourcing the web research for job openings in the area of Chemistry and Biochemistry that I just recently started.

Roman has done a pretty solid job after some rough start where I really shook my head a few times. But the latest results of his research looks pretty solid, I have to say.

I already have a list of 60 enterprises where I could apply. This already helps a lot.

And now we have a double whammy.

Muhammad has joined the team. He is from Pakistan like my main virtual assistant and the good thing about him, he knows his way around in the area of Chemistry and has a basic knowledge of German language which is an awesome asset if you have to research in a German city for local enterprises.

I expect his work to go extremely efficient. I compared his results with Roman directly. My virtual assistant has taken the time to interview Muhammad and gave him some few test questions and then set up a limited contract for 5 hours only to test out how Muhammad will do.

I’m really excited!

← Previous Diary Page                                                     Next Diary Page →

Comments for The Team’s Growing and Growing

by Francis
(December 11, 2012)

After many downs and a few ups, I think that the first researcher, Roman, has now fully understood the concept of the task.

He has researched 30 companies up until now and things are looking good.

This is working way better now and if the end results really looked like they should, I should have a list of a few hundred companies in the end which I could use one after the other.

Simply contact research for a job opportunity and apply one after the other. If all that doesn’t work out then I will finally be out of luck.

I will have then really tried everything.

So wish me luck.

← Previous Diary Page                                                      Next Diary Page →

Comments for The List of Researched Chemistry Companies is Growing, It’s Looking Good

by Francis
(December 11, 2012)

German skilled chemist comes to the rescue. I was a little bit worried if we would be able to set up a cooperation with Muhammad from Pakistan.

The good thing about him is he has basic German understanding, which is a huge plus for the job of researching chemistry job opportunities for me; and he’s a chemist so he has knowledge about which job openings actually have meaning for me.

This is a world of difference between the normal researcher, who will only compile a list of items as fast as possible, and the specialist. As a specialist, he will be able to pre-screen the results for me.

My virtual assistant who is also from Pakistan and me still has some concerns about him. He has no work history and his bid price is surprisingly low especially if one considers his work background in his profile.

Here is what my main virtual assistant wrote about his profile!

← Previous Diary Page                                                      Next Diary Page →

Comments for A New Challenger Appears

by Francis
(December 11, 2012)

Roman finally got into gears. I’m really anxious to receive the results of his research.

Because he does not know his way around the area of Munich, of course; I gave him a few pointers via video using the free screen recording software Jing to clarify how he should best conduct his research.

For this, I simply sent him to a web presence of the Munich train system and explain to him how he should work each train line one at a time.

Also, some of his results really were not that bad at all.

However, I think this research project of manually picking out job application opportunities for a chemist will really be a bigger one than I thought. So I better work up on the results while new results are added every day.

← Previous Diary Page                                                      Next Diary Page →

Comments for Finally the Project Starts

by Francis
(December 11, 2012)

Roman got me to have quite a headache to be honest. Right after we hired him, he said he would start working. It took one day for him to complete the initial two-hour assignment which mainly consisted of watching the videos of me giving instructions on how to do the task.

As a sign of goodwill and to compensate the virtual assistant for the training, which took those 1-2 hours, I agreed to have that training be paid. In other words, Roman receives his hourly rate even for only watching the training.

I assumed that the task would be crystal clear as I really have put much much thoughts in to the training.

What did I get as a result?

An email saying that he forgot the first gist of the project.

The first gist, seriously?

Did he even watch the videos?

I was a little bit disgruntled. However, managing this provider was mainly the task of my virtual assistant.

So I gave him a piece of my mind and asked him to motivate Roman to work a little faster. Two to three days later, Roman finally got to start the task.

Sidenote:

This sounds as if I was yelling at my VA. I was not. But since we work together very closely for quite some time, I am free to express myself freely when I’m not happy about anything to my VA – without having to fear him taking it personally.

To be honest, at that time of writing while Roman was working on the project; I was also a little bit ill. So I had to lie in bed and could not do much research on my own and I was expecting somehow this outsourced job research task to go well.

When I saw what sort of businesses and firms Roman was researching in the actual excel sheet, I was not greatly impressed either.

However, this much is not his fault. He is researching in a foreign language after all.

The good thing is my virtual assistant has reposted the same job opening a second time in order to find a fallback option provider for this project. In other words, if Roman should fail; we would be able to hire someone else right away.

Now for the awesome part, one applicant who is interestingly from Pakistan actually tells me that he has basic understanding of Germany and he has a diploma in Chemistry. How much more could I ask for?

I’ll start the competition of both providers next week. Let’s see who gets me the better and more results and makes the race. It’s always good to have a healthy competition. Not so much to put pressure on the applicants. Roman doesn’t know about his competition, but more to find the perfect fit of a virtual assistant for your project.

That’s what I’m going to do.

← Previous Diary Page                                                      Next Diary Page →

Comments for How the First Freelancer Didn’t Do Such a Good Job of Researching Job Opportunities Quickly