Employer interviews who have hired virtual assistants and shared their experiences of outsourcing.
Interviews
Reader Interactions
Using Trello as a project management system with your virtual assistants
Trello is a project management online application where you can manage different tasks assigned to your virtual assistant or a team of VAs. After using other project and employee management applications and comparing them with Trello, we found it better than other applications like Asana. Using Trello is especially great if you have a flexible team of virtual assistants. This is how it looks for us:
Here are some of the major reasons why we preferred Trello over Asana.
- Free to use.
- User-friendly – Easy to work with
- Drag and Drop system
- Asana is more complicated than Trello.
- Asana is good for those teams who follow strict deadlines on each task. However, we can still set a deadline within Trello if we want to.
- You can see the complete history of any task within the same task /card
The downside
There is no dashboard where you can see reports and ongoing work progress in Trello, but this is still possible with Trello if you follow the process in a perfect order.
How to best use Trello for managing your virtual assistants
So here is our best suggestions on how you can use Trello as a content management system.
Let’s suppose you’re working with only one virtual assistant at the moment.
Create two boards in Trello.
- Virtual Assistant To-do
- Employer To-to
Virtual Assistant to-do has three lists
- Low priority: You will put all low priority tasks here
- High priority: All high priority tasks can be placed here
- Work in Process: Either VA or employer will move the tasks to this list based on their priorities
Employer to-do has two lists
- To-do: All tasks where your virtual assistant needs any feedback from you, or it’s pending on you will be moved here.
- Pending for validation: After completing any task, the VA will move the card here for your review. So you will review his work and either archive the card if it’s good or re-move to your VA’s boards if something is not finished.
Working mechanism
As mentioned above that you’ll move all of tasks that are supposed to be performed by your virtual assistant, he will move tasks from high priority list to Work in Process list. This will give you an overview of what tasks he is working on at the moment.
When he will finish a task, he will move it either to Pending for Validation or to your to-do list based on its status.
When you have time, you will only have to go to your board and there you will find all the tasks that are pending on your end. When you review those tasks, if the task is done you can archive that. If it’s still not complete, then you can move it back to one of your virtual assistant’s lists.
How to move tasks from one board to another
Moving tasks from one board to another is easy. You need to follow this process:
- Open the task
- From actions click “Move”
- Select the appropriate board
- Select the appropriate list
More amazing Trello features
Here are some more features that we can use in order to use Trello better.
- You can add members to different tasks
- If you check “subscribe” you’ll get notified whenever any changes/updates made to the card.
- There is a checklist feature which allows to bifurcate the task into different steps, so you can use that to create and follow those tasks which have multiple steps
- Every task has all its actions described at the bottom
- You can set due dates to those tasks which have strict deadlines
- For big projects, You can create more boards.
- You can add different labels to different tasks
- You can search tasks within the search bar
What Is Effective Outsourcing And How To Master It
Effective outsourcing is part-4 of the second interview from Stefan from Germany, who lives the Four Hour Work Week lifestyle in Thailand.
Click here to read part 3– Virtual assistants’ retention problems
Summary:
- Outsourcing itself requires a lot of time investment. If you need something to get done by tomorrow, outsourcing might not be a good solution of your problem.
- Communication is the most important factor of efficient outsourcing, not only from your assistants, but from you as well.
- Most of the assistants prefer an hourly rate rather than working on a fixed price job.
Start of the Interview:
Francis:
I do agree that outsourcing is not the solution of your choice if you have tight time schedule. If you have a work that needs to be done until tomorrow, you shouldn’t outsource it.
It takes longer for someone to hire someone and train him than to do the work yourself if it’s a task which is to do within a few days.
If it’s a long term project which you have a little control over, for example, write an e-product sell it and you have a few months for that.
Then, I think, outsourcing is still a viable solution for as long as you are disciplined and quick with screening for the right assistant.
So you tell me that you need to fire people all the time, I think such an example is an extreme example. It shouldn’t happen more than two or three times.
Stefan:
Okay.
Francis:
If it happens very often then we have a problem on a different level. If the communication is clear – the expectations is clear – I mean, there can be a misunderstanding one or two times.
The first assistant is not skilled enough, the second assistant is not motivated enough. And after those two feedback loops, your risk should be very small that an assistant is neither skilled enough nor patient enough to do your job.
If this still happens then you need to work on your communication skills, in my opinion. I propose to you if you have the next job description, whenever this is, you can work together with me and we increase the quality of your job description. And I propose some help with the interview process.
Stefan:
Alright. Okay.
Francis:
That would be my proposition.
Stefan:
Yes, we can do that.
Francis:
Okay. I think this whole trust building exercise is a prerequisite before we can continue to work.
So Stefan, let’s assume that we have started out with a good job description and we have found a good quality candidate with a high level of motivation and skill for the right price.
There has been a little bit of trust building in the first week where you work together. He delivers good work results in the first week and is happy with the payment
Stefan:
Yes.
Francis:
The payment guarantee comes from oDesk. As long as he works within the guidelines in an hourly contract, he will automatically be paid.
Stefan:
You’re talking about hourly based.
Francis:
That is correct.
Stefan:
And why not fixed price? You wouldn’t recommend a fixed price at all?
Francis:
I have had a sub-section in my site where I discussed fixed price versus hourly pay. The bottom-line is fixed price is much more interesting to many assistants. All assistants I’ve asked prefer hourly pay because with fixed price, there is a risk. We tell them, “After you done the job, I pay you $20.” You have the freedom within the oDesk guidelines to not pay them because you say you are not happy.
So if this happens then the virtual assistant has no money. In other words, the risk is with his side. So he will often not be motivated to do the job. With the hourly pay, he will always be paid as long as he, for example, doesn’t surf on Facebook all the time and you end the contract because of that.
Stefan:
Well, what I don’t like about hourly pay that’s why I changed that a little bit in the past from hourly paid to, what I used in the last time, fixed price is that in the end I have absolutely no guarantee that I would have a result at all. I could pay hundreds or thousands of dollars and have nothing in the end. That is totally my risk.
Continue reading part 5 – Effective email communication with virtual assistants
Effective Email Communication With Your VAs From Day 1
Effective email communication is part-5 of the second interview from Stefan from Germany, who lives the Four Hour Work Week lifestyle in Thailand.
Click here to read part 4 – Mastering the art of effective outsourcing
Summary:
- Whether it’s hourly paid or a fixed price job – you absolutely need daily communication with your virtual assistant.
- For a productive email communication with your assistant, you can either use Skype or you can have him write daily emails.
- My assistant makes a daily Google presentation with illustrations and bullet points of all the work he does during that day and it worked out really well for me.
Start of the Interview:
Francis:
That is true. The risk is on your end. It’s more on your end and your managing skills are needed so that the money losing risk is little. So my proposition to keep that risk as little as possible is to have a clear daily communication with your assistant.
Then the risk of losing money is very small because if an assistant works 8 hours then the most you can lose is 8 hours of work where he does nothing effective until there’s the next communication exchange.
So when the initial trust has been built and the start of the work has started – hourly paid or fixed price doesn’t matter – you absolutely need daily communication. How you do it, it’s up to you. You can Skype with your assistant. You can have him write daily emails.
as an effective email communication, I prefer them on bullet point format for easy reading for me. Or, as my assistant does it right now, he makes a daily Google documents presentation with screenshots and bullet points of his questions, updates of what he works on, etc.
This is addition of checking up on your oDesk screenshots what your assistant does, will make sure that he doesn’t work for nothing for long time.
Stefan:
Yes, that’s true.
Francis:
I agree that this is an additional time investment on your end. But if you don’t do it you, as you say, risks losing hundreds of dollars.
Stefan:
Yup. But the problem is that it just takes away time. Because imagine I have a new job, let’s say, a design for a flyer. Or a cover or whatever and I don’t have a specific idea of what I want.
I just want a few proposals from a graphic designer and I’m willing to pay, let’s say, $30 for that or $40. So that could translate into 10 hours of work. Or a fixed price where I have guaranteed something in the hands at the end or I don’t have anything and I don’t have to pay.
On the other hand, if I let him make some work for 10 hours and he just gives me 15 proposals but they are all crap; I have to pay him.
Francis:
It’s true.
Stefan:
So it’s guaranteed. And most of the time as I’ve said earlier, in the past I have never had a good result in the first work batch.
Francis:
Okay.
Stefan:
I never experienced that I give him a job, the first milestone, the first assignment and that was completely perfect 100%. That has never happened to me.
Francis:
That’s also not very unrealistic.
Stefan:
Yes, it’s not. But I want that. I’m not going to pay 10 hours for $40 and not have my cover design done when I could have a fixed price for $40. And I’m only paying that $40 when the job is done. Not before.
Are you getting my point?
Francis:
Okay, That is acceptable to me. So in this specific situation where it’s a design job, I have to say I have not much experience doing designer jobs via oDesk.
In my opinion, there are specialized services for graphics design which are much more appropriate for designer jobs than oDesk.
Stefan:
They’re way more expensive.
Francis:
Yeah, not if you take into account the time training and hiring, etc. The least expensive method to find a basic graphic design which sometimes is surprisingly good quality is to use Fiverr.
Stefan:
Okay.
Francis:
Do you know this service?
Stefan:
Yeah, I know Fiverr.
Francis:
If you have Fiverr, you can invest $5 to have roughly what you want. And then you can use this in your job description to say, “Okay, I have a basic design which is like that. I want it much better.”
Continue reading part 6 – Asking your virtual assistants for previous work samples
Learn How To Outsource With Youtube Marketing Strategy Effectively
YouTube marketing strategy is part-17 of an interview with Eric, a fellow entrepreneur interested in outsourcing his work to virtual assistants all over the world.
Follow along to learn from our experience on working with VAs!
Summary:
- How to make the YouTube marketing strategy helpful in training your assistants and outsourcing tasks
- Create videos that contains content that will help your outsourcing strategy effectively
- Learn how YouTube videos can help train your virtual assistants
Start of the Interview:
Francis
One other comment regarding YouTube, when you start doing that I would be very happy to learn from you about that because I also think this is one of my many projects in my projects folder.
I think I’m giving my main assistant nightmares with all the projects I’m opening and none that I’m closing.
But I would like also very much like to go into YouTube because I do believe that it is very a targeted traffic and from the right sort of persons. And I know that it’s very useful to have a virtual assistant to fine tune your videos.
And there’s one outsourcing expert, so to say, who’s shared a lot on YouTube already. I’m sending you a link. It’s from a person called Tyrone Shum.
Eric
Yeah, I’ve heard of Tyrone. I’ve seen some of his stuff on this.
Francis
And okay, I didn’t know you knew, but then I would suggest that your assistant should digest all his free information as much as possible because you obviously also have some paid service especially in the direction of video creation.
But if you have basic knowledge about working with virtual assistants, I think it’s more money efficient to train your own team than to pay him for a service. But if you’re not interested in that, then just go ahead and use a specialized service for that.
Eric
Yeah, that’s definitely something that I need to look into. Because I think especially with my medium – teaching piano lessons – that’s definitely something that needs to be more on YouTube because it’s such a visual type of thing. You know what I’m saying.
Francis
Yeah. But I really think when it comes to training your assistant, just let them watch training videos. I think there are lots of how to use YouTube videos on YouTube just as part of the training because I wouldn’t have the patience to watch all these videos if I wasn’t doing the task myself.
Eric
Right, yeah. And that will save us the time to have and actually go out and create the video themselves and making that time to do that too.
Francis
Yeah. Do you have special equipment for your videos? Your quality was much better than mine and you had a big microphone as well.
Eric
Well, at the moment, you see, I used to do some basic audio recordings so I have the microphone that I use for that. And I just use that for my videos. I mean, I just went out and got like a $200 HD camera.
Francis
Okay.
Eric
I went out and bought some lights, just $20 lights that I just saw. And really the qualities of my videos aren’t really that great yet but they’re getting better. But it’s probably only like a couple of hundred dollars and you can get a microphone, a decent HD camera and that’s really all that I have.
Francis
Yeah. That’s also the advice I’ve read often about videos. One advice that I’ve found very good from Tyrone was to just get started. Just do a crappy video first. And then he showed his oldest videos and they were crappy in comparison.
Eric
Because his videos have like explosions and sound effects and stuff like that. And in his first video, he’s like in the trunk in the car or something, really. And then I wanted to follow his advice and I just did that.
I prepared some sort of script and it was evening and I was tired because I watched all these videos but I wanted to get into action. I didn’t want to just read and not do anything.
And then it was dark and I didn’t have the lights installed too well, so I was looking almost green in this video. And I was like looking sleepy and talking slurrish like I was high. And I was recording then a 10 minutes video of myself talking this way. And then I was proud because I took an actionable step, you know.
Francis
And then I put it in the Dropbox and send it to my 2 best friends and my girlfriend. And I cannot tell you how hard they laughed at me. They did not laugh with me, seriously. They made fun of me and hard, really hard.
And I was just trying to explain myself. I was just saying, yeah, I know it’s bad but I just want to take action and the next one will be better. Then they said that was so bad, just don’t do that.
Eric
Let me say one thing though really quick, Francis. I’ve sent you a link to my YouTube channel.
And my videos, some of the first ones that I did – they’re horrible. I mean, I’m serious. And also, I was nervous in front of the camera. I mean I didn’t even have my face in them, it was just my hand. And the way I talk I was ah—ah, you know. I mumbled most of the time and they’re just horrible. So if you ever have a minute, watch some of them.
Francis
But you kept them online, I think that’s charming.
Eric
And if you look at some of them, I’ve got almost 110,000 views on one video.
Francis
Yeah, you have lots of views. I’ve been looking at it. I think in the end, the content is what’s important in the long run.
Eric
Right. And that’s the thing; if you can just get it out there I think that people are a lot more gracious than we think.
I think that even though that we look at it and like oh that’s terrible, that’s horrible, yeah. I mean I think that we want to strive for quality. I think we want to have the best stuff that we can.
But when you’re first starting your business, I think it is better just to get it out there. And I mean, you can see from what I’ve got; I mean they look horrible but I’ve got a lot of views.
And too I mean, it’s different for my stuff because I’m kind of piggybacking off of popular songs. I think that they’re doing a great job but they are horribly, horribly produced.
Francis
Yeah, I agree. But thanks for the heads up because I really sort of lost my motivation with that story because my tools were so bad. And yeah, also I’m aware that the tool I’m using for recording for my webcam has much lower quality than, for example, the recording that comes from Skype.
So obviously technically, I was not set up either. But I’d like to go into that soon also. And for example, for these videos, I will try work with my main assistant first because I will not have enough work for full time and then I give it to someone else.
I also believe before you expand, you have to have some sort of return of interest so some money which comes back into your business.
If you have videos and you create them. And over time, it creates you either direct advertisement income or links back to your services that you get money from. Then you can say, okay, I’m earning hundreds of dollars more a month, why not put them directly into the expansion of my team?
But if you just expand because you have so many ideas, like I am, then you risk just running and burning lots of money.
Eric
Yeah and you’re not getting anything in return on that.
Francis
Yeah, so that’s something to look out for.
Continue reading part 18 – How reliable Google Analytics YouTube tracking for online business?
What To Look For In A Virtual Assistant – Start Of An Interview
What to look for in a virtual assistant is part-1 of the second interview from Stefan from Germany, who lives the Four Hour Work Week lifestyle in Thailand.
Summary:
- Usually most VAs/providers promise higher but can’t deliver what is expected.
- Trust building process between both parties is crucial for a long term relationship
- Good work ethics is probably the most desirable skill an employer is looking for in a virtual assistant.
Start of the Interview:
Francis:
Hello, Stefan. We already talked about this subject and here are my thoughts about how to create confidence in a freshly hired assistant so that later on he can work with self motivated drive for you and what to look for in a virtual assistant at the first glance. That’s where we want to go, right?
Stefan:
Yes. That’s good.
Francis:
Okay. In principle, it’s important at the beginning of the working relationship that your employer has no fear from you and has the room to grow self confidence in his work. If he’s afraid of being fired all the time or something then it’s difficult.
What’s also very important at the starting of a new working relationship is to figure out how big are the cultural barriers. Are there some? Where are they? How can you overcome them?
In my opinion, there’s not much of a short catch around this first trust building stage. It needs regular communication from both sides and the rough approach of “Do this work or I will fire you” often does not work in my opinion.
Please feel free to share your thoughts.
Stefan:
Yeah. I have experienced that when I’m trying to find someone who’s doing a good work. In the beginning, the promise is so very high.
You have a job and the employee, most of the time tells you right away that he can do this or that. And he will, in the beginning, most likely not say that he can’t do something.
Francis:
Yeah, that’s natural. They need the money. That’s totally natural.
Stefan:
Yes. I understand that but this goes on for awhile. In my experience too long and often the whole working relationship is built along that.
But the promises are very high and the delivery is very low. And because they don’t want to get fired, as you said, they’d rather say that they can do it or they need more time or whatever.
Francis:
They will come up with excuses, right?
Stefan:
With excuses instead of admitting that they are somewhere or that they’re not able to do it or whatever.
Francis:
In my opinion, this trust building goes both ways. You added that even before the virtual assistant should have the room to work and build his own confidence; he must give the employer (so us) the confidence in his work.
So if within the first few days a virtual assistant does not deliver at all, I would be extremely careful. I would immediately let him stop working and first figure out where’s the problem.
If the problem is clearly something that he does not have the ability or the programs or anything so that he cannot do the work and that he lied to me then I would have to end the working relationship. Or, figure out a way to train him so that he still can work for me depending on the situation.
If there has been some dishonesty going on at the beginning of the working relationship from the side of the virtual assistant and, in my opinion, this happened to me personally not so often because I’m very thorough in the interview process. But if it still happens then you have to take your consequences.
In general, there are many virtual assistants out there and many of them are highly motivated and capable people. You do not need to work with people who don’t have good working ethics.
There are many other people which have good working ethics which you can find instead. So before it gets expensive and time consuming, it’s better to end a bad start than to continue and try to fix it.
Stefan:
Yeah but the problem is that in the beginning it’s often a good start. Then you have the impression that your worker does understand the job, has the skills and he gives you feedback.
He talks with you about the job and you are coming to a conclusion together. You’ve given him job. You tell him what he has to do in the next three days and the next week. And often, he delivers the first week whatever you wanted from him.
In my case, I don’t want my worker to deliver the job. I tell him the job and he delivers the end product.
That’s how I work. I give him a part like a partial goal first.
Francis:
Yes.
Stefan:
Like the job is, for example, 3 weeks. I have estimated 3 weeks to finish it and I break it down to 3 parts, for example.
Francis:
I think the tactics of using milestones is very effective.
Stefan:
So, for example, I have a job 3 weeks. I’ll tell him after I hire him, because we had a good interview, I had the impression that you understand what we’re talking about. He could do the work and he assured me he could do the work. I give him his first milestone.
In 1 week, you have to do this and that, this and that until end of the week. He tells me, “Yes I can do that. I come back to you end of the week.” Then I let him work because he can’t work when we were “Skyping” so I leave him alone to do work.
At the end of the week, he comes back to me with finished part of the job. It’s done but it’s not as I had imagined which is okay because we can work that out.
We can rearrange stuff and then finish it so that it’s perfect. But there the problem starts. Because most of the time after that he lacks the work ethic, most of the people.
If I’m not happy with the first milestone which most of the time I will never be happy because we just started working together; he will start taking longer and longer for easier parts of the job.
Francis:
In other words, his efficiency drops with the time that he provides.
Stefan:Dramastically, yes.
Continue reading part 2 – Fixed Price vs Hourly Jobs
Human vs Voice Transcription Software
Human Vs Voice transcription software is part-1 of an interview from Stefan from Germany, who lives the Four Hour Work Week lifestyle in Thailand.
Summary:
- Transcription done by a human always beats transcription done by a software – No matter how good the software is.
- When you have a human transcriber, you can freeflow with your thoughts without breaking up the transcription.
- The better the English skills of your transcriber, the higher the quality of the transcription.
Start of the Interview:
Stefan:
What’s the benefit of having transcription via a human outsourcer instead of voice transcription software? Like (the one) I tried already, Dragon Naturally Speaking 12.
I configured it and it understands me pretty well, actually. So I’m wondering what is the benefit because Dragon doesn’t cost me anything and an outsourcer would cost me money per hour.
Francis:
Okay so let me jump in here. First of all, account the question. Dragon as a transcription software is free? Is that correct?
Stefan:
No, it’s not free. I got it and I think there’s a full feature trial. You can try it out but I just got it so there’s no problem from my side.
I only used it for a day and I found it okay but the problem was it’s still kind of like writing it like on the keyboard. It feels the same way. It’s still the same tedious work, actually.
It’s just with your mouth instead of your hands. That’s why I’m wondering if it’s so much better to talk and then transcribe it.
Francis:
Okay. So as I understand it; using transcription software, Text to Speech software, is tedious because the way you have to speak so that the transcription software understands you is not natural.
Stefan:
Yeah, because I have to tell somebody new line (to enter a new line break) and it’s not like we are talking. It’s different.
Francis:
Yes, I agree. I think also that is one of the main purposes or reasons I love transcription so much. So when I will record something for transcription including this interview, I will not hesitate to speak in a natural way, I will use pauses, natural hmmms and aawhs.
I would ask questions and I can, at any point in time, interject a comment like “Abi (My Transcriptionist), please transcribe this literally”, “Note to my assistant: Please insert this and that”.
So as I’m talking, I can always when I have a new idea which strikes me, open sort of a new paragraph and tell my idea away from my head. And then continue. So you cannot free brains with a voice transcription software.
If we were doing all what we did until now which is probably already like 300 words of content. With the transcription software, we would have failed. Right?
Because it wouldn’t have gotten much further than the first typo or punctuation. Let’s not speak about putting paragraphs into the text in a natural way. A human transcriber will take care of human elements, pauses or punctuation.
Stefan:
Ok
Francis:
Also, a smart human transcriber, let’s say high quality transcription person who has decent understanding of English could be able to separate endless sentences like this on I use right now into shorter sentences.
I have to be honest with you, in my case, I haven’t asked my transcriptionist to shorten my sentences for me. I haven’t done that. But I could do.
I assumed that I would need to invest a little bit more money in a transcriptionists which some basic editing works. But that could be done by this same person.
Continue reading part 2 – Transcription service cost comparison
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