Read and learn from a big entrepreneur interview with an outsourcer from Germany who lives in Thailand right at the beach. Learn all about optimizing a job description for oDesk in this case study.
Stefan Interview
Reader Interactions
Example Job Description for An Ebook Illustrator and Selection Process
Example job description is part-4 of an interview from Stefan from Germany, who lives the Four Hour Work Week lifestyle in Thailand.
Summary:
- You can also invite virtual assistants that have specific skills directly for an interview instead having them apply for your job.
- It’s a good sign of a candidate if he straight away provides his contact details (e.g. skype name) in the cover letter.
- Always check for copyright details whenever you use any images on your website.
Start of the Interview:
Francis:
Okay. So I have made a screenshot of your example job description, Stefan.
Stefan:
Yes.
Francis:
And we have talked about it before but I can give you feedbacks about your job description if you would like to. But if you have questions first…
Stefan:
Let me just explain first what I’m talking about is. Why I wrote it like that and I wasn’t so sure because my experience with outsourcing is limited.
So in the past when I outsourced the jobs, I just wrote the job – what you have to do – in very simple words. So, somebody that is working with me would understand or I would understand it.
And from that, I search for an outsourcer that would have a good profile – a high quality profile that have a good ranking and whatever and that should possibly able to understand what I mean.
Francis:
Yes.
Stefan:
So by writing it very simple and just put it out there. Then I wrote to you that what you think about it and how could I improve it. From that point, I didn’t want to wait so long until you help me out with your expertise.
I just invited a few people that I found on oDesk that I thought were maybe good. I invited them to the job and I got a couple of applications. A lot of them were crap because they’ve just said, “Okay, I accept.”
That was the whole application. But there was one person in particular that wrote me and explained to me what he wanted to do. He would like to have the job and he also sent me his Skype name right away.
Francis:
That is a very good sign, by the way. That would be a test I would do if I were interested in finding a good applicant. So he is actually a very interesting candidate. Go on, please.
Stefan:
Yeah. I thought that was good right away because I didn’t need to write him back and wait for the message again. So, I just added him on Skype and wrote him.
I wrote him and he was online right away. We chatted a little bit. We exchanged ideas and it was right away a good communication.
We didn’t talk so much right away about the payment and about stuff. We talked about the job and I thought that was also a good sign because a lot of people, most of the time in the past interviews, were like this.
I asked what would you do with this job, what are your idea? …and the person tells me I have experience with that and that and that.
And that is all. It’s just listing the past experience. Not so much like I think that we could do that and we could do that. So I thought that he gave me right away possible solutions for the problem and he listened to my problem in detail.
Then, it was a good sign that he didn’t talk about payment right away at all. We didn’t talk about payment for he worked for me 2 days already. It wasn’t a full time job. It was a – how do you say?
Francis:
A part time job.
Stefan:
Part time job, yeah. Like maybe 1 hour a day, 2 hours a day, maybe with a fixed price offer. And the next day, he sent me a sample of his ideas – of his work. That was really good. I saw that he has a few ideas and that he really had thought about that stuff.
Then we discussed it further and further. The biggest problem about the job wasn’t so much the redesigning of the layout.
The biggest problem that is still on the table with our E-book creation is that we have to redesign the pictures that are in the E-book that will be used in the E-book.
Because I can’t produce pictures from scratch, from zero, so I take copyrighted material from Google image search and I just have to make it non-copyright material.
So, my idea is to just take it and redraw it because if I redraw it, 99% of the copyright problem is gone.
Right? If they are like cartoon styled, totally different style, change the angle of the work and stuff. It’s hand-drawn or something like that. Okay, just some solution.
Francis:
We just want to interject here. Since I’m not a lawyer, I cannot give you legal advice. However in your case, I would double or triple check if hand redrawn picture will keep you safe especially if you give the instructions “Please re-draw by hand” and the results is pretty similar. Then you will be in trouble, perhaps.
Stefan:
No, no. The result doesn’t have to be similar. It mustn’t be similar.
Francis:
It shouldn’t be.
Stefan:
No, it mustn’t be similar. It has to be the same information for the human eye, for the reader, but it doesn’t have to be the same. You know what I mean?
A reader has to get the same value from the picture but a Google reverse search engine doesn’t have to find the original image where it came from. Okay?
Because it’s a medical E-book and the human body is not copyrighted, okay?
Francis:
Yes. I understand.
Stefan:
And so writing a vertebra is not copyrighted in any form – you drawing a vertebra. So it just has to be the same value of the information of the picture.
We tried a few examples. We tried to take the original picture. That was the first idea, take the original picture and make a vector graphic from it.
But that was still too similar – way too similar. It looked the same. The arrangement of the picture was basically the same. It was just a different graphic style.
Google image search is very good to find the original still and that mustn’t be possible. That is the thing that I want from my designer that he draws a picture.
And if I take that picture and put it into image search from Google, I can’t find the original picture where it came from. We have to achieve that.
Francis:
Okay. So, let me take over the conversation again. I think that is possible. But just for food for thought and as a little sidebar, as you said the human body is not copyrighted; please double check.
And if needed, get an assistant to research that for you. Is it possible that some of the pictures you plan to re-draw could be found in the very similar way in the Creative Commons area in the Wikimedia, in Flickr, in other image source which you can use for commercial reasons for free?
Stefan:
No. Not in this quality and especially not in this being so easy to find. There are a lot of different because I don’t know exactly what I’m searching for and if I’m using Google image search to search for.
I have a thousand or many, many pictures that I can choose from. And to search that volume from open sources would take an immense amount of time from my side. More than it would take to use images from a source that I don’t know if copyrighted or not and let them be re-drawn.
That is basically the easiest solution and since we made so much progress in the last days to find a solution to this problem.
I’m confident that this is the way to go because it saves a lot of time from my side. And my time is the most valuable in this whole calculation, you know.
Francis:
Understood. So, the possibility of having someone else does the picture research for you, someone potentially cheaper and just as effective.
This possibility aside, I think your job description is rather effective overall. It still has a few flaws.
Stefan:
Yes.
Francis:
I tried to point them out in our mastermind group which we have which is closed so I won’t link to it. But unfortunately, Google plus deleted somehow my comment when I pressed enter and I didn’t want to write it again.
Entrepreneur Interview With Stefan Who Lives The 4-Hour-Work-Week In Thailand
Stefan and I did a very interesting entrepreneur interview about outsourcing via Skype. The whole interview was transcribed and put into blog posts so that you can learn from his lessons and my insights about how to become an employer and get better results with your virtual assistants.
Enjoy the interview!
Stefan has had some good results with using transcription software. On the other hand, software will never be as accurate and flexible, as well as fast as human transcription. Read our discussion about voice transcription software vs transcription by a virtual assistant.
You will be surprised how much more effective a human transcriber can be if you do it right.
If you do decide to hire a transcriptionist, you might think about using this person for all other virtual assistant duties. But that is probably not the wisest decision. No one person can be a do-it-all-for-you assistant – unless you learn how to train them right.
Of course, hiring someone to do transcription for you costs money. On the other hand, the best software for transcription is also not cheap. If you train your transcriptionist right, you can reach a very high transcription speed.
In the third part of this interview we talked about a freelance transcription VA and some general but valuable tips for finding the right fit for you.
Since Stefan wanted to outsource his ebook creation from the cover to the illustrations and even the format of the content, we went through an example job description from him. There are many lessons to be learned from this discussion – you’ll be able to…
- Save time
- Find a better candidate
- Learn about Ebook creation
If you take the time to read this section of the entrepreneur interview closely.
From this specific example, we quickly covered all there is to know about how to write a job description on Odesk.
Knowing these tips, you will quickly see how much time a concise but precise job description saves you as an employer. But you’ll also understand what really motivates a VA to stay with you long term.
With the strategy of “split testing” the performance of two VA’s against each other in the first week of an assignment, you’ll optimize your hiring results to the maximum.
Depending on what tasks you are looking to outsource, you will need a different type of virtual assistant. Generally, it’s tough to find the do-it-all-person right from the start. It takes a lot of time, effort and money (pay your assistant for his training!) to reach the level of a professional administrative assistant with an affordable rate.
As you “form” your assistant to your needs, there are some sentences you will be most happy to hear from him:
- I will find a way.
- If I don’t know a way, I will research it.
- Don’t worry, I’ll figure it out!
What was really interesting to me was that Stefan has, like me, made great experiences with outsourcing to the Philippines. Although his outsourced project was way different and much more crazy than what I usually do 😉
The biggest advantages and the great work ethics found with Filipino VA’s are clearly visible from this part of the interview. As a bonus, you will learn the one downside of working with freelancer from this country – and how to avoid it.
In the end, the interview finishes with more tips about how to improve a job description on my favourite outsourcing service – and more about how to really save time in the hiring process.
Transcription Service Cost Comparison
Transcription service cost comparison is part-2 of an interview from Stefan from Germany, who lives the Four Hour Work Week lifestyle in Thailand.
Click here to read part 1 – Human vs voice transcription software
Summary:
- Voice transcription software is a single time investment whereas a human transcriptionist will charge you as and when he/she works for you.
- It can take 4-5 hours to transcribe one hour of audio recording.
- It’s important that you speak clearly with an easy to understand accent so that your transcriptionist understands it easily.
Start of the Interview:
Stefan:
How much does it costs you to transcribe like let’s say one hour of talking?
Francis:
Hmmm, that’s a tough one. Let me estimate. So, transcription takes roughly 2-4 times as long as you speak. This depends on how complicated the stuff is that you speak; how fast you speak.
It also depends on if you make many comments or side bars. It depends on if the transcriptionist has experience with this work or not.
But let’s say the worst case scenario, if it takes four times as long as the time you need to record. So if I record 1 hour of recording in the normal speed, it would take 4 hours of work.
Let’s not make it 5 hours, keep it 4 hours. So in this case, I would need to invest between $4 and $8 to pay for the transcription.
Stefan:
Okay.
Francis:
Of course, it’s not always right from the beginning this effective. Any virtual assistant, even a transcriptionist, needs to be accustomed to you.
So for example, I have a sort of a slight German accent. With that, I try to force myself to speak correct English while I talk. So this is some conscious effort I try to make.
I could, of course and you know that, make my German accent worse and then it wouldn’t help to be understandable so much. But I think if you speak decent English, it’s okay.
If you give your assistant some time, the first few hours, to be accustomed to your style and also let him work out which format you want your transcriptions to have then it can be okay.
For example for me, I like my transcription files as a Word format ideally with paragraphs. And the notes which I make I like them in Word comments.
So, perhaps, you would like your transcription results in a Notepad or an Excel sheet.
Continue reading part 3 – How you can use a freelance transcriptionist for other administrative Jobs
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