You’ll find here the overview about my second interview with Stefan.
Stefan is a friend and fellow entrepreneur, only that he moved to Thailand to learn about and experience the 4 hour work week.
Virtual Assistant for Small Business
Reader Interactions
Asking for Virtual Assistant Works Samples at the Time of Hiring
Virtual assistant work samples is part-6 of the second interview from Stefan from Germany, who lives the Four Hour Work Week lifestyle in Thailand.Click here to read part 5 – Effective email communication with your virtual assistants
Summary:
- At the time of hiring a virtual assistant, check if they have a portfolio in their profile and put it as a requirement in your job description that you need a portfolio
- For design jobs, services like 99designs or Fiverr are more relevant than oDesk.
- You can ask them to attach a work sample before you even start the contract. This will show you who is really motivated to do the job for you and who is able to give you a work sample.
Start of the Interview:
Francis:
Another tool in your hiring process which we didn’t talk about yet is asking for work samples. Check if they have a portfolio in their profile and put it as a requirement in your job description that you need a portfolio. This will take care of all the applicants which do not have a portfolio you don’t even interview them.
Also, you can ask them to attach something, a work sample or something else, in their interview. This is before you even start the contract. This will show you who is really motivated to do the job for you and who is able to give you a work sample.
On the other hand, it will drastically reduce the amount of people who will apply for your job because they have to invest a lot of time and perhaps don’t even get a job.
But if your experience is that when you open a job description and you get a hundred applicants then you can put hire requirements to cut down on the people who applied to you and really filter out the best of the best for you.
Stefan:
Yes, that’s a possibility that you could this.
Francis:
This can all be happening before you start the contract within the interviewing phase.
Stefan:
Most of the time the portfolio is very good actually and shows work which is to me is totally surprising because I wouldn’t hire someone whose portfolio of his past work is not okay – is not good.
Francis:
Yes, of course.
Stefan:
But, surprisingly, I don’t understand why often it’s very difficult for people to reproduce what they already did in their portfolio. I don’t understand this. This is totally illogical. I mean, they could do it once why can’t they do it again?
Francis:
Well, as I said in my opinion, I wouldn’t do graphics designs on oDesk.
Stefan:
Okay.
Francis:
Something like that. So E-book writing, transcription, data entry, data analysis, all website administrative tasks – all of those technical stuffs can easily be outsourced to oDesk.
Stefan:
You wouldn’t do layout, designs or all creativity stuff?
Francis:
At least, I cannot teach you anything about it. I never have done designer jobs over oDesk.
Stefan:
Okay.
Francis:
So if I tell you, “Do it”, I wouldn’t be honest.
Stefan:
No, it’s okay.
Stefan:
There’s also Gigabox, for example.
Francis:
Ah yes, that’s true. So I would probably go over there if I wanted to have a designer job. It might be surprisingly time and money saving. If you invest $100 once and have a great design instead of losing a few weeks of time, a lot of nerves and then $40 without having a result by training an assistant and not getting the results. Then if you do it the second time then you easily has invested $100 also.
Also, with most professional designers you have the chance to have your work reviewed once or twice even on Fiverr. So if you’re not happy with the results, you are not paying the full price unless they have revised it once or twice. This is, in my opinion, a very good solution for designer jobs.
Stefan:
Yup. Right now, I don’t need a designer. But in the future I think I will do it whether it’s two versions. Either I do it small as you suggested in Fiverr. Do the 5 solutions – 5x 5, its $25. Or, do it way bigger also as you said Ninety-nine designs where you pay like $700 for a design or for 20 designs but you only pay for the one you choose.
So, from my experience, I think it’s very likely that only those 2 things are practical. Either go very small or very big for design and art stuff. On the other side, for technical stuff; for writing or what I need right now is not writing but layout.
Arrange the words and the pictures in the layout in a book. I’m writing the E-book right now and if I would outsource that, I am anxious to outsource that because somewhere deep inside I know that this won’t work.
Do you understand what my problem here is? Because from the past experiences I don’t trust this system anymore, I don’t trust that I can hire someone who does the job as I tell him to do the job. There’s also a little burying inside of me already.
Francis:
Yes, of course. If you have had failures in the past, then you will not be as trusting as if you had a lot of success in the past. That I think is natural. In my opinion, it is a doable thing. But if you already have lost your trust in the ability of your assistant then it will be difficult to get this job done.
So for anyone reading this interview, I think an editing and template doing job is very doable in oDesk or Elance or any other outsourcing platform for that matter. For you Stefan, personally, I propose to you that after the interview we talk about how you want the job done.
I figure out with either my assistant or someone else I hire especially for that to do it. I figure out how to make the instructions and then I give this back to you and you try that out with increased instructions.
Stefan:
Okay, could try that. I could try that.
Continue reading part 7 – Why outsourcing fails?
Virtual Assistant Improvement Tips And Tactics
Virtual assistant improvement tips is part-17 of the second interview from Stefan from Germany, who lives the Four Hour Work Week lifestyle in Thailand.
Summary:
- First and most valuable measure you take for your virtual assistant’s improvement is to provide him training.
- Another thing which really improves the motivation of an assistant is to bring his own ideas into the work. This is a sign of self-confidence and motivation.
- It’s just important that you show interest in the motivation of your assistant even if it’s very small. It’s like a small plant that you water with nice feedback.
Start of the Interview:
Francis:
Let’s go back really improving how to research. We talked about research as an example. And we can always expand research by forum, internet research, Youtube videos and PowerPoint archives. If you are very motivated, you make a profile and start asking questions in the forums to get even better research results.
There are survey tools which results in anonymized research results which your assistant can add to the research. If you want to go even further, you can tell your assistant to research for E-books that can train him even further. And then you decide if you buy that E-book and let your assistant read it. So that he can improve his work.
Research is perhaps not the best result example but website creation is a very good example. If you have a WordPress website or another website or a blog, there are lots of free E-books out there. Let your assistant research a few E-books, download them or show you where you can find them.
You check all the resources very quickly, decide which research he should read and then you tell them “Okay, this is a paid training. Take 5 hours reading this.” And then implement everything.
This only works if really he’s already delivering the basic work then we can add the training.
Stefan:
Yes, that’s no problem for me. If I would hire someone long-term, I would be interested in improving this spectrum of abilities, of course.
But that’s only if he already delivered that he is capable of improving himself and not leaving next week or 1 month or something.
Francis:
Yes. I think these tactics are only been there when you are already working with your assistant for 2 months, at least.
If we’re still in the first week and that was the previous part of the interview, you need to make sure that he does what he’s told and he doesn’t leave you without a second note.
Stefan:
Yeah. Okay. And after that, you can work on improving him.
Francis:
Yes. You don’t start with this. Else, you lose a lot of time and money.
Another thing which really improves the motivation of an assistant to bring his own ideas in to the work is to repeat a lot how much it’s important to you that he brings improvement ideas. So this is very easy to do when you do video instructions.
You can talk off the top of your head. While you do video instructions, you can always tell “Ah yeah. By the way if you have any idea to make this better, please tell me in the next email- the next daily email.”
And while it takes you 2 seconds to say in a video recording when you repeat this from time to time, your assistant will start bringing you his own ideas. Perhaps, his own ideas at the beginning are very small ones and you cannot do anything with it. But the fact that he has given you idea from his own perspective means a lot. So don’t disregard it.
If for example you have a WordPress blog and ask “Okay, do you have any idea to make this better?” And he said, “Yeah. I have the idea to research how to do WordPress blogs and then we can make it better.” This is not a tip that would bring you much. But he brought his own tip and then you tell him “Okay. It’s very good that you bring your own tip.”
Actually, you did already know this so nothing will change but it’s very, very good that he brought his own tip and please continue to doing that. Encourage him to bring his own ideas into it.
When he brought to you his basic first tip, tell him what you already know. That it surpasses his basic tip and that after he has implemented all that; he should feel free to bring even more complicated tips.
It’s just important that you show interest in the motivation of your assistant even if it’s very small. It’s like a small plant that you water with nice feedback.
Continue reading part 18 – Mastering the art of having a self-motivated virtual assistant
A Virtual Assistant For Your Small Business – How To Find, Train And Keep Them Self-Motivated
Even more intense and info-packed than the first interview, you’ll find here the overview about my second interview with Stefan.
Stefan is a friend and fellow entrepreneur, only that he moved to Thailand to learn about and experience the 4 hour work week.
The main topic of this interview is how to get a self-motivated virtual assistant for a small business, that solves all your problems.
Although it’s not as easy as it sounds, it’s doable. But read it all for yourself…
The basics: What to look out for / Best practices
When you start out with outsourcing, you first don’t know what to look for in a virtual assistant.
In the interview, we talk about
- Pitfalls of under-delivering assistants,
- How to build trust for long lasting success
- And what the most desirable skill in a virtual assistant really is.
Money is important – both for you as an employer as well as for the virtual assistant. But how best pay your VA?
To the often asked question about hourly vs fixed-price payments, you’ll learn about the pros and cons of each payment method.
Mostly look out for unethical assistants that
- report more hours than they worked for you
- or work on so many different projects at the same time, that yours does not receive the attention it deserves.
However, money is not all to keep your virtual assistants happy. As we lay out next, there are challenges with saving time in the recruitment step as well ass with keeping “the good ones”.
Don’t get trapped in the time waster of burning one employee after the other. Else you will never get the results you are looking for. A certain politeness in handling your virtual employees is also crucial to avoid virtual assistant retention problems.
Graduating from the basics: How to improve efficiency with your VA
Doing personal outsourcing can be time-draining, if you don’t do it efficiently.
What is effective outsourcing?
- Learning about when to do a task yourself, and when the time is right to outsource it. Not all your tasks should be given to your VA.
- Mastering effective communication from and to your virtual assistants.
Since you will mostly communicate with your VA’s via email, it’s important to know about effective email communication.
To be effective, you should communicate often, ideally daily. Even a short info exchange can increase your results!
If you don’t have tíme for email, Skype or video recordings (from you) and email responses (from your VA) have proven to be time savers.
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.
Initial effort well-invested: How to screen for the right candidate
Remember, the final goal is to have a self-motivated, excellent virtual assistant with a “can do” attitude.
Setting up the basics is important.
An underused screening trick to speed up the hiring process is asking for work samples from your potential virtual assistants.
The quality of their portfolio will tell you volumes about their past work attitude. If they cared a lot about the work quality for their past employers they will also care about yours.
When you then first start working with your assistant, you can’t expect all to go perfectly. There is a learning curve.
Don’t mistake the process done when your assistant is learning with failure in your outsourcing efforts. If you quit right from the start, you risk losing more time and money than necessary.
The rest will be a result of
- your training,
- his attitude towards work
- and the long-term working relationship you build with your VA.
Communicating with your VA = Your Success
If there is one recipe that will guarantee you better results:
Daily communication with your assistant.
Even if you have a virtual communication using email, video recordings and phone calls, you still will build trust between you and your assistant.
Learn how to talk to your assistant with the right frequency that is best for you and him. This will speed up the communication more and more.
How you communicate with him, is up to you. But there are many tools and many types of communication to choose from.
They all have their pros and cons, as you will read in this part of the interview with Stefan.
The importance of communication with your VA cannot be stressed enough.
How often you communicate with him, is up to you. If you want to start out right, put your need for regular communication into the job description as a requirement for the job.
Frequent Communication = Prevented Mistakes
As a nice side effect, you’ll see that regularly communicating with your assistant will prevent failures from your worker.
You will…
always be up to date about the performance of your VA
find out more quickly if your VA is the right “ideal helper” for you
save money by not working with the wrong person longer than necessary
Good work relationship = Potential long term virtual assistant
Improving your cooperation with your partner to the point that you gain a long term virtual assistant for your online business is a win-win situation for both of you.
- He has a reliable source of income and a solid job.
- You have a motivated, loyal and trustworthy business partner that helps you build your successful online business.
How to communicate this to your assistant while you still get to know him?
Drop hints from time to time about your long time goals. Ask for his advice from time to time.
Even if you have to pry a bit, asking for the honest advice of your VA will leave him with a sense of belonging and respect.
Of course, if your VA does an awesome job and the communication goes really well, nothing speaks against giving a monetary bonus from time to time.
Sidebar: other cultures, and what to look out for
Stefan and my interview got side-stepped at this point for a bit. We talk a lot about Asian work ethics, because most virtual assistants can be found in Asia.
There are pits and downfalls, and sometimes even surprises. But you do best if you adapt your communication style to your assistant a bit.
Empathy is key when dealing with an assistant from another country. A bit of care and tact when talking to your employees doesn’t hurt, either.
Then, dealing with international cultural differences is not such a big challenge any more.
Back on track: What if your communication is bad?
Simple:
Learn from this interview how to improve your communication skills with your assistants.
Learn when to be strict (insist on regular communication) and when to be understanding (when dealing with different cultural backgrounds).
Learn that your work relationship is your ongoing investment into your success.
Remember:
bad relationship with your assistant = little chance to have a self-motivated and productive assistant
Next Milestone: Motivate your VAs!
To get an assistant that works independently, he needs lots of motivation and self-confidence. In the interview, we discuss closely how to motivate employees, and how to teach them to take initiative of their own about your work.
When your assistant is trusting you and is motivated, you should invest into the training and improvement of your virtual assistant.
Any dollar invested now will pay back in the long run in better results for you.
Mastery: Having a self-motivated and proactive virtual assistant
If you keep working on your communication, your trust and the motivation of your assistant, you will have a self motivated virtual assistant.
Note that you don’t ever start here, no matter how much you are willing to pay. This level of mastery is the fruit of your long term efforts.
That’s right, it can take at least a year to be at the point where you would trust your assistant with most of your online business assets (with care).
But the power of leverage you then have is priceless.
Don’t forget to keep your assistant motivated! Don’t destroy what you have invested lots of time and personal energy in by losing your cool over a mistake.
You seriously risk everything, in the worst case scenario.
If you do that, you achieve the dream of every time-challenged entrepreneur:
To have one full time virtual assistant that says:
“Yeah don’t worry about it. I’ll get it figured out. I’ll research it. Don’t you worry.”
We discuss what this means in the context of an outsourcing case study about picture research.
Example: An Assistant for Traffic Generation
Time for another example of an outsourcing case study about traffic generation.
On the basis of a very simple traffic generation technique, we discuss how training your assistant to learn more and more complex skills is key to his independent thinking.
Soon, he will be looking for training materials all on his own (without you needing to do any more).
A long interview finally at its end
Phew! A long interview finally wrapped up!
Stefan and I skyped over 3 hours about all sort of topics. At the end of this outsourcing interview, we summarize again shortly what we learned, and take a well deserved break.
There are many services where the tips shared here can be useful for you. Now it’s your turn to bring your assistant to the level of mastery!
Closing Words of Thanks
Thanks for taking the time to read such a big interview. I hope it was helpful to you and that you could learn a lot from it.
If you enjoyed it, please take the time to endorse our work by clicking on the button below. Thank you 🙂
Mastering The Art Of Having A Self-Motivated Virtual Assistant
Self-motivated virtual assistants is part-18 of the second interview from Stefan from Germany, who lives the Four Hour Work Week lifestyle in Thailand.
Click here to read part 17 – Virtual assistant improvement tips
Summary:
- Every entrepreneur wants to reach the level of mastery with outsourcing and to have high skilled and motivated virtual assistants.
- There are certain steps that you can take to improve the performance of your self-motivated virtual assistant.
- You can also give your virtual assistant access to your financial account so that he can pay on behalf of you, but this is something very critical and you should build a lot of trust and take necessary measures before you decide to do that.
Start of the Interview:
Francis:
So here we’re talking really about a level of mastery. That’s the level of Tim Ferriss or someone who has done working with his self-motivated virtual assistant for at least 1 or 2 years. This is really long term stuff here. Yeah?
If he’s working on himself and if he implements all the work without asking in a nice way and from time to time he gives his own ideas; you can give him more responsibility. You can let him research training materials on his own.
You can assign him time for a paid training. You say, “Okay, you work 20 hours per week for me. Three hours per week, you read your E-books. And if you’re finished, you tell me and you propose other E-books to read.” They’ll tell you “Okay, you can do this.”
Even further down the line, you can him a budget – a money budget for his own further training. One example I do at the moment where I give my assistant his own budget is
- he has his own Mechanical Turk account which I set up so that it works outside of the US as an employer.
- Then I have prepaid this with funding and he can use it to buy mechanical Turk work on his own terms as needed for my projects. I leave that money up to him. It’s something like $20 and it holds out for quite a while.
The other example is I have prepaid an account with Copyscape for premium search and he can use it as he needs it. What I don’t recommend is, of course, giving your virtual assistant access to your credit card information.
You mentioned an idea of how to pre-fund money for your assistant before?
Stefan:
I said that I will only give my main assistant- my number one off my bunch, of course- access to my money. I don’t know if you said that already.
You didn’t say it?
Francis:
I didn’t say that but I do it like that also.
Stefan:
Yeah. Because he’s the most trustworthy so it is enough that the most trustworthy has access to money or whatsoever.
And if I give money out, I would only either create a new Paypal account or give because on Paypal when you have a business account; I don’t know you have a business account?
Francis:
Not yet.
Stefan:
Because when you have a business account, you can have like sub-accounts and give people access to budgets.
For example, I have a thousand euros or dollars on my account and I can’t give. It’s like in Dropbox, you add people per email to your team, so to say.
Francis:
Yes.
Stefan:
So you give that person a budget of $100 and he can pay from your account. The money is on your account but he can pay via his account.
Francis:
It’s very interesting. Is the business account for Paypal free?
Stefan:
Ah yeah, it’s free. It’s even cheaper than the basic account.
Francis:
Okay, this is a big recommendation. I have to check it out.
Stefan:
I think, you save a little bit transfer fee, 1% or something. I think for private accounts, it’s 2.2% and for businesses, 1.7% or something. You save even a little bit of money. They were tiny amounts, in cents, but it has more functionality.
To create a business account, you need your business identification or your business data and you have to send that to Paypal.
Francis:
Okay. So the requirement is that you have to have an established business with, probably, a tax number or something like that.
Stefan:
Exactly.
Francis:
So this I haven’t set up yet. This year, I will have to set it up because the income from my website surpasses the tax-free income that you are allowed to have in Germany.
And so this year, it’s definitively on my to-do list. And when I have this, I will probably also set up a premium business Paypal account.
Stefan:
Yeah, exactly. So in this way, I know of other people who did it this way or even further. Some people even gave full access but only for only having money on that by the money that comes in, you know, be of sales…
Francis:
Yes.
Stefan:
So you can never lose money.
Francis:
Yes.
Stefan:
Your assistant has only access to the money that came in through sales but never what’s on your credit card.
So it’s a possibility.
Francis:
A good application of the funding you give your virtual assistant is that you allow him to buy premium stuff like E-books that costs money or premium services.
Well, anything that costs money on the internet that you allow him with a certain budget as long as it solves your problem. It would be a good idea though that every purchase he has to justify somehow in his daily reports especially at the beginning.
Stefan:
Okay. If he pays a certain price.
Francis:
Exactly. I remember reading something from Tim Ferriss – big outsourcing master – who said that his personal assistant who schedules his flights and organizes his calendar and stuff like that.
If she has to make a small purchase below $100 then she doesn’t even need to ask. Actually, I’m not sure if it was Tim Ferriss himself or one of the persons in his book he interviewed.
Stefan:
Well, it was about his forum where he had the food supplements and he had this problem with his customers that if they call customer support and complain about something.
Then his assistant would have instead of asking for every customer that complains. Thanks. For every customer that complains, instead of asking him, his assistant was allowed to just to settle the case. So he saves time.
It doesn’t save him money because he would pay the customer back anyway but at least he reduces his incoming emails by 80% or something.
Francis:
Yeah. Because he makes more money with his free time than he would make up and back complains.
Stefan:
Yeah and he would pay back either ways so just fix the problem. That’s the idea. Just fix the problem. Well I think just a little back to the previous topic…
Francis:
Yes?
Stefan:
I think, maybe that idea comes from the book – from the 4-Hour Work Week. The idea to “This is the budget, fix the problem.”
Francis:
Yeah but I think since outsourcing in the original E-book, “4-Hour Work Week”, is the last example after definition, elimination, automation and outsourcing. Outsourcing is the last part.
You are supposed only to do outsourcing if you have already defined what you want, set your goals. If you eliminate everything which is waste; if you automated all that is automation; then only then, you would take yourself out of the equation by outsourcing.
Many people who dream big don’t understand the whole philosophy of the book and only see the outsourcing. They see the daily job and say “Well, I hire an Indian guy for that.” This is probably a little bit naïve and is doomed to fail, if I can say so, one way or the other.
I think, outsourcing already is a very advanced topic. And although it’s very charming because everyone loves free time and free results, there are some requirements to be met before you can actually start with outsourcing.
In the scope of our interview, the hiring process has to be right, the trust problem has to be solved and the work ethics has to be defined at the beginning.
And that’s already when you are ready to do outsourcing. So we are really talking about some lessons that have to be learned. And that’s why we put them all into this interview so that other people have no problems to learn them.
If you learned all these lessons then you can have nice 4-hour work week lifestyle – live under the palms and not do anything while you receive money.
Stefan:
Hmm, very pretty.
Francis:
Yeah. Everyone wants it. But if it was easy, everyone would have it. Since not everyone has it, it’s obviously not easy.
Stefan:
Yeah, I don’t think it’s that hard but we can do that later.
Francis:
Yeah. Perhaps, we will have another interview, why it’s so easy to live under the palms like you do. Or, perhaps, it isn’t easy. We’ll see.
Stefan:
Didn’t we want to do that, anyway?
Francis:
Ah yeah. We’ll go to the cost of living in Thailand in a second.
Continue reading part 19 – Outsourcing case study – Picture research
Preventing Failures From Your Workers
Preventing failures from your workers is part-11 of the second interview from Stefan from Germany, who lives the Four Hour Work Week lifestyle in Thailand.
Click here to read part 10– Importance of communication with your virtual assistants
Summary:
- Try to maintain daily communication with your workers, this will let you keep an eye on their performance and help you preventing failures from your workers.
- You can even ask them to install a productivity tracking software, this will also help you to analyze his performance.
- Another way to avoid frequent mistakes by your virtual employee is to hire the right person for the right job. This involves a bit of time and effort in the hiring process.
Start of the Interview:
Stefan:
Yes. And I also expect that the work that wasn’t done yesterday is done tomorrow or this evening. But I don’t know. It often fails. It often fails at this point.
When there’s one time I’m some sort of lost time, it’s often a back stab and it doesn’t go back to the way it was before. You know. We lose a massive amount of track from the employee side.
Francis:
I think very early you have to make clear that you’re not joking with the communication. When they fail it one time, warn them. Tell them this was your first warning. Most people are like kids. With kids, you start counting 1, 2… and before you say 3, kids will go running.
So this is the same psychology. You tell them, “Okay, this is serious matter. I do assume daily communication. Perhaps, I didn’t make it clear enough but now you know. You will have to communicate. If you don’t, I will be not happy.” They can assume what this means on their own.
And then the next time you tell them, “Okay. I want you then at that date. This is the last warning. I expect the regular communication.” If then, of course, he works half a year very, very nicely. Then he misses the communication again; then please be human. Don’t fire him.
Stefan:
No problem. No.
Francis:
But we’re talking about the first weeks here.
Stefan:
Yes, the first weeks are crucial.
Francis:
Yeah. If we don’t establish the right communication in a very strict and disciplined way at the beginning, there’s no chance to make it nice and lenient in the future. I am at the point where I tell my assistant “Well, do it however you want. I know you do it right.”
Because at the beginning I was very, very specific and he now knows what I want. But if I didn’t do it at the beginning, you would do whatever.
Stefan:
Yes, that’s what’s happening.
Francis:
So I think the key for you to improve the communication with your assistant is at the beginning of the working relationship, be very strict, daily communication, a lot micromanaging and a lot of checking up on what your assistants are doing on oDesk screenshots.
You can even ask them to install a productivity tracking software and tell them that you’re closely managing them at the beginning because you expect them to learn your working style. And then, things can go on natural course.
Do you believe that if he does this from the start with a fresh assistant, you have might have better results?
Stefan:
My only problem with that approach is that it’s a very time and money investing approach.
Francis:
How much time are we talking about here? We hire someone in a very closely managed interviewing process. No money spent and probably about 4 hours of work spend if we sum it all up together.
With this, you screened a least 50 assistants with a basic interview tests. I call it a Sunshine Test. So, you tell them a code word within the job description and tell them “Start your application with that word. Else, I wouldn’t read it.” This screens out half of the people then we have 25 people left.
Those you check which ones have the right portfolio, the right qualities, and the right work feedbacks and there you choose your 5 preferred people. Those 5 people, you send them interview requests with further questions.
For example, send me a screenshot of your internet speed. Let’s do a Skype call. And then you have 3 people who actually shut up. With those 3 people, you make 10 minutes Skype call. You stop your timer and you only have 10 minutes. After that everything is done.
Stefan:
Yes.
Francis:
Then you have perhaps 2 winners where you’re not sure who to take. Both of them are good. Either you hire both of them and let them work against each other and see who is working better.
Or, you hire one and keep the other one and tell them”Okay, I’ve found someone who’s slightly better than you. But if it doesn’t work out, I will come to you first things first.”
Keep that contact in mind and be nice to him, right, because he already passed all your interviews. If the first person fails within 1 week, hire the second person immediately.
You can also tell your first person “Okay, you have made the catch. You are the best interviewee but it was a very close call to another guy.
And I’m hiring you on a trial position. We work for 1 week, we establish the communication and we see it before we work together in a nice way. If you pass this week and you continue to keep that work morals upright then we can continue working together.”
Be open with your applicant. If they’re fresh, have them have a probationary period like in a real job.
And then, don’t allow for more than 1 week of experimentation. If the communication doesn’t work after 1 week, it will not work ever or it is too time consuming to correct that behavior.
Continue reading part 12 – Short term vs long term virtual assistants
Concluding The Outsourcing Interview From Stefan
This is the conclusion and last part of the outsourcing interview from Stefan from Germany, who lives the Four Hour Work Week lifestyle in Thailand.
Click here to read part 21 – How to keep your assistant motivated
Summary:
- In this interview you can learn about hiring process, about the tools you need to communicate to your assistant like video instructions and online productivity tools.
- We have also discussed about the different services that are out there like the Fiverr, Mechanical Turk, oDesk and other services in this outsourcing interview.
- You would also learn how to train your virtual assistants with new skills and how to motivate them to build their inner confidence and initiative.
Start of the Interview:
Francis:
In this outsourcing interview, I could answer your questions or try to answer your questions directly. But the website has grown pretty big and there’s a lot of free information on it and in my humble opinion, I think there’s lots of lessons to be learned.
So if you do have free time, please take the time to check out different sites. Although it’s a lot of stuff to read, I think if you implement the lessons from my site; you might be able to save time on the long run.
Especially about the hiring process, about the tools you need to communicate to your assistant like video instructions and online productivity tools. And the different services that are out there like the Fiverr, Mechanical Turk, oDesk and other services.
So if you haven’t had time to take an overview about this, please look at it and see if you cannot increase the quality of your hiring strategy.
Stefan:
Yes.
Francis:
Promise?
Stefan
I have to change my hiring process because it’s not working yet.
Francis:
That’s right.
Stefan:
it’s not giving the results that I want to have. But I’m most likely would only go for long stuff in the future. There are two things that I will definitely change. One thing is a way bigger…how do you say this…
Francis:
So you’re looking forward to build a bigger team of people who will be working at your project at the same time.
Stefan:
In the beginning, for like the first 5 hours and then shave off 50% of the people. And then let the rest work another 5-10 hours. Shave again the half of them. And then, figure out one person. But all of that is not for an immediate project.
Because when I need the immediate results, they most likely won’t deliver that. So, it’s basically just dummy work to find someone who is able to improve himself and become my virtual assistant for the future.
Francis:
One word of warning to this, please don’t be too nearsighted. If you hire someone for 3 hours then fire them because the first 3 hours were not good. You might be losing out. Some people need some time and I’m not talking about several weeks but at least 1 or 2 weeks.
So if you decide to hire several people and keep only the best of them; I would always propose that you hire 2 people for 2 weeks. And after 2 weeks, you keep the winner. Do not work with more than 2 people at a time because you will lose the overview. Also, you will lose too much money in a short period of time.
And always by pairs of 2 against 2 weeks, check the performance objectively by the people. See how often they reply, how willing they are, how motivated they are and don’t let your time invested into 1 person be lost too easily. So always think about your second chance if makes it worth it in the long run.
Stefan:
Yup. But again, as I said, this is rather a long term thing. From my experience, I think I can conclude that if I need a job done right now like let’s say in 1 week or 2 weeks, 4 weeks or whatever…
I would have to train someone first. That doesn’t work out. So I’d rather do that on my own right now.
Francis:
Okay. So I think that’s a good bottom line for this outsourcing interview. For important short term projects, figure it out on your own first. But build the basic building blocks so that you can have 1 or, perhaps, several long term assistants in the future.
Stefan:
Yes. For the future project, if you already have someone who is able to do various things then okay. But if you don’t have anybody, don’t search for that person because most likely it won’t work. That’s my experience for short time.
Francis:
Yeah, for short time. For long term, you would…
Stefan:
But let’s say for 2 weeks the project has to be done or like in 4 weeks, it’s very unlikely that the person whom you hire right now will deliver those results.
Francis:
I think it’s very difficult. Yes, that’s true. I would like end this outsourcing interview from this part about the motivation of the virtual assistant unless you have a final question about this.
Stefan:
No. No further questions.
Francis:
Okay. So thanks for that.
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