Short Term Vs Long Term Virtual Assistants

Stefan:

I have the impression that going for a long time employee is working up way better than going for short time employment.

Because when we compare my experience and your experience, I basically only had more or less short time or project based employees and you basically only have long-time or part-time or whatever.

Francis:

I totally agree.

Stefan:

And this is such a drastic difference then it seems like the way better approach is the long-time commitment to something.

Francis:

I think that’s a win situation for everyone. You have one person to go to which you trust, which you trained, which knows you in and out.  

That person has one person who pays them, who is nice, who is reliable; and they don’t, I mean as an assistant, if you are hunting for a new job all the time, this is a lot of time lost. If you could work instead of running around a new job, that is a much better position for the assistant.

Also, if the assistant gets better and better and if you perhaps give them a raise after a year, that’s also a very nice perspective for an assistant to work with you.

Stefan:

That’s rather a full-time job – a couple of jobs. 

Francis:

I think for an assistant, for a freelancer, a position where they have a reliable source of income and a reliable contact partner is much more attractive than running from one project after the other.

To be honest, I think people do project work only at the beginning to build their portfolio and to build their oDesk feedback score. After that, in principle, most of them dream of having one nice position and you only dream of having one nice work result.

Stefan:

I would agree because I know of people who are working on oDesk also on the other site and they also don’t apply too much anymore only in the beginning.

But You know what I don’t understand? There’s one thing that I don’t understand because if I’m doing the work for someone else, I deliver on period.  

Francis:

Yeah, that’s your German work ethics. I have a page about German work ethics – the good and the bad sides of it. And there’s a cultural difference between our work ethics, we are both from Germany, and the work ethics of someone in another country. 

Stefan:

And that’s the thing that I don’t understand. It seems to me, I don’t know, I don’t have too much work experience with Americans or something but this seems like an Asian problem, I would assume. It’s an Eastern Asian problem. 

Francis:

I wouldn’t call it a problem. I would just it a difference or a challenge. Because a problem makes it seems like we are right and they are wrong. Here’s the other way around, perhaps, for them our direct and sort of “we say it like we mean it” communication style is rude. 

So I know this from the Chinese culture. For example, if I tell a Chinese guy “Yeah, come over to my house we will have dinner sometime.” Then I expect the dishonest. I mean it like that. 

If someone in the Chinese culture knows you and talks about you and your family and then they say “Yeah, please come have dinner.” This is sort of a polite gesture. They don’t expect you to show up at their house and eat with them directly. Only if they repeat the invitation three times that they mean it like that.

There’s a clear difference. And this is also a big problem in big corporate meetings. If a big enterprise works together with another country in China, In India or somewhere else then all these communication details come into play. 

So for a Chinese person, if you show up after one invitation; you show up at the house with their family and say “Thanks for the invitation. Here I am.” They will think “Are you stupid or what?” You are totally rude. Perhaps, they will smile and invite you but they will think you are rude.