How To Write A Job Description To Save Your Precious Time

Francis:

So, E-book Creation: InDesign Illustrate pictures. InDesign says nothing to me.

Stefan:

InDesign is some Adobe program.

Francis:

Ah, good. 

Stefan:

The file, the layout, at moment is in InDesign – Adobe InDesign. And the designer should have access to InDesign. That’s what I wanted to tell.

Francis:

Okay. So, my proposition for the title would be:

“E-book Creation: Illustration with Pictures – Must be able to use the program InDesign” 

Stefan:

Okay.

Francis:

It is important that even the title is concise and precise because you do not only want to find the perfect candidate; you do also not want to lose time in interviewing the wrong candidates.

So everything you can do to weed out or to filter out the candidates which are not right for you, will save everyone time. 

The candidates, you have to know, have in oDesk only a limited quota of jobs they can apply to in certain amount of time. So their applications are valuable for them too.

And you do not want to have 500 applicants who will say, “Take me. Take me. I’m the best. Give me work.” And I’m not kidding. They say so.

Stefan:

I know, I know

Francis:

Okay. They don’t mean bad. I can even imagine that some of them might be rather over motivated for the wrong reasons. Let me not go too much into that.

But I think it’s important that you find the right person for you and do not need to resign to someone because he backed loudly enough.

So rewrite the title. The title is not bad; some propositions to make it better. The fixed price project is somehow, in my understanding, the amount of money you want to pay in total. 

I want you to slow down and think about what you asked for. You asked for 50 pictures that should be re-drawn and edited into an E-book which is 60 pages long for $50. So if you break it down, it is $1 per picture and E-book page. That will likely take more than 1 hour each to redraw.

Stefan:

Yes.

Francis:

And so the budget is not realistic at all.

Stefan:

The idea was that the whole layout and redesigning should be around $30…

Francis:

Okay.

Stefan:

…and around $20 should be for the pictures with the option because the E-book is not done yet and I don’t know how many will be in the E-book in the end version.

I know this is maybe a good idea. I should have kind of transfer the information but I’m willing to pay more for more pictures if the work expands. This is the idea that it’s just the starting point. More work will be more paid. Like something like that.

Francis:

I think “more work is more paid” is always interesting for an assistant.

Stefan:

Yes.

Francis:

What I would propose and what I tried to propose in my first try when I wrote the comment in Google Plus; try to hire several candidates. Several of those will look very interesting like 2 or maximum of 3. And hire them for 1 picture for a budget of, let’s say, $5.

So the minimum budget in oDesk is $5. 

Stefan:

Yes.

Francis:

A few years ago, it used to be $1 and you were actually able to do jobs for $1. By the way, the very first job I did on oDesk 4 years ago was to have someone open an account for an online storage.

It was on MediaFire. Make the account and give me the account information. I did not know that it was that easy. 

I did not know the concept of MediaFire and that you could have a free account. And some of this told me an interesting lesson in outsourcing and internet stuff for $1; I think it was a bargain.

So if you hire someone for $5, you can tell in the job description, “I or we will be hiring more than one candidate and we will keep the most productive candidate for further work.” 

And then you can allude to the amount of work you have. You can say, “Okay, work at one picture and this will make you $5.  And I have 50 pictures in total.”

That does not mean that you will pay them $250. But it should give them enough information so that they see the work load is bigger on your end. You’re not hiring and training them for 5 minutes.

Stefan:

Yeah. The problem with why I didn’t want to like do it like this; I thought about it, just invite like invite 5 people to the job and see who does the best picture.

It’s because I didn’t know how I wanted the redrawing to be done.  You know what I mean?

Francis:

If you don’t know, how does the assistant know?

Stefan:

Yes. I needed someone who has way more expertise in designing and what is possible in picture creation than me.

I need somebody for the job that can give me advice in that. Also, I’m willing to pay more but I’m also buying the expertise, you know.

Francis:

Okay. So let me give you my take on hiring experts that know more about the subject than yourself…

Stefan:

Yes.

Francis:

…as a sidebar. If you hire someone, you should be able to at least know the basics of what you’re hiring them for. An example, I could hire someone to create an app for my party website.

It would be a very good application, by the way. Although, there are already exists a few apps in this area. However, I don’t know anything about programming and even less about app programming. 

So it would be very easy for me to hire someone and someone could convince me very easily that he’s a great guy for the job. I cannot counter check this because I don’t have the expertise.

He can work and work and bill me lots of money. And in the end, I have a sub-optimal product to say the least without any possibility to say; okay you have to do this to make it good. 

So this is sort of a worst case scenario. This is where I don’t know anything, the assistant knows everything. It has me as a weakness and I’m just a running bag of money. 

Stefan:

Yes.

Francis:

So you are sort of in between. You know, sort of, when you see the result you will be happy. You know that. You don’t know where to get there and…

Stefan:

I have a few ideas.

Francis:

Yeah, that’s right. And you’re asking an expert who knows more than you to propose you a few ideas.

Stefan:

Yes – And to find a way together.

Francis:

Okay.

Stefan:

Like work towards a solution. Like for example, let’s just go back to the one person that I hired now for this job…

Francis:

Yes.

Stefan:

That we worked on that together. I proposed to recolor it. He did the re-coloring and gave it back to me. I looked at it and said, “This doesn’t work. Try this.”

Then, he redesigned it; send it back to me and so on and so on. And I have a feeling, at least, that we’re going towards some solution.

Francis:

Okay.

Stefan:

I can’t be sure of it, of course. But I think we are because we are developing or going somewhere.

Francis:

Yeah. You were developing a work relationship between an employer and an assistant.

Stefan:

Yes.

Francis:

This is a process that always takes place. So you’re in a good way.

Stefan:

Especially in this job, I hope so we are reaching the point where we find the solution for one picture. And once we have that solution then it’s just work. Then I can tell and do that for 50 more pictures. 

Francis:

Yes.