hiring a va

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…

1. Save time
2. Find a better candidate
3. 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.