outsourcing discussion

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.