If you’re too busy to even look for a virtual employee, that would be the first sign that you need to find one, and fast.
I have been in your shoes, and it is a frustrating situation.
You know that you need to find some help, but the second your feet hit the floor in the morning, you are like a rocket ship. You grab some coffee to keep you going, and maybe a piece of toast. You’re not even dressed before the phone starts ringing, and the last thing you have time to do is sit down for hours at a time an look through resumes.
If you have any time to sit down and read the” The Four Hour Work Week”, Tim Ferris talks about how to go to sites like Odesk and Elance to look for virtual employees. These VA’s can help you to take over the tedious and monotonous activities that eat up all of your free time. Sounds good doesn’t it?
I mean, it seems simple enough right? You just go to one of these sites, look for the exact requirements you are looking for in an employee, push a button, and voila, you have a full time employee that knows exactly how to run your business from day one.
(cue annoying buzzer noise) Wrong! Try again. Actually, don’t try again. I will tell you what has to happen in order to find that special someone.
First, you have to go to the right site. Some sites specialize in only one kind of help, like programming and writing code for instance. So, you don’t want to go to a site like Rent-a-Coder, if you’re looking for someone to write advertisements.
Second, you have to go through the process of registering with the site, or multiple sites if you don’t know what you’re doing.
Third, you have to look for the kind of person that fits your needs, and chances are if you don’t have any idea what the title of the position you need filled is, or the requirements needed, you are going to be spending a lot of time in the FAQ section of that site. Fourth, you have to read through dozens of resumes, and find at least a few people you would like to interview.
Fifth, you have to interview the candidates, make sure they understand English, and get proof that that can do the work they say they can do. Finally, you have to hire someone, teach them how you like things done, and how to do them. Keep track of their hours and make sure it lines up with the amount of work being done, and if everything checks out, you have to figure out a way to send money to some place you have probably never heard of.
Sounds nice right…..yeah, not really.
But don’t worry. You don’t have to go through all of that just to find someone to help you. There is a much better way to find some good, quality, inexpensive help that won’t take up days of your life.
There are companies out there that will do everything for you. All you have to do is contact the company, go through a brief interview about what kind of help you are looking for, and they will actually go through the entire grueling process that I mentioned previously, for you.
They will contact qualified people that meet your job requirements. They will interview them, put them through a testing phase that will weed out any bad seeds, and hire the person that performed the best.
Once they hire the VA they will introduce you to them and get them started on the first assignment.
This option is the one that I use, and I wouldn’t do it any other way. It saves you time and frustration from the beginning. It’s kind of like, outsourcing your outsourcing, which doesn’t get any more efficient than that.There are several companies out there that can facilitate this option for you, but there is one in particular that I use, and that is Ultimate Virtual Employee. They have competitive pricing, a really nice staff, and they actually give me my own project management software, so I am able to track my VA’s hours, and communicate with them through a private interface. This keeps me safe from people who may be looking for ideas to steal, which happens all of the time on open interfaces like Odesk.
So, if you don’t have time to look for help, but you know you need some, go and check out Ultimate Virtual Employee, or any other one stop shop, and start getting your life back.
