One of the best places to outsource your work is to the Philippines. English language is required in their schools and you can higher highly educated people for a very reasonable price.
One of the best places to find them is at, https://www.onlinejobs.ph/
Let’s take a closer look at this site.
Let’s take a closer look at the https://www.onlinejobs.ph/ website and create an account. It’s inexpensive. From there, scroll to the bottom of the page and click on “Advanced VA search” and fill in your information. You can now select the type of person you are looking for (left hand side of screen).
NOTE: PLEASE keep in mind that things change quickly online so if this isn’t exact, just follow along as closely as you can.
Just to give you an idea of how comprehensive the listing is, here’s just what is listed under Virtual Assistant Office: admin assistant, appointment setter, data entry, email management, event planner, excel, human resources personal assistant, project coordinator, quality assurance, recruitment assistant, research, transcription, travel, travel planning.
Under English speaking translating you will find: tutoring, writing in English, blogging, copy writing, creative writing, book writing, book editing, proofreading, ghost writing. Follow along online, and you will see under each heading are multiple categories and sub-headings of tasks that we can outsource for.
The headings list is vast; it even includes services like architectural and engineering services, legal services, medical services.
While all this is impressive all you need to concern yourself about is what you need help with. Once you determine the task you want to hire for you can then look for an expert to hire for that task.
Let’s say you want to hire an advertising person. I go to “Marketing and Sales,” and I see things like classified ads and Facebook marketing. That’s not what I’m looking for, so I have to look a little farther. Then I see Amazon ads, creative advertising, Facebook ads, Google ads etc. Let’s say I’m looking for someone to handle my Google ads.
I want someone with a 5-star rating who will work part time.
At this point I leave the “monthly salary” blank. I am also looking for someone who has logged into the site during the past week because that should mean they are actively looking for work right now.
I now have my criteria added, and I click the “search” button and a bunch show up. I then narrow this down by only accepting those that have a picture and a government ID. I also want people with at least a score of 70. This cuts the number down a lot.
I then scan through them looking for those that mention Google Adwords in their first line. I pass those by that don’t have that keyword in the first sentence. I go through the remaining people and make quick judgement calls. I either eliminate them or bookmark them to give them another
look.
Some say they are currently working for someone else but would like to take on another client. Do I care? No. I don’t care if they have other clients as long as they do a good job for me.
Once I get my list down to two or three people, I usually set up a call and talk to them about what I want them to do and determine if they can do it. While talking to them I ask questions and try to determine if they can really do what they say the can.
Just because they say they can do it doesn’t mean they can really do it.
Another thing you have to look at is can they do it within the time frame I set for them. Maybe a person says they can do the job but only can spend 10 hours a week on it, and I know the job will take at least 20 hours a week. They may be qualified to do the work but do not have the time to do it.
Let’s say I couldn’t find anyone qualified among those who wanted part time work. In that case, I will change my criteria to full-time and go through the search process again. This search should bring up a much larger group.
In the part-time, example I pulled up 9 people. I just did the same search for full-time people and pulled up 42 people.
I do not want to choose someone on this first go around.
After my quick filtering I then go over the few who remain. Sometimes I may have 20 or 30 people who make it through the first round. I just keep going through the remaining with a finer tooth comb until I only have a very few remaining. I read everything they have regarding their qualifications and job experience.
In this example, I want a part-time person but had to look under people who want full-time work in order to find enough qualified people. What do I do now?
I can contact the person and tell them that I know they want full-time work, but I don’t have enough work for full-time. I ask them if they would be willing to work on a project basis. If they’re interested, I describe the project and ask them to quote me a price for it. If we can agree on a price, I hire them.
Let’s say that after you’ve done all your research, you’re still not sure about the best one or two people who remain on your list. In this case, I would test them. I would give them a small project as a test and see how they do.
I don’t tell them it’s a test; they think it’s the full project. You want to see if they communicate with you during the test. Do they ask questions to make sure they understand what’s to be done? Do they give you progress reports?
Sure, it would be ideal if they can complete it with no questions, but if there are questions you want to be sure they ask them and don’t just try and wing it.
Remember if, for example, I’m looking for a person to run my Google Adwords campaign, I need to see Google Adwords in the first or second line of their description. If it’s not, they are immediately eliminated.
How much do I pay? Well, if I’m looking for part-timers, say 20 hours a week, I’m thinking $200 to $400 a month. I may go as high as $500 if the person is REALLY qualified.
Another thing that I don’t strictly look at but do take into consideration is age. I usually like slightly older people. I have nothing against 22, 23, 24 year olds but someone who is 29 or more usually has more at risk. They probably are supporting a family and have to work to pay the bills.
They have more incentive to be reliable. A younger person may still be living at home and more easily distracted. This is something to take into consideration, especially as a tie breaker between similarly qualified people.
Let’s talk a bit about salary. We can eliminate some people using salary requirements. Right now 50,000 pesos a month is about $970 a month. That’s a lot more than I may be willing to pay. So maybe I just filter out all people who want more than 20,000 pesos a month.
Ideally, I would like to filter down to 10 or 15 people that can be compared in order to find the most qualified. This isn’t always possible but it’s what I like to see. Because the more I have to compare against, the more likely I am to find a well-qualified person.
Will I always make a good choice? No. If that happens, the key is to get rid of them really fast and start the process over. One of the best ways to limit the chances of hiring someone who doesn’t work out is to give them that test project first to see how they handle it.
Here are some questions from people looking into using outsourcing to the Philippines for the first time ask:
Q. How do I pay them?
A. PayPal or Xoom. PayPal actually owns Xoom. (pronounced zoom).
Q. How do I know they are working?
A. You gave them a task…go look and see if it’s complete. Or you can tell them to email or text you letting you know when it’s finished.
Q. Can we trust these people?
A. At first you don’t know if you can trust them. It’s not like Fiverr where they have reviews. This is more like hiring people face-to-face. If you’re hiring people to work in your office, you don’t have reviews, but you have a resume.
This is just you and them; there is no third party you’re hiring them through. The PH website is just a database of people. You can minimize risk by having them do small jobs first and gradually trust them with bigger jobs. The secret is be slow to hire and quick to fire (if they don’t work out).
After all you can’t afford to keep a person on board hoping they eventually figure out how to do what you need them to do.
As you outsource here, you’ll find the vast majority of these people are highly educated and easy to work with. Your job is to find the right person to match your personality and who match the skills needed for the task.
I’ve been talking about hiring one person but remember, your objective is to assemble a team of people. Each person is an expert in something specific, and I only need them on a project basis. But once I use them on one project, I have built a relationship with them.
They know what I want and I know what they can do and how they work. I
now can go back to the same person each time I need their particular skillset. They become my “go to” person for, as an example, graphics. They are part of my team, but I only use them and pay them on an “as needed” basis.
I may have one or two working on a monthly basis (either full-time or part-time), for example, a virtual assistant, the rest are on a project basis. I would always suggest you hire them on a project basis before you put them on a monthly payroll.
This is a simple process. I can get it narrowed down to 5 or 10 people in 30 minutes or less.
