Looking for advice on hiring a VA

cougarclaws

cougarclaws

Señor Member
Jul 14, 2008
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Houston, TX
I'm looking to hire some VAs and train them to do some work outside the scope of IM work. I need VAs to do estimates of architectural plans in a construction trade.

The work involves a lot of using the measuring tools in Acrobat Pro. Its repetitive, task-oriented work but there are steps that have to be followed. I'll be making some training videos walking them through the process.

Average estimate of a plan takes about 20-40 mins. Its easy once you get the hang of it, but if they cut corners margins on the work will come in bad -- so I have to get accuracy on their work (which I'll be checking up on a lot their first few weeks). I'm thinking the way to go is pay a monthly wage and incentivize them working faster with bonuses once they get the hang of it.

What do you all recommend as a monthly pay for this kind of work?
Where do you all recommend I source a VA that can be trained to do something outside the usual tasks in demand by IMers but is repetitive process-oriented?
What do you all recommend for keeping tabs on their work? I'd like to be able to see them working.
 


cougarclaws said:
What do you all recommend as a monthly pay for this kind of work?
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This is a really domain specific query. It's probably not likely someone here knows this domain. I'd check industry journals and such for employment ads, and see if they give a salary range.

cougarclaws said:
Where do you all recommend I source a VA that can be trained to do something outside the usual tasks in demand by IMers but is repetitive process-oriented?
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Do you want a VA or an employee? Can you trust this to some random dude you will never meet from Asia?

Character matters when it comes to following a process and delivering consistent results.

cougarclaws said:
What do you all recommend for keeping tabs on their work? I'd like to be able to see them working.
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Use one of the really shitty organizational tools out there like Basecamp. It's not great, but it will kinda do the job if you hack away at it.

hth
 
cougarclaws said:
Where do you all recommend I source a VA that can be trained to do something outside the usual tasks in demand by IMers but is repetitive process-oriented?
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Eastern Europe will probably be the cheapest as far as getting decent quality more technical work done without fuckups. If that doesn't cut it, then you might have to look at somebody here in the states.

As far as general hiring and finding of VAs goes, here's an old post that covers a lots of basics:

Gertex said:
Depending on what the task is, I agree with oDesk and bestjobs.ph.

The most important part in finding good employees are a good interview process and your own management skills.

In the interview process on odesk/elance give them these questions. If they are really interested in the job, they will answer and it helps to weed out 75% of the wannabe VA's, not motivated, etc. BEFORE ever interviewing them (time savings).

Examples questions when looking for a general VA on oDesk/elance/etc.:

a) Who is the Quarterback for the St. Louis Rams and what is his current TD/INT ratio?
b) What programs are currently available for article spinning?
c) What are the top 5 keywords people use to search for office furniture?
d) What are your top 5 Wordpress plug ins and why?
e) If I would ask you for 3 wordpress themes that would fit a country western site which would you recommend? How about a fitness site for women? (Please send me to the locations where I can look at them)
f) In 100 words: What about this job interests you? How do you think you can contribute?

Reasons:

a) Lets you see how familiar with American culture they are. While you think this question is no big deal, someone in India or PH with no background about American Football will have NO clue what you are talking about. This will also give you insight into their research capabilities. Will they send you just the starting qb info? Info for all qb's on the roster?
b) Gives you a quick overview if they have any SEO knowledge, do they know what article spinning is? how to do it? what programs are out there. Also, as a bonus they will sometimes surprise you and throw out a program you have not heard about
c) Keyword research skills
d) Wordpress skills, plus you get an example on how they think and what they value
e) Wordpress theme skills and it will give you an insight into their design/cultural skills. You'd be surprised what they consider country western/fitness in india/ph
f) Here you'll get a good idea about their article writing skills, general language skills and why they would be interested in the job.

If they are interested in the job and are a real 'hustler' they find answers to all the questions. Their answers will give a huge amount of information about them and you can narrow your list down to the top 5/top 10. From there you start the actual interview to see if you personally mesh with them and find the best 3 VA's for the job. Hire them for a one to two week trial. Usually, from there you'll find one or two individuals you like to work with for an extended amount of time.

Always make sure you have two VA's from different areas available at the same time. Sick days, bad weather, death in the family etc. can be a real killer when you are on a tight deadline. From there, have those two help you to find more VA's for you. Just make sure they are independent from each other so that they don't have the ability to shut your business down etc..

$$ depend from country to country. A decent 'general VA' in PH should run around $250-$300 a month. Throw in some technical skills and good English knowledge and you are looking around $400.

If you are looking for someone to write GOOD articles and ebooks, copy etc. I would ALWAYS look local first. It's not worth the money savings to dick around with some of the most important part of your business. 95% of the time you can tell a non-native writer...

Second big part is how good you are in managing a VA. Are your instructions clear and understandable? Do you know the actual 'work' involved? Have you ever done the same work before yourself? Do you have rough metrics how long a task like this 'should' take? Can you pay by the project or do you do by the hour? Are you instructions clear and understandable? (Yes, it's repeated on purpose). Do you have little camtasia training videos on how EXACTLY your VA is suppose to perform your work? In the beginning, you should spot check their work more frequently and then let go slowly, once comfortable with their output.

I've learned the hard way that most of the time that I have a crappy employee, it's because "I" am a crappy manager and do not give them the proper tools to succeed (Time, education, proper instructions, etc.).

Hope this helps someone...
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guerilla said:
Do you want a VA or an employee?
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If they're overseas, what's the difference? Again, I'm new to this.

guerilla said:
Can you trust this to some random dude you will never meet from Asia?
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That remains to be seen. I can see how this could blow up in my face by I need to take some risks to up my productivity. I want someone who intrinsically cares about doing their job right. I figure finding the right people for this is simply trial and error.
 
cougarclaws said:
If they're overseas, what's the difference? Again, I'm new to this.



That remains to be seen. I can see how this could blow up in my face by I need to take some risks to up my productivity. I want someone who intrinsically cares about doing their job right. I figure finding the right people for this is simply trial and error.
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a VA (most of the times here on Wickedfire) usually implies more or less generialized type of labor.

for instance most VA's can whip up a quick banner ad, give you 500 words of "OK" content, and do tons of data processing but won't be a master designer or eloquent writer.

when you start looking for someone that has uber specific skills then it kind of falls outside of the VA relm, epecially what you are looking for.

me personally - id scour some forums that are related to what you are looking for and see if you can cherrypick someone who is really good but hard up for cash.

hiring a VA via normal routes usually winds up bad IME.

good luck my friend.
 
I know a couple of architecture students who would be great for the job. As far as i remember, they design in Acrobat, Rhinoceros and Maya. PM me if you want me to get you in touch with them.

Also, if you can manage to get a couple of students from your city, it would make your work a whole lot easier and more efficient as this is an industry specific technical work. Students always be surfing for cash.
 
Kiopa_Matt said:
It's up to you to give them the incentive to do their job right.
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I get where you are coming from on this but I don't agree with you 100%. Some people will work their asses off for peanuts while others just don't give a fuck and will never deliver effort regardless of the incentive. That's outside of my control and something I need to figure out when I interview.
 
shawnhag said:
when you start looking for someone that has uber specific skills then it kind of falls outside of the VA relm, epecially what you are looking for.
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The thing is, ANYBODY can learn to do this -- but I think it does take the right personality to be content doing it. I hate doing them myself but have seen super introverted analytical types who kill it. But yeah, its outside of the usual skillset so maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree targeting VA's.

shawnhag said:
me personally - id scour some forums that are related to what you are looking for and see if you can cherrypick someone who is really good but hard up for cash.
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good idea.
 
SideGeek said:
I know a couple of architecture students who would be great for the job. As far as i remember, they design in Acrobat, Rhinoceros and Maya. PM me if you want me to get you in touch with them.

Also, if you can manage to get a couple of students from your city, it would make your work a whole lot easier and more efficient as this is an industry specific technical work. Students always be surfing for cash.
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I think that would be a better way to go but its hard to ignore the prospect of this only costing $100/wk which I believe is what a lot of VAs work for.
 
cougarclaws said:
I think that would be a better way to go but its hard to ignore the prospect of this only costing $100/wk which I believe is what a lot of VAs work for.
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Its the same repetitive technical work right? The cost totally depends on the person you are hiring. If one person finds this work easy, can do it quickly and find $400/month + bonus a good easy way to make some extra cash, he/she would gladly take it. If the person isn't experienced with the tools, needs to learn how to do it and would take time to get used to it, he/she might ask for more than just $100/wk because of the extra effort being put into it to complete the task.

Thats why i suggested architecture students as they are more likely to take the job and prevent you from pulling your hair out.
 
I have an ex brother in law who does construction estimates/take-offs for a living. He charges per square ft I believe. I could put you in touch if you want.
 
Odesk. You can watch their work through Odesk's team admin. Plenty of $2/hr workers to be had. It will take awhile of weeding through to find the ones that are actually willing to put in work and be reliable.

I don't worry about skills for the most part and just look for whoever can communicate well. Miscommunications will cause 90% of your problems.

I've taught plenty of VA's niche tasks like you're talking about. You just have to find the right VA's and provide the training.

The only thing that really sucks about Odesk is their fees are a bit high.
 
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