Hiring Workers on the Internet

Doug Allendougallen@allensconsulting.com

• 345,000 new business joined Elance• 80,000+ jobs are being posted each month• 779,000 new freelancers joined Elance• $200 million was earned by freelancers

Agenda

• 5 Examples

•Quick Overview

• 2-3 Project Examples

•Tips and Pitfalls

• Request an Invite

• Get Profiled

• Meet your Assistant

• Assign Tasks

• Pay

and reminding you of the appointment as the day draw nears ex: haircut, massage, manicure.

• Finding and ordering a case of the same wine you and your husband drank on your wedding day for your 10 year anniversary.

• Finding an Apple store in the city you're visiting that has the newest iPhone in stock and then texting you the coordinates and hours of operation.

• Securing a reservation at a posh restaurant and offering a suggestion of night spots your party of 8 could go to later in the evening.

• Calling the 7 spots you visited in Vegas last weekend to recover your lost ID and arrange for it to be shipped back.

• Research writers at the 5 major newspapers who are active on Twitter to write about the tech space.

• Contact 4 star hotels in the Chicago area for prices on renting out a ballroom for an upcoming event.

• Handle calendar, e-mail, outbound calling

• Travel itinerary, reservations, booking

• Transcribing, copy-editing and proof-reading

• Social media research and posting

• Purchases

• Data entry to Presentation formatting

assistants can…

• Manage projects or teams or hire/fire people

• Do accounting

• Create content (press, blogs, copy, etc.)

• Design work or photo/video editing

• Lead generation or sales calling

• Handle in-bound calls

• Manage your social media

assistants can’t…

• $97 – Light Plan– US-based Assistant– 15 15-minute requests

• $197 – Premium Plan– Dedicated Assistant– Up to 10 hours– E-mail and Phone support

• $397 – Executive Plan– Up to 20 hours– Same day turn-around

• $997 – VIP Plan– Up to 50 hours– Night and Weekend– E-mail, Phone and SMS support

Pay for by the month

• $97 – Light Plan– US-based Assistant– 15 15-minute requests

• $197 – Premium Plan– Dedicated Assistant– Up to 10 hours– E-mail and Phone support

• $397 – Executive Plan– Up to 20 hours– Same day turn-around

• $997 – VIP Plan– Up to 50 hours– Night and Weekend– E-mail, Phone and SMS support

Pay for by the month

Assigned to 6-10 clients

Assigned to 4-6 clients

Assigned to 2-4 clients

• Accounts are recurring monthly subscriptions that can be cancelled at any time

• You can add users (other execs) to your account for $100 per month

• Top two tiers get a ZA@yourdomain.com e-mail

• E-mail delegates for Gmail only, not Outlook

• Share CC info over the phone; other sensitive data via their secure link

• Web Development

– Design and programming; Ecommerce; UI Design

• Software Development

– Desktop and Mobile; Game dev; Scripts and Utilities

• Networking and Information Systems

– Network/Server Admin; DBA; ERP & CRM

• Design and Multimedia

– Graphic/Logo/Print Design; Audio and Video Production; Engineering and Technical Design; 3D modeling and CAD

Technical Categories

• Writing and Translation– Tech/Creative writing; Website/blog/article; Translation

• Administrative Support– Data entry; Assistant; Transcription; E-mail Handling

• Customer Service– Tech Support; Order Processing; Phone Customer Service

• Sales and Marketing– Advertising and PR; SEO/SEM/SMM; E-mail and

Telemarketing; Market research; Sales/Lead Generation; Business Plans; Marketing Strategy

• Business Services– Accounting/Bookkeeping; HR/Recruiting/Payroll; Legal;

Payment Processing; Financial Planning; Stat Analysis

Office Categories

Best Bookkeepers

Best Bookkeepers

• Create an Account

• Create a Job Posting– Think of the skills required, not a job description

– Pay by hour or by project

– Work with Individuals or Agencies

– Pre-qualify with questions and ratings

• Select from Applicants

• Monitor the work – Communicate frequently

• Accept the work and Pay

• Give Feedback

Process

10% fee

• Register

• Post your job

• Select a free-lancer

• Put money in escrow

• Monitor work

• Accept work and Pay

• Give Feedback

Process

8.75% fee

• Work of a wide variety for $5 per job– Advertising

– Video & Animation

– Graphics and Design

– Programming and Tech

– Music and Audio

– Online Marketing

– Writing and Translation

• That’s pretty much the whole story

• A marketplace for work that requires human intelligence

• Jobs are called Human Intelligence Tasks or HITs

• Register as a REQUESTER and create your HITs

– Excellent instructions

– Rate for each HIT and time estimated for completion

• Require qualifications

• Review and pay for the work 10% fee

Use Mechanical Turk for:

HITs

Find the largest possible image of the given real estate agent, then copy the IMAGE URL and paste it into the provided field.

$.04 for this work. 9,771 Websites to work

HITs

Mechanical Turk Master

Masters are elite groups of Workers who have demonstrated accuracy on specific types of HITs on the Mechanical Turk marketplace. Workers achieve a Masters distinction by consistently completing HITs of a certain type with a high degree of accuracy across a variety of Requesters. Masters must continue to pass our statistical monitoring to remain Mechanical Turk Masters.

Masters receive special perks including:•Exclusive access to work that requires a Master Qualification•Access to a private forum available only to Masters

Please note that Workers cannot apply for this status - it is a performance based distinction. The best thing a Worker can do to become a Master is to submit Assignments with accurate results across a wide variety of Requesters on the Mechanical Turk marketplace.

• Crowd-sourced writing and design jobs

• Submit a detailed project request

• Get 10’s of job submissions

• Feedback loop improves everyone’s work

• Rate each submission until the deadline

• Choose the winning entry and that person gets paid.

WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?

THE SOLUTION?

• Great genes

• Proper technique

• Correct coaching

• Advanced conditioning

• Hard work

WHO IS ISTVAN “STEVE” JAVOREK?

• Former Romanian Olympic Weightlifting coach

• Dragomir (bronze) and Tasnadi (silver) at 1984 Olympics

• All-sports conditioning coach at Texas A&M

• 1986 Floyd Heard world’s best 200 meter (1st in ‘87 Pan American Games)

• Arturo Barrios – 10,000 meter world record holder

• Randy Barnes – Olympic Shot putter (’88 silver and ‘96 gold)

• Head Strength and Conditioning Coach at Johnson County Community College

• Five National Champs, 78 region VI titles and 119 East Jayhawk Championships

• Kareem Rush, Wayne Simien, Sumya Anani and others

• Romania’s highest coaching honor – the Emeritus Coaching Award

• 2003 inducted into the USA Strength and Conditioning Hall of Fame

Review the CSS work

To Fiverr for Excel

Things were going well enough

that I asked for a custom

module be created and I

wanted Poya to do the work

Thanks for this information. My brother faced the same problem. he is all tensed and worried. He is getting sick just thinking on this issue. He shared all the issues with me few days back. he thought his issue will be resolved but oDesk is saying that his issue has been submitted to another department. All I am trying to say. There are works he couldn't submit good work. may be 10 out of 50. But also there are works where he did fantastic. And the ratio to good:bad= 3:1. And the main part is he understand his mistakes and promised that he won't do anything wrong that will impact badly on oDesk. So, is there any chance if he gets a chance to work on odesk soon. Cause I saw him how happy he was with oDesk. He can't stay without work and now he is out of work for 4-5 days. He always recommend other people and his friends to join oDesk.

Benefits of Internet Workers

Can be very inexpensive

Scales easily – hire when you need to

Make you more productive

They can work while you’re sleeping

Supplement your skillset

Expand your skillset

Part-timers – no healthcare costs

Great for experiments and new ideas

Potential Problems

Not an employee, so some loss of control

They might

Quit or Get too busy

Charge you more

Screw up

Your stuff gets stolen

Company and project “know how” is

outside somewhere

If you don’t manage time zones, it can take

longer

They’ll lie about their skills

The Relationship

Contractual – but who’s contract?

Based on mutual trust

Gets summed up with a 5-point ranking – and it’s

hard for people to be fair

Both sides get rated, scored and commented on

Treat others with respect and it goes a long way

Tips

Plan (budget) for problems and re-doing work

Communicate using Skype

Work late or very early hours

Stick with Americans if you prefer

Play around with very small projects

Technology workers should seek out partners

Designers should seek out partners

Check with your clients to see if they care

Tips

Study the profiles

Hours worked and the types of jobs

Ratings and what was said

Until you trust them

Small projects with quick milestones

Work you know exactly how to do (but

don’t have time)

Hourly work with lots of monitoring of results

Fixed price projects with milestones

Tips (con’t)

Red flag: their profile is perfect English,

but the Skype interview reveals

something else

Grab some key phrases from the profile

and Google-check to see if it’s someone

else’s

Google-check name and location

Best tip I Seen

GOOD SPECIFICATION OF YOUR REQUESTS!!!

especially for fixed price project, should be

learned at start. This is very important as

job postings of type "I want like this and

link" and expecting mind reading are very

bad practice and start for disaster, as

developer isn't possible to be aware of all

options of sample link (brute force scan

clicking), will loss time and give far from

precise estimate time and move

development in wrong direction