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Outsourcing

The 6 critical mistakes that employers continue to make on Elance

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I have spent waaaaay too much money on Elance over the past several years but every dollar has been absolutely worth it. For those who don’t know, Elance is the best (in my opinion) online marketing talent marketplace online. The site serves as a project management middleman between vendors and clients who work online.

Every day hundreds of thousands of people use the site to work in a virtual project space and lots of amazing websites, web tools and applications come from Elance.

Managing talent on Elance however can be a little tricky. As a former IT project manager, I have seen contractors pull all types of tricks and shenanigans. Online is no different.

Here are the 6 critical mistakes that employers continue to make on Elance.

Never select only one contractor at a time

select-only-oneWhen you have been on Elance for a while, you develop a network of trusted go-to resources who are reliable and can work as a well oiled virtual team for you.

Getting to that point however isn’t always a smooth process.

When you open up a job, get responses and select a vendor, Elance gives you the option to keep the job open even after you have selected a vendor.

Use it.

For small to medium jobs, before I had my virtual team, I would assume I would get 3 or 4 vendors who would misrepresent their skills so I would hire 2 or 3 at a time.

For cheaper jobs, I would take the chance that I would have to pay 3 times because it was worth it to get the deliverable in a timely manner. For more expensive jobs, I would hire several contractors at once and then do the next step.

Always set up an early milestone

So this is a medium to large project and you want to make sure you have the right talent. You also have 3 people who SWEAR they can do this job.

Create an early test or milestone for these vendors. The odds of all of them getting it right the first time is very low.

Make it a tough but fair task and be willing to pay for it. If any vendor fails this task, cut them right there.

Trust me you’ll be saving yourself a world of pain by cutting them early.

Never fund escrow unless you ABSOLUTELY have to

This one is controversial but it has saved my ass time and time again. For those who may not know, Escrow is simply a third party trusted location where a buyer and seller can store the funds until a project or milestones are completed.

Elance has a pretty bulletproof escrow system and I use it often. The thing is, when I don’t have lots of confidence in the vendor I am selecting, I usually choose to fund escrow later.

Here’s how this helps – a small example. You hire a vendor to modify a graphic and they tell you it will take 2 days.

2 days later you check in and they say ” The internet was down in [insert India, Pakistan, China etc etc here] and they couldn’t get to it but it will be done tomorrow.

You check in the next day and their sister/brother had a [insert fake life event here car accident, was shot, hurt etc etc].

At this point 3 days later, it’s clear this isn’t going to work out.

Would you rather:

  1. Cancel and forget about this resource entirely (they owe you no money since you never placed money in escrow)
  2. Cancel and have to explain to Elance what they did and why you should get your money back and have them respond that you weren’t patient and back and forth etc?

Now let me make this clear, Elance are extremely good about refunds etc so you will almost never lose your money but the extra bureaucratic hassle is never worth it for me.

Always treat contractors with dignity

human-dignity

I live in California and life is good. I am always aware of the fact that the people who are working for me may be living in close to abject poverty. Twenty dollars for a small project could be the difference between that man or woman making rent or feeding their family that month.

A lot of the people who work for me are also decent, funny, brilliant people who are excited that they can be part of my projects and have gotten to know me. It’s a pretty cool thing if you really think about it.

Be firm with people but fair. If someone is asking for $20 and can do a tiny project for me with 90% quality. I’ll pay them $25 and clean the product up myself. It means a lot more to him/her than it means to me.

Next,

Make sure you pick your battles

Don’t spend time arguing with a contractor over pennies. If they can’t fix the work, move on and get another resource. The back and forth/argument time is often more expensive than the actual work itself.

You should ALWAYS trust your gut

Sometimes, you want to select a vendor but for some reason, it doesn’t sit right with you. It may not make sense, their qualifications may be pristine and they may be asking for the right price. It doesn’t matter.

Trust your instincts and wait for the right one.

Better to start late with the right resource than begin on time with a pain in the ass. It makes the entire project experience a lot more enjoyable.

Well that’s it.. the six critical mistakes that employers continue to make on Elance.

What about you? Have you experienced any of these mistakes? Use the comments below and let me know..

Onuora Amobi is a Digital Marketing Strategist. He implements digital marketing solutions to drive leads, increase conversions and grow revenue. He has an extensive background in both Digital Marketing and Enterprise Technology solutions.

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Business Development

10 reasons why every entrepreneur should hire and use virtual staff

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Most people make mistakes when starting out, and this is doubly true for online entrepreneurs. Even if you put in loads of extra hours into your business every day, and are doing well, you still are missing out on the sheer power that hiring and working with virtual staff provides.

The saying “If you want something done right, you do it yourself” still hold true in the online business world, but the right virtual staff establishes clarity in your business ventures, so you can focus working on your business, instead of in your business — major difference!

With that being said, here are 10 good reasons why every entrepreneur should look into hiring virtual staff, and the immense benefits this brings:

  1. The immediate benefit? You can say goodbye to longwinded and stressful days which you probably force on yourself by working too hard on areas you could easily hire others for.
  2. Virtual staffing means you do not have to worry about where to put your staff in the office, and other such office needs like supplies and computers.
  3. You can hire people for one-time jobs or one-off projects leading to earlier completion.
  4. No geographical constraints means that your business can run nonstop thanks to separate time zones. This is particularly helpful for businesses that offer services round-the-clock, 24/7.
  5. You can have your virtual staff update your social accounts like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn with new content regularly, ultimately growing your marketing and your business.
  6. Virtual assistants can take care of your mundane tasks, thereby leaving you more time to invest in improving the quality of your products and services.
  7. Outsourcing graphic design work to virtual staff will result in your promotional stuff looking amazing and professional, instead of something that is quickly thrown together.
  8. Working with a small army of virtual staff means you have to become more focused from an operational standpoint, have systems in place, and this mindset almost always allows for more growth.
  9. Hiring virtual assistants means you can outsource per projects, and spend only when required.
  10. And more importantly, virtual staff allow you to switch off more regularly, enjoy more time with friends and family, and sleep — all factors that have a say in you becoming a more fulfilled, happy and successful entrepreneur.
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Outsourcing

The other side – 6 critical mistakes that contractors make on Elance

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OK, so in my previous post, I had talked a little bit about some of the critical mistakes that employers make when they post jobs on Elance.

This time I want to turn this around and talk about vendors/contractors.

There are several mistakes that contractors continue to make on Elance that absolutely drive me bananas! It’s hard to watch because while I know that these things come from ignorance, it’s sad to see it cost contractors jobs that could help them feed their families.

So without further ado, here are the 6 critical mistakes that contractors make on Elance.

Contacting Employers outside of Elance

Man-Disgusted-phoneThis is a fun one.

I’ll post a job on Elance and then 3 hours later my phone will ring and it will be someone from some country telling me that they were calling me about the job.

NEVER contact someone on the phone who didn’t ask you to call them on the phone. It inspires a lot of disgust and is creepy. That person has a ZERO probability of getting the job.

It’s not clever or thinking outside the box. It’s rude.

Using fake names in order to make employers feel more comfortable

This one really gets me every time.

Hey newsflash – I really don’t expect to see “Richard Johnson” in Mumbai. Once I suspect a vendor is pretending or using a fake name, it makes me wonder, what else is this vendor lying about?

If you’re in a different part of the world, use your real name. If it’s really long, shorten it a little but use your real name.

It’ll be worth it in the end I promise.

Sending an unsolicited link to your portfolio

So as an employer, when I post a job on Elance, I’m VERY specific about what I am looking for from a project resource.

I add the description of the task, the duration, skillset expected, budget etc and I am extremely specific about insisting that only qualified resources contact me.

I usually also ask for 3 to 4 examples of when they have done something like my project before.

There’s always the rocket scientist who will read what I am looking for and respond with a link to his portfolio. Or even better, the genius who responds by sending me the links to the last 100 jobs they did.

The response is automatic – delete.

Contractors – read the detailed requirements and respond to only what the employer is asking for. No more and no less.

Don’t apply for a job you CLEARLY aren’t qualified for

This is a tough one because a lot of the resources who work on projects are ambitious and are always looking to do bigger and better things. Having said that though, sometimes it’s ridiculous.

If you have no programming background, maybe a medium to large PHP, HTML5 and Javascript project might not be the way to break into the business. I’m just saying.

Don’t miss deadlines that an employer gives you

deadlinesIn the post about employer mistakes, I talked about how employers should set tests and deadlines for contractors. If you aren’t sure what I’m talking about read that post. Basically just keep this in mind – every deadline you miss could be the last on that project.

Take employers seriously. They need work done by a certain time and when you don’t deliver that work, you become the problem.

Use a decent photograph for your profile

It’s really simple. If I have a medium to large project, I’m not going to give it to someone who looks like he/she needs that work to survive.

You dont have to make a lot of money to fix your hair, clean your face, wear a clean shirt or blouse, find a sunny day, find a friend with a camera phone and say cheese.

This is a business so treat it like one.

Those are my tips for contractors. Avoiding those 6 mistakes as an Elance contractor will probably raise your customer satisfaction ratings significantly.

What about you guys and girls? What have your outsourcing experiences taught you?

Use the comments below.

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