I’ve been playing around a little with outsourcing on a few projects I’ve been running recently on oDesk, just to keep things moving on various websites I have.
It’s been an experience, but it’s been worthwhile – I’ve been able to keep a few things moving whilst I’ve been on holiday. With a laptop which I took on my travels, it was easy.
Whilst I’ve been happy with the results so far, it’s been a learning experience, but this is a fairly nifty tip I picked up.
Basically, when you create a project, one of the most important things to do is communication – like pretty much anything online. If you have a good communication with your outsourcee (is that a word?), then problems will be negated. To test how well the outsourcer reads is this:-
Include in your job description an outlandish statement that people wouldn’t do. Something like “the last word of the application must be ‘weddings’.”, or – what I do – “Please address your application to Commander Zorg of The Interstellar Nebula”.
This immeidately removes time wasters or spammers who just copy & paste blurb saying their wonderful or lovely or that they kiss babies foreheads, whereas a shorter more to the point message that meets your requirements will get through.
I’ve known people to say that the first message should be in haiku form, as not only does it show that they understand, but also that they are more interested in the role than simply sending in their CV.
Do you have any tips for outsourcing?
