Virtual assistant

shangri la

Can anyone recommend a recruitment website for online/virtual assistants?

It would be very basic but time consuming excel data entry so I would be looking more towards the cheapest of the reliable options and it would be about 15 hours per week, 20 weeks a year. I'm thinking more along the lines of India.

Have you any experience with this and what would be the best way to pay them? Moneybookers?

Thanks.

The Apprentice

Odesk or freelancers..

Both are full of scammers but also are full of hungry people that need work to pay bills.. make sure u pick someone with some good refs. Be clear and concise what u want done or you,ll waste a day when they come back an d say ohh i didnt do that because u didnt tell me attitudes..
They take payments through the websites only i would suggest until u can find a more suitable person to take on .. the majority take paypal.

The websites themselves take any credit cards etc, so you shouldnt have a problem and they PAY OUT to the actual worker in any method such as moneybookers, paypal etc..
Its a tough shell to crack but generally there are some good workers out there but for every one you find you,ll have to fire 3

JD Dublin

We use a firm in Nairobi, Kenya. After a lot of heartache and false dawns, we have got some reliable people to do spreadsheet and word processing work for us. Please PM me if you need further detail on rates of pay etc.

Chet Zar

I wouldn't use Indian or overseas firms for this. Support Irish I would say, as long as they are providing good value. There are quite a few VA sole traders/small companies based in Ireland on Twitter if you do a search. I'd imagine their rates are very good and of course they are in the same time zone and only a quick phone call away at any hour.

JD Dublin

Chet Zar wrote: »

I wouldn't use Indian or overseas firms for this. Support Irish I would say, as long as they are providing good value. There are quite a few VA sole traders/small companies based in Ireland on Twitter if you do a search. I'd imagine their rates are very good and of course they are in the same time zone and only a quick phone call away at any hour.

Yes what you say is true. We started to use people in Kenya when you could not get reliable people here at good rates back before our current economic woes.

We have continued to use them because they are reliable and reasonably priced. While we work away here on our day-to-day stuff, we know that outsourced workers are making progress on other more mundane jobs eg keying in Exdel sheets, word-processing and so forth. And there is quite a difference in rates paid.

I would not use an overseas service to answer phones, organise events, to do credit control etc as they are not equipped to do that sort of work.

The Apprentice

Chet Zar wrote: »

I wouldn't use Indian or overseas firms for this. Support Irish I would say, as long as they are providing good value. There are quite a few VA sole traders/small companies based in Ireland on Twitter if you do a search. I'd imagine their rates are very good and of course they are in the same time zone and only a quick phone call away at any hour.

He said cheap.. For the price of labour for those 15 hrs per week you could hire someone full time with a college degree from another country for 1 month.. Im sorry to say but ireland has priced itself out of the market on this topic !

TheCostumeShop.ie: Ronan

The Apprentice wrote: »

He said cheap.. For the price of labour for those 15 hrs per week you could hire someone full time with a college degree from another country for 1 month.. Im sorry to say but ireland has priced itself out of the market on this topic !

Dont give up on Ireland, were not forsaken yet.

Out sourcing while it can be done profitably isn't easy, there are language barriers and cheap hourly rates don't always translate to cheapest to get the job done. There is set up costs to training the person, then you have to check all the work to ensure accuracy. You need back-up incase they are sick or a better project comes their way etc.

In terms of Excel data entry, while this might not be the case, double check that you are not just outsourcing a pointless exercise. Outsourcing something that should be automated is a really bad idea. There is software that can scan and translate information into programs, then Macro's in excel which can import, sort, calculate and format work that you may be trying to do manually.

If it's not automated-able, ie. it requires human thinking and not following processes, then work out if you will really get X units of output per hour VS the Y outputs that may be available if you supported Irish jobs. I'm not saying outsourcing is bad but just double check that the effort in setting up the outsourced work is worth pushing the money overseas. In a lot of cases I've seen outsourcing in a small capacity has been more costly than keeping it local.

Chet Zar

The Apprentice wrote: »

He said cheap.. For the price of labour for those 15 hrs per week you could hire someone full time with a college degree from another country for 1 month.. Im sorry to say but ireland has priced itself out of the market on this topic !

He also said reliable though!

It's really about value - if you are spending twice the amount of time that your tasks should take chasing people on the internet or sending stuff back that isn't done right due to cultural difference or linguistic misunderstandings, then you are actually spending more outright - meaning the Irish VAs are actually cheaper!

bon ami

Firstly let me declare my vested interest I run a telephone answering service and provide a range of VA services to Irish Businesses.

I have to agree with keeping the work in Ireland. If we are ever to recover our economy we need to create jobs and outsourcing to foreign countries is not the best way to do that. Also although it can be cheaper it can have its draw backs. Some examples

1. The HSE/Tallaght Hospital outsourcing data processing to The Philippines and then discovering they have problems with confidentiality.

2. A White Goods manufacture outsourcing their service desk to Cairo and apart from language problems having great difficulty during the riots and fighting in Egypt as staff could not report to work.

3. My own experience with having to interpret between an IT technician ( Foreign excellent English but distinct accent) sent to solve a problem in our office and the help desk based in India again good English but even heavier accent. Neither could understand the other and I found it difficult to understand the guy on the help desk so what should have been a relatively easy task, became a long winded process with me in the centre.

In my own business , there are a number of products and services which I could source abroad cheaper but I chose not to as I believe in supporting Irish Business and our economy.