Outsourcing to India - Experiment 5 - Craigslist Bangalore - continued!

Well so far my new VA has done two weeks of work for me. So far so good.

Pros:
- my work is at last getting done
- accounting work is being finished… that isn’t much fun I’ll admit.

Cons:
- not on my time zone
- not doing 40 hours a week
- roadblocks cause serious problems.

I don’t know, but it just seems that the amount of time taken doesn’t really match what I think… but it could just be that. Maybe I just happen to work fast.

I illustrated this with an employee several years back. Our company provided tech support to advertising firms before I sold out to my business partner (and within 6 months everyone had lost their job… but that’s another story).

I had one employee who was particularly slow. He had been reprimanded about this several time and didn’t see how he was slow. I told him “We have a software update to do on all machines. You can do half the agency, I will do the other half.” Long story short, it took me half a day, he gave up on the challenge after 3 days.

Even more interesting was the fact that when I told the agency I was going to fire him, they were upset. I said, “OK, I’m not going to fire him, I’m just going to stop paying him for his work.” He was a contract person with me and he was at the end of his contract. It was an easy parting. I let him know that on Monday he would no longer be paid. Monday he showed up… the agency hired him. Turns out he was a good drug connection for many employees at that agency. 3 months later when they realized he did not work, they had to fire him… but as a full time employee he demanded severance and extended benefits and more…

It’s too bad there wasn’t someone who noticed this in the first place!

But the things I need done from my VAs are:
- obtaining art gallery show bookings for my work
- updating existing accounting entries
- currently sourcing business affiliate partnerships for another project

I’m taking a trip to Vegas in the next week or so (hopefully), but I’m not ready to leave the arrangements to my VA.