How to interview when Outsourcing ?

[attuk]

Interview questions

1. Daily status reports, must include difficulties that we can help you with
2. Weekly targets
3. Difficult first task , setup Wordpress, change theme, add Posts
4. VA not only writer
5. back linking
6. What is the speed of your broadband connection
7. Ask them to send an invoice, for monthly payment
8. NDA
9. 1 month probation trial
10. Jing
11. Ask them to work from 9-6 in their time
12. Payment ? Paypal , Moneybookers → not a big fan of this.

What do you ask them ?

Please add or comment on my list

 

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[Bobo]

This is actually part of my job. Typically when I scope a work estimate for a client I run it a couple ways and seperate out what I need to get done in house and what I can toss over the fence.

Your's is a little different situation but below are my thoughts


Interview questions

1. Daily status reports, must include difficulties that we can help you with Weekly? Uhm, no, Daily. When you are outsourcing offshore you need to talk to the offshore fols first thing in the morning as they are going to bed and find out what got done today. People meet your inspectations, not your expectations.
2. Weekly targets Yes, but spend the time to be fine grained, learn MS-Project and be a detail weenie when dealing with offshore resources.
3. Difficult first task , setup Wordpress, change theme, add Posts Consider making these fixed fee and clearly define deliverables/quality. Use EXAMPLES and make sure instructions are written LITERALLY because they will be taken LITERALLY. You can only imagine what my love of metaphors can do when processed through the ears of someone in India.
4. VA not only writer
5. back linking
6. What is the speed of your broadband connection And availability of power. Easy way to check is to talk on Skype.
7. Ask them to send an invoice, for monthly payment For what you are doing I would recommend fixed fee with clearly defined targets. I can review these for you.
8. NDA Good luck with that unless they have an onshore presence. If you are going to share valuable IP then you need to deal with someone who has offices in the US. Physical offices and personnel under the jurisdiction of US courts.
9. 1 month probation trial Why so generous? At will, fixed fee. U deliver I pay you, U don't I replace you. I'm a sweetheart outside of work but when it is my a$$ on the line it's my game, my rules.
10. Jing
11. Ask them to work from 9-6 in their time PM to Am? I do this sometimes depending on the level of interaction required. For what you are doing a daily status call when you wake up or before you go to bed works. Consider night for you, morning for them. You wake up and it's like the elves made shoes all night. (Yeah, don't use that analogy)
12. Payment ? Paypal , Moneybookers → not a big fan of this. I've done well over $1M in paypal transactions and it is a good system. Setup a bank account JUST FOR PAYPAL if you have any worries. Paypal protects the payer more than the payee.

You need to do some financials here too. For what I do, I can't replace a "Level 5" (arbitrary) resource with a Level 5 offshore. I need a level 5 and a level 3 and have to manage them a lot more.

More about fixed fee:
Have them quote you three numbers: weekly and monthly, then fixed fee per task.

Then during the trial period use 100% fixed fee. This may appear to be more expensive, keep reading.
On fixed fee they are going to work fast and get the work done so they can be paid. PAY IMMEDIATELY.
After a month or two what happens? You know EXACTLY what they can do in a week. Then talk about the weekly plan and you will get literally twice the work because there is no padding they can do - you know the numbers.

FWIW - when I run an estimate and then ask for an offshore estimate the number comes back a LOT bigger than mine in hours. Do what I suggested above and you will be able to set precise, measurable work expectations on that weekly price.

Yeah, that's a little sneaky, so is padding the estimate and I'm consulting for you, not them.

 

[attuk]

Wow Bobo you are just brilliant !!!
Thanks and speed added.

A few questions

1.John Jonas advocates giving your credit card, paypal , adwords account login details when outsourcing, wouldn't this be a disaster ?

2. Currently I am using basecamp, and mindmaps from mindmeister should I shift to MS-Project? guess the only problem is MS Project is not could based.

 

[Bobo]

Wow Bobo you are just brilliant !!!
Thanks and speed added.

John Jonas advocates giving your credit card, paypal , adwords account login details when outsourcing, wouldn't this be a disaster ?

I think John Jonas should give ME all of those things.

It depends.

If you need them to do stuff for you in those accounts then you have to give access. In Paypal you can restrict access for some users. (My shipping folks had that).

It's a matter of degree. How much money do they need to move? Prepaid debit cards, a bank account tied to and used solely for Paypal... you can manage risk here.

Actually my real life job involves defining roles and entitlements within an organization - you want to give people the minimum tools they need to perform their job and you restrict their access to everything else.

Think about what access they MUST have, provide that and nothing else. If I setup a paypal account linked only to a bank account with $100 in it and a Debit card with $X on it you can't go very far. If it costs you $200 to find out somone is a thief then wow, that's a great investment. The thieving scumbags who've taken advantage of me prior to my gaining sufficient distrust usually cost me thousands before I caught on. Put those accounts in the name of a corporation and manage your businesses independently to limit exposure while you're at it. Then there is the simple stuff: set a password different than what you usually use, no personally identifiable info and of course, watch for scams. If you aren't sure it is legit, post and ask to this forum as there are some immensely sensitive bullshit detectors around here.

 

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[attuk]

Thanks Bobo
It was time for more SPEED, but the system said
"You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Bobo again"
The deserved speed will be added soon !

I actually spent months debating these things in my head

I guess you would give server passwords also the same way , on a need to know basis with highly managed and isolated risk.
How would you outsource someone to access say wordpress on a shared server ? how do you manage risk ? for example would you just use 1 site per server and then give controlled access to that ?

 

[Bobo]

Great question but time for the Wordpress experts to chime in.

I have a dozen or so blog sites in my head, have the domains setup but haven't started on them yet. Been wicked busy with my slowlane job for the past few months

 

[LightHouse]

Great advice Bobo!

 

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[faq88]

Thanks a lot. This helped me out. Speed +++

 

[snowbank]

This is actually part of my job.

I'd be really interested in hearing about this if you felt like starting a thread on it or something.

 

[Bobo]

Snowbank...
I know your business and if you need to outsource work we can talk. I would happily help you write up requirements and interview offshore developers but I am not cheap, it will cost you a beer and and an hour of poker advice for each hour I spend helping you I think I owe you a dozen hours already though for teaching Jill to play, damn.

It just occured to me that I'm kinda pulling from multiple sources here.

• I've had an online businesss where I learned about Paypal and letting employees have limited access to systems in order to do their work.
• Professionally I'm in technology consulting where a significant portion of the work is outsourced overseas
• Jill has been using outsourcing to get web and wordpress stuff done over the past year

So I am kinda combining experiences a bit in my suggestions and talking about two very different types of outsourcing.
The firm I work for has facilities overseas where development work is done at a lower cost. As an example, for US and English speaking work it is done in India. There are facilities for Spanish speaking work, French etcetera.

The large technology firms don't do nearly as much coding onshore these days. When I got out of graduate school if you were an expert coder it was lucrative and in high demand. Today, the technology market is very different.

• Coding has been commoditized: A java coder is worth a certain amount per hour, ditto PERL Scripting, XML, Sql....
• The demand and money now is much higher for those who architect the solutions by defining the requirements and design of the solution working with the client

So for example, my clients are typically Fortune 100 type firms. I generally work with their IT security and internal audit departments in my specialty area. A typical project might be say 10000 total hours. From a staffing perspective, my job is to figure out how to

• Keep our bid competitive
• Ensure quality of work
• Get'r done (Channeling Larry the Cable Guy again)

So typically I am going to break those 10,000 hours out to 5-10 resources in a phased approach. For some phases I need 3 guys who really understand the business the client is in and the subject matter we are dealing with, for others I need 10 technical guys who can bang out code 10 hours per day. The first three guys have to write up very specific, detailed, measurable requirements before I can toss the design and requirements over the fence to the development team. The trick is in figuring out how to break it up and then manage remote teams on a daily basis. For my work, it isn't like I have to find the outsourcing firm because we ARE the outsourcing firm and the offshore folks use the same set of processes and structure we use. One nice advantage I have was pointed out by a C level exec at my current client last week. He said "The big advantage your firm has is that you can toss something over your shoulder and know that it won't hit the ground - three smart guys are gonna catch it and run with it". He's right about that.

I've also worked with the outsourcing model under less favorable conditions and found that it can be a nightmare if you don't manage it perfectly.

So.... kinda mixing some very varied experiences together I think the keys are:

1. Be detailed: Jill does HR consulting and told an offshore team that the requirements for the dropdown box for 'suffix' in the name field should have the standard stuff, Jur, III, Esq etcetera. Whoooops, she did that verbally and got back a list with "Junior", "The Third" and "Esquire". Know that you can only hope to get what you ask for, not what you mean, when dealing with outsourcing to a country where the language and customs may be very different.
2. Set specific expectations. You may be dealing with 'silly cheap' resources. Jill gets WP work done for peanuts, like $10/hr and from resources who are very good at straight forward technical tasks. You can't beat that here. That's probably a guy with an engineering degree doing the work so he/she is smart and well educated but they don't understand your business.
3. Measure. Look, the first rule of managing anything is that people will do what is inspected, not what is expected. That holds true most of the time. In outsourcing, it becomes more important.
4. Use outsourcing for the same reasons people first used computers: To automate repetitive, complex tasks. You are saving time here by making the outsourced resource into your computer. The old rule of garbage in, garbage out applies so the quality of work you get will be commensurate with the quality of your requirements specification.

...and that just made me think a bit. Most people don't know what I mean when I say "Requirements Specification" ....I need to see if I can find a good online source that shows how to write a set of requirements for people who don't do that for a living. The short version is detail, detail detail. You want a screen that looks a certain way but don't know how to code it? Do what you can for the layout in a graphics program, print it out, add in the rest with a pen, scan it, email it. I have a little toy called "AceCAD" - its a clipboard and pen that captures what I write on the pad to the PC so I can scratch out the layout of a window with notes and then email it to someone - big time saver. The more you can 'show' instead of 'tell' the offshore resource what you need the less rework you will be paying for. Remember, if they gave you what you asked for and it is wrong, you screwed up, not them.

 

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[faq88]

Thanks a lot for all the info Bobo. I have also heard that for getting details across to your outsourcing you can use a Live Scribe pen or even a product like Camtasia (Camstudio is free). The more detailed you are the better, thats why video and audio are preferred over e-mails.