oDesk & Outsourcing — I’m not sold
Outsource, Outsource, Outsource .. that’s all I’m hearing these days. Ok .. I agree with the concept, I have more work needed than I have time for. But it comes down to – where can I find good, preferably cheap, workers that can do the job I need in a timely manner.
I’ve been through John Reese’s Outsource Force and I’m currently a member in John Jonas’s Replace Myself Program .. so I know the Philippines the really the only place to find these type of users.
Now maybe this is a personal fault of mine, but I don’t like to follow exact directions. John recommends to stay away from oDesk and only use his site to find great workers. John on the other hand feels that oDesk is the one contractor site that’s ok to work with.
So I decided that before I go the full time route, that I would go to oDesk and try and find a good candidate with a combination of temp tasks and test tasks. My results have not been encouraging and in fact I’m no longer going to use oDesk to find workers.
My first task was for a Data Entry worker that I needed for an ecommerce site of mine. The first person I hired was too good to be true, they offered to do it for a $1 because the needed the feedback. I figured, well even if they suck, I’m only out the time and a $1. Well I didn’t even get that worth out of it. The person I “hired” took the job and then I never heard from them again. After a week I gave up and fired them. Strike 1…
I hired the next person in line for the job (I actually qualified the candidates with a short test entry). While the person was gung ho from the beginning, it quickly faded. First their Internet connection was “out” for a couple days (although for some reason it was ok to reply to my emails – hrmm…) and then they simply could get the work done on schedule and asked for delay after delay. oDesk has a “work diary” feature that allows you as an employer to see what your workers are doing. It seemed to me that my “worker” was more interested in chatting on Skype than working on my data. After a month of waiting I fired this worker after getting 17% of the entries done (and paying them 25% of the project money). Strike 2 …
At the same time, I had another project for long term link builder for some ecomm properties of mine. After going through a large number of candidates and running through test tasks .. I never felt comfortable with any of them. They just came off cocky to me, and very inflexible. I actually offered 1 guy a full time well paying gig outside of oDesk (as oDesk takes a cut of their money) and he flat out said no thanks .. ok whatever.
My concluding thoughts are this is the problem with dealing with “free agent contractors” vs “employees”.. So the next time I’ll hire somebody it will be the John Jonas way and hire a real employee and not a contractor.
I am interested to see what Dan & Leslie will be suggesting in their Link Liberation program when it comes up. I’m pretty sure they will be recommending mTurk, which I actually used to use a lot awhile ago and had pretty good success with it. My issue with it was that it is really only for small tasks.
Has anyone had any success with oDesk?
11.11.2010(10:01 pm)
Guido, sorry you did not have a good outcome on oDesk, I can assure you that we have tens of thousands of customers who do have success and as a result they are building large remote teams via our platform. I am happy to speak with you about your experience and I even have some guidance for you to have a positive outcome if you’d like to try us again. For starters, I would encourage anyone considering a remote contractor over a local hire to invest the time up front to hire the right person and then I would not let things go for too long without some feedback loop to ensure that the work was getting completed to your satisfaction. We provide real-time visibility to the work for this very reason. Also, if your remote contractor was NOT actually working while billing time, you are not required to pay for this time, another benefit of the work diary feature. In any event, please let me know if you would like to connect to discuss further success with a remote contractor….on oDesk or in general.
Thanks,
Gary Swart
CEO oDesk
11.11.2010(10:21 pm)
Thanks for the reply Gary. It wasn’t really a shot against oDesk specifically .. more so just a general idea on hiring outsourcing motivation and the potential pitfalls.
Specifically to your comment, I did invest a lot of time upfront in hiring the person, including small test tasks. And I did have contact throughout the process of the job, my issue was more of task completion than anything else. I choose a fixed task project for this specific reason.. I didn’t want to get overbilled because the person couldn’t handle the job. Of course it is hard to judge the sum of the system with only a few experiences.
Generally there are a couple of things that I came upon that I really think would help oDesk in pre-qualifying candidates.
1. The feedback system is hard to use as a judge. As an employer I feel bad to really ding somebody when I’m not satisfied (except the person that disappeared). When rating people, I realized that I bet other employers felt the same reasoning and perhaps rated workers the same way.
2. Workers should be required to complete a specific test in order to apply to jobs. I know as an employer I can require this, but I think it would help the system if people applying for an Internet Marketing position took the Internet marketing test for example. (and as a bonus even the ability for the potential employer to see the Q&A of the test)
3. Scrap feedback by Workers for Employers. To me this just is there for disgruntled workers to make the employer look bad. I had a test task that a user accepted and then a week later they decided the task wasn’t what they thought it was, so the job was canceled and they promptly left me 1′s for feedback .. that’s just dumb.
4. Dealing with Agencies is very confusing for Employers .. You really have no idea who will be doing the work. I did ask these questions in the interview, but still it’s hard to tell. And there were a lot of Individuals that applied as an agency, even though they were the only person as part of the agency — just confusing.
If you want to look at the specifics, it was under the account Target Local .. not that I’m looking for any retribution or anything.
Honestly I had high hopes for oDesk to be a gateway to starting to build my team, but I’ve decided to re-think how I want to approach things in the future.
12.11.2010(12:29 am)
Shaun, Thanks for the detailed response, I appreciate your suggestions and have already forwarded to our product team for action. I am happy to connect any time to discuss further and look forward to winning you over as a successful customer at some point
Thanks again, Gary
29.01.2011(7:31 pm)
I just wanted to say I have had very positive experiences with oDesk and the people I have worked with through them.
I never did do the \\"due diligence\\" you should before setting up – but this one group \\"MenuKitchen\\" said in their notes they were Christians – and as I am a true-believing Christian that sounded like they would make good workers.
I worked with a girl from them on SEO and she did a GREAT JOB. We had issues come up on both sides, but she kept at it, producing the work and really over delivered, especially with me on a tight budget. She kept at the task and took it to completion on her own- I never had to prompt her. She sent a complete chart with keywords and meta tags with descriptions, etc for each of 3 web sites. Now I will say I was not under a tight deadline, but she delivered certainly within the timeframe. Her name was Marilyn Magno in the Philippines.
I found the oDesk platform easy to work with once I got the hang of it and payments were promptly taken out, etc – all very professional.
I will say I had a dickens of a time finding the MenuKitchen agency again, but finally did. Personally I don\\\’t mind the agency concept – as long as they are responsible to have the work completed on time to satisfaction.
The problem with employees is all the paperwork headaches, liability and they are really expensive with salaries, unemployment insurance, workers comp, social security taxes, etc.
Perhaps contract assignments – but I have been warned against hiring for the short term. You just have to screen and take chances on how they will do -over and over again. When you find good, hard-working, do-good-job people – you do want to get them on a long-term basis.
Two places I have received excellent instruction, suggested tests, telephone interviews and what to ask and look for, etc. are with Rich Schefren and his Strategic Profits and the most comprehensive is within Niche Profit Classroom ($1 2-wk trial, $67 month) and their outsourcing webinar recording. It was very detailed and these guys have had several groups of outsourcing folks they have been using for years. Niche Profit Classroom also recommends oDesk.
Well -too long already here- hope things work out for you with the staff stuff. I know in the end we limit our productivity when trying to do it all ourselves. But then -interacting with others has its own set of issues, but seems inevitable -and we do make more money that way.
Hope the info will be helpful and I did want to put in a good word for oDesk and the positive experiences I have had with them. Good luck and God Bless.
Nancy N.