- Super-interviewing : “Trial by Fire”
The *number one* determinant of your project’s success or failure occurs long before your worker even logs their first hour on your project. Choosing the best worker is the most important step you can take to make sure your project is successful.
Why is this so important? The worst workers are 1/10th as productive as the best. So choosing a “bum worker” can be ridiculously costly.
So how do you make sure you choose the best? If you’re hiring a worker in a field you’re personally familiar with (say you’re a programmer and are hiring another programmer), then it’s pretty easy. You know what to look for and how to spot the best ones.
But what if that isn’t the case for you? What if you’re a writer who is hiring a webdesigner, or a marketer hiring a translator? Looking at profiles and resumes can help. But both of these can be faked. When the stakes are so high, they are not certain enough to rely on. Past ratings by employers are also helpful. But sometimes past employers have not left enough information, and some workers don’t have a long enough work history to be able to tell for sure. Requiring the worker to place an Expert Guarantee (forfeitable deposit) does help quite a bit, and weeds out the majority of the bad apples. But it still doesn’t weed out those bozos who have money to burn. So what’s the ultimate answer?
The *best* way to choose the best worker is by watching how they work on *your* project. But how can you possibly figure this out, before they’ve even started? There’s a simple way to do this.
I call this technique “Trial by Fire”. Basically you “interview” several candidates by giving them a small piece of your project and watching who meets the deadline and does the best work! It’s so simple: there’s no better way to predict performance than by watching the person when on the actual job itself. Yes, by “racing” workers like this, you may have to pay more than one (if they all finish by the deadline). But the small up-front investment will pay dividends in the long term, by saving you from wasting time and effort from choosing the wrong worker. And by keeping the “interview” piece small, you minimize your costs. And you can further minimize costs by using all the tools I mentioned earlier (profiles, portfolios, ratings, Expert Guarantees) to weed out the majority of your candidates and keep your trial candidates to a minimum size. Finally, once you’ve found your uber-worker, you can save even more money with my next tip: switching them to pay-for-time.
Sneak preview: “Trial by Fire” is an awesome technique. And in just a few months, we’ll be releasing a new feature that will make “Trial by Fire” even easier to do. With “Trial by Fire” you end up escrowing 5-6 individual projects (and potentially pay them for it). All of those little projects can be cumbersome to manage and keep track of. With the new “work trial-competition” feature: you’ll only need to escrow the “competition prize” once and award it only once (to the winner). The amount will be about the same, but it will all be in one place and much easier to manage and keep track of. So watch for this, soon! http://siteupdates.vworker.com/
- Save big bucks by knowing when to switch them to pay-for-time
When you work with someone the first time, pay-for-deliverables is the best way to go. The triple-point money-back guarantee ensure you get: - The entire contract
- Delivered by the deadline
- In the industry expected manner
However, once you’ve worked with someone and established they’re a good worker, you don’t need all that protection. So if you’re smart you can set up things so you can still monitor their productivity, but also save some serious money at the same time.
Here’s how: instead of posting followup pay-for-deliverables project, post a pay-for-time project. Pay-for-time projects give you a different guarantee: the honest-billing-guarantee. This means the AccuTimecard will make sure they are billing you accurately by making sure their punch in/out times are accurate. It will also allow you to make sure they are truly working on your project by recording regular images of their desktop (and optionally their webcam to ensure they are not sleeping, etc.). So this also offers you good protection. However, since it’s much cheaper for us to deliver this to you, the vworker fee drops to just 6.5%-9%. If you work with someone long-term, this can add up substantially.
Subscribe to the vWorker Latest News Blog through RSS or email. Visit vWorker.com.
© 2001-2011 Exhedra Solutions, Inc.
