How to outsource in 5 simple steps

In my last “Make it work Fridays, Open office Hours” I talked about How to manage multiple social media accounts and outsourcing was a tactic that I mentioned was a very effective way of helping you manage your time an getting things done.

In this episode of make it work Friday’s I’m going to address the question: What are the steps to outsourcing your business.

Watch this week’s Open Office Hours on: How to Outsource your business in 5 steps now and leave a comment! 🙂

Link to resources mentioned in the video:
www.freelancer.com

www.elance.com

www.odesk.com

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Video Transcript: How to outsource your business in 5 steps

Hello and welcome to Make it Work Fridays: Open Office Hours. My name is Sara Nguyen from socialmediarocketeer.com and in Make it Work Fridays I take your burning social media questions and answer them to help you get unstuck so you can rocket your reach and boost your brand profitably using social media marketing.

Now, in the last Make it Work Fridays, I talked about how to manage multiple social media accounts effectively. And one of the tactics that I talked about was outsourcing, as a way to help you get things done quickly. I had a lot of questions about outsourcing. In this episode of Make it Work Fridays I’m going to address the question: What are the steps to outsourcing your business?

Step one is to be clear on the jobs you want to outsource. You can outsource theoretically anything these days and in order to be successful with outsourcing you need to be clear on exactly what it is that you need done.

This impacts the job description that you write and therefore the people that you attract who apply for the outsourcing roles that you have open. You also need to keep in mind when you’re looking for people to fill these jobs that it’s difficult to find one person who can do it all.

So, for example, it’s difficult to find one person to be a fantastic graphic designer, web designer, social media manager, SEO expert as these are all very different skill sets. You’re better off finding different people to do these specific tasks as opposed to one person who is a jack-of-all-trades.

Now once you’ve determined exactly what jobs you want to outsource, step number two is to post your job and have a process for filtering candidates and interviewing them. You can post the job to a range of outsourcing websites such as Freelancer.com, Odesk.com, and Elance.com.

They’re a range of outsourcing sites which you can use. The important part here is to have a system in which you can process all of the job applicants and interview them. What I personally do which I find helps a lot is opposed to posting a job on Odesk.com and having 300 candidates apply at the same time, what I typically do is I post the job and set it to invite only.

After I’ve posted the job, I go out and search on Odesk’s candidate profile and then I invite candidates based off their profile who I think would be best suited for the job. This helps in many ways. For one, I’m not going through 300 candidates who randomly applied for the job and two, I get a head start so I proactively go look for candidates who would be a good fit for the job in my opinion and then I interview them. This puts me in a little bit more control and I find this a little bit more effective than wading through 300 candidates who apply for the job post. The other important part of filtering candidates is having a process for interviewing. I typically interview my candidates using Skype.

I would conduct the Skype interview as I would any interview when you’re looking to hire staff and ask questions such as: what experience they have, what is their background, what’s their motivation and to give examples of how they’ve completed the jobs which you’re looking to have done in this role.

I really believe that spending time to interview people is an important part of success for outsourcing. However, there are two parts of this equation. Just because a person interviews well, doesn’t mean that they can necessarily complete the job well. So, this is something that’s important to keep in mind and also that rolls onto step three, which is to give the candidate a trial job to start off with.

When you give the candidate a trial job to start off with, the truth comes out. You can see if they actually match what they say that they can do and it also a real test to see how they work and how well they work with you.

For example if you’re looking for a graphic designer, what I would do after interviewing some candidates is give them a trial job of a small design task for $5, $10, $15 to start off with and within that task set them a brief, set them the deadline and see how they communicate with you and see the output that they end up providing.

This will give you the tell-all tale of how competent this staff member is at being able to complete this job that you’re looking for someone for. Sometimes, it doesn’t work out and that’s okay. You’ve limited yourself to the small job and you’re able to go back to the candidate pool and continue to interview other candidates for the role.

After you have found a candidate who has proven with their trial job that they are able to complete the task that you assign them and that they communicate and work well with you, step four is the fun part which is assigning them the role or the contract and to begin this working relationship with them, having a strong line of communication with them and being able and willing to train your staff.

I find it is extremely important to the success of your outsourcer if you have a strong line of communication, where they’re not afraid to ask you questions and they’re not afraid to come to you with problems that they have and also if you’re willing to train them so that they can do the jobs that they need for you at a high level, at a high quality.

This is really important in the success of your outsourcer and to the longevity of your outsource contractor as well.

Step five in successful outsourcing is to constantly evaluate your contractor’s work. You need to keep a track of the quality of work that your contractor is producing, how long it’s taking for them to deliver this, and most importantly, the cost to you as a business.

Are your contractors actually adding value to your business in freeing up your time? Or are they causing problems and delays and headaches in your business? The whole point of outsourcing components of your business is to free up your time so that you can work on other areas of the business. If your contractors aren’t working for you, it’s important to know when to stop and when to go and find a new one.

So, there are my five steps to successful outsourcing in your business.

Step one is to be really clear on the jobs that you want to outsource and to write a fantastic job description to attract the right people.

The step two is to post the job offering that you have and have a process for featuring the candidates and interviewing them.

Step three is to give this potential candidate a small trial to start off with so you can get an indication of how these contractors work and how they work with you.

Step four is to assign them the contract if they are successful and have proven that they’re able to do the task.

Step five is to constantly evaluate the work that your contractors do.

Now if you need help with outsourcing your business whether it’s to help you come up with a strategy for the different areas of your business you need to outsource or if you need help with outsourcing your social platform, click on the link in the description to apply and work with me and we’ll talk more about the different solutions that I can help you come up with.

I’m a strong believer in outsourcing as an extremely efficient way of getting things done in your business.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this edition of Make it Work Fridays. If you’re on my list and you have a burning question watch out for the email with the link to submit a question. If you’re not on my list and you want to submit a question, click on the link to join the list in the description and I will see you for another edition of Make it Work Fridays next week. Thank you and bye.