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by mahipal
5448 days ago
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Well, it's definitely an iterative process. Over time, you'll converge on a "management style" that works for you and for your contractors. Here is a good starting point, though -- Derek Sivers has a really good blog post that outlines a concrete process for hiring on oDesk: http://sivers.org/how2hire |
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Let me add a bit more:
I've done my best to document how things should be done, step by step, and continue working on that. I don't expect these guys to just go do various things and get it right without some detailed direction.
The parts about programming aren't as relevant to me, as I handle that side of things. More than technical skills, I need people who are going to be good at getting back to my customers in a 'reasonable' period of time and not leave a bad impression on them. That, and people with some basic HTML/CSS skills to work on customers' books. That much, people do have... I guess I'm looking to figure out what's normal in terms of communication skills and turnaround time, and ... how other people deal with the huge gap between themselves, who are quite dedicated, get stuff done quickly, and have every incentive to get things just right, and 'hired guns'. There's going to be some of that gap in a normal startup where you hire people to work alongside you, but it's even bigger if you're outsourcing, and can't provide incentives like stock options, and don't even see the people in question.
In other words: as long as it's just me answering tech support requests, I'm generally very quick to turn them around, provide quick, helpful answers, and seem to be getting very positive reactions from people. I'm scared of things taking a turn for the worse when other people start answering support requests.