If I had a dime for every time one of my singer friends complained, “I have too much work to do, I need a personal assistant!” I’d have enough money to hire Kenneth to work for me full time instead of 4-5 hours a week.
Oh, Kenneth? He’s my personal assistant. In the Philippines.
You see, a couple of years ago I decided to go corporate on this mess that is a singer’s life, and outsource some of my busywork. I did this partially to help clear up space in my brain and to not let myself get distracted by life’s minutiae when I should be working or even relaxing (what’s that?)—but also to teach myself a lesson. How am I using my time? Is this an efficient way of operating? If I had to pay somebody else by the hour to do this, how would I want them to do it? When you begin looking at every task before you and asking yourself, “Could somebody else be doing this for me right now?” you force yourself to re-evaluate your methods.
Oh, and I also did it partially for fun. Part of that fun includes telling people I have an assistant in India (or whatever country it happens to be at the time). The responses are always both bemused and bewildered and usually involve the following questions: “How did you get an assistant in India?” “How much does it cost?” And “What do they do for you?”
So let me start by answering those questions.
“How did you get an assistant in India?”
Personally I have exclusively used Guru.com, but Elance.com is also a very popular choice. Basically, any website you can hire freelancers through will do. You create a profile as an employer (yes, you are the employer—get used to it!) and post a “project,” explaining your needs, your requirements, and your budget. Then the professionals get to bid on your project. Usually they will come to you, but you can also search through their profiles and invite them to bid.
They’ll send you an introductory note explaining how great of an assistant they are and invite you to check out their profile or website. Often you will be contacted not only by individual VAs (virtual assistants) but by companies, big and small, that they work under. You then sift through their profiles and choose someone. You’ll be able to follow the instructions on the website of your choosing but, generally, they don’t get paid until they finish the job, in case there is a problem.
“How much does it cost?”
Rates vary widely. To hire a good, extremely professional assistant through a well organized company, you might be looking at $12-15 an hour. On the lower end of the spectrum, you can hire someone for $4-5 an hour or even less. My personal experience has been exclusively with the budget options. Most of my assistants have been $4 an hour. Whether you hire them for a fixed amount of hours per week or pay them pro rata is between you and them.
“What do they do for you?”
Ah, and herein lies the ultimate question. You see, in between the first two questions, one often contemplates aloud, “If I had a personal assistant, I’d make them do my laundry and clean my apartment and . . . Wait! They can’t do that if they’re in China.” Being able to delegate tasks, especially remotely, is its own skill, requiring imagination and planning. If this sounds like too much work to you, bail now, but know this: you will never enjoy the confused look on your boss’s face when your personal assistant in India calls to schedule your shifts.
So, now, the actual answer to the question of what they do for me:
• Manage my MySpace page
• Design e-mail blasts
• Find a website designer
• Make phone calls to contacts who don’t do e-mail
• Track down scores
• Answer e-mails from creepy fans and other Internet trolls
• Place ads on Craigslist
• Go through gig listings on Craigslist
• Call radio stations and request my songs
• Transcribe my interviews (though I’ve had bad luck with this one—transcription is a tough skill, even for a native speaker)
• Input rehearsal schedules into my calendar
• Gather contact info for companies
• Return calls when I’m out of the country
• Make flyers for my performances
• Update my website
• Research performance venues
• Post upcoming performances to my public calendars
• Go through PR listings
• Call people who owe me money
• . . . and a handful of other one-off tasks
Once these initial three questions have been asked, the follow-ups are usually chosen from among the following:
“Can’t you just hire an American?”
Yes, you can! You will have to pay them minimum wage and issue tax forms, but it is totally doable. There are plenty of smart people in America who are happy to work for minimum wage if it means they can work from home in their spare time, doing what they would be doing anyway: screwing around on the computer. (You might even put yourself out as a freelancer!) You will likely get somebody with better English communication skills and will be able to trust them with further decision making. I don’t speak from personal experience, however, as I tried to hire an American once and she flaked before completing her first task.
“Isn’t offshoring unethical?”
There are two issues at stake: taking jobs away from Americans and exploiting foreign workers. Regarding the former, I think many of us would be unable to afford hiring an American and paying them a fair living wage relative to their area. So it’s hard to see it as taking jobs from them—if not for the international labor market, the job wouldn’t be created.
As to the latter, this is harder to judge. If you are going through a big company, you might be able to discuss their policies with them—but other than that, there’s no way of knowing how much of the money you’re paying them is going to the individual workers. Hiring an independent worker, you will know that everything (minus the cut the freelancing website will take) is going directly to them and that you’re helping someone have a safe job that feeds their family on what an American might spend on coffee.
“Do they speak English?”
Most VAs are young, computer-savvy types who have a good handle on English, both from school and from general Internet exposure and popular culture. Some are far better than others. India comes starkly into play here because English is an official second language there. However, in dealing with any non-native speaker, you will need to be extremely clear, not by carefully selecting precise vocabulary, but by explaining things in the simplest terms and sentence structures. It’s also not a bad idea to test out their phone skills personally. It won’t cost much as they all use Skype for phone calls.
Now that we’ve covered the initial curiosities, here are some collected thoughts and advice based on my experience.
VAs flake out. This is the biggest problem I’ve had. They will not only flake on little things, like getting a task done by the deadline you assigned, they will also completely fall off the face of the globe without warning. It’s not like they are taking your money and running, since they generally will not get paid until their tasks are done. But, still, it can throw you for a loop when one day you have someone handling all these things for you, and then a few days later you realize they haven’t done any of their work for the week and are no longer answering e-mails. Sometimes they will come crawling back after a month, claiming that they were sick. Other times they will not.
The best way to deal with this is by keeping the relationship through the website you used to originally hired the person. Usually they will want to be paid privately, through PayPal, so that they keep more of the money (this is against the websites’ policies). But then you don’t get to leave feedback, which is a huge incentive for them to behave. This is also one benefit of hiring through a big, well organized company, as they will have managers to be reported to and a backup plan if your guy actually is incapacitated. (Every VA I’ve ever hired has sworn up and down that they have assistants, co-workers, or other backup in case they have an emergency, but I have yet to see one come through.)
If your VA is coming across as flabbergastingly moronic and you are about to berate them for their incomprehensible idiocy, take a deep breath, count to 10, and give your own side of the communication a very hard, sober look. There is a good chance that you were not squeaky clear with your instructions—at least not clear enough for a non-native speaker. Criticize yourself before them. On the other hand, some of them are plain idiots. Just fire them.
My most important advice if you decide to hire a virtual assistant is to have as much fun as you possibly can. You may or may not be able to make the effort involved in this project worth the payoff, but having your personal assistant in India call your husband in the next room to ask him to get you some Starbucks makes it all worthwhile.
