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How Do You Confirm The Work Your Virtual Assistant Has Done That Day?

by magentawave
3 replies
I just hired a virtual assistant and was wondering what system(s) you use for checking to see the work they have done that day? Obviously things like building a website is easy to verify, but how do you verify the back linking they've done for you by submitting articles using something like Magic Article Submitter (for example)?

Any ideas for how you check the work they did that day will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Steve
#assistant #confirm #day #virtual
  • Profile picture of the author peakperformer
    I always ask my assistants to type out what they have done for the day in a word document and then mail it to my inbox for me to check.. This makes sure that they get things done, as even if you didn't check your inbox on a certain day, they won't know!

    So the fact that they need to tell you what they have done for the day makes them afraid of just lazing around and doing nothing... Besides, checking on what they have done won't take more than 10mins of your time daily, since its all written down in a word document.

    hope this helps
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    • Profile picture of the author magentawave
      That is a great idea and I can see how effective it can be because they won't want to end their work day knowing they have nothing to fill out. I will start having them do that today.

      Thank you.
      Steve



      Originally Posted by peakperformer View Post

      I always ask my assistants to type out what they have done for the day in a word document and then mail it to my inbox for me to check.. This makes sure that they get things done, as even if you didn't check your inbox on a certain day, they won't know!

      So the fact that they need to tell you what they have done for the day makes them afraid of just lazing around and doing nothing... Besides, checking on what they have done won't take more than 10mins of your time daily, since its all written down in a word document.

      hope this helps
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  • Profile picture of the author Andy Fletcher
    Effective reporting is one of the most important aspects of outsourcing low skill jobs. If you don't get the process right you spend more time communicating with people than you would've to do the job.

    Everyone loves the oDesk feature that lets you see a screen grab of your workers' every 10 minutes until they realise just how much time it takes to check it. If you ever need to look at those screen shots you're doing it wrong.

    Figure out the absolute simplest reporting format you can get away with that'll still show you what has been achieved. If it's a backlink builder for example have their record each link placed as target url, keyphrase and link location url (possibly associated account details). Have them chuck that in a spreadsheet (adds a few seconds per link) and you can easily have someone else go down the list to check or have someone make you a simple scraping application to check them. If they are using software for you try to get software that generates reports. If not find something they can report on.

    The fundamental rule of outsource reporting though is to make sure they are doing results reporting not time reporting. Getting them to tell you how many links they built each hour is less than useless as it eats up time for no benefit. Getting them to tell you where each link is tells you everything you need to know.

    And finally, don't obsess over the time it took. If a $2 an hour link builder reports XYZ links built in his 5 hour shift ask yourself whether XYZ links is acceptable not whether you think they slacked off to make an extra cup of tea in the middle. Always focus on results.

    Hope that helps,

    Andy
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