Category Archives: Hiring & Firing

Hiring people who work from their home

February 23, 2013 by 123outsource
Categories: Hiring & Firing, Outsourcing Articles, Popular on Twitter | Tagged | Leave a comment

In this day and age, it is more and more common to see responsible and successful people work from home. However, I have found that many companies with bosses who work from home can be very irresponsible. Hiring a new company to outsource your work for is risky and actually dangerous. No matter how careful you are choosing them, many things go wrong, and you are left holding the bag.

Companies with offices are also risky
I have learned in my years that hiring companies with professional offices is risky too. These companies will often hire young and inexperienced (or reckless) employees and put them on YOUR projects — while these employees don’t care at all about you or your project. Your business is in jeapardy simply by being involved with careless people. My motto is that you hire not only a company, but also particular staff members. No company likes how I pick and choose people, but my experience has dictated that even a good company can burn you if the wrong staffmember is working on your case!

Companies that work from home are more risky?
Companies with offices have turned out to be 50% responsible on average for me. But, I have many stories about nightmares that happened hiring individuals who worked from home.

(1) I attempted to hire a very gifted and bright Indian gentleman in California. He advertised as being a former VP of some large company. I didn’t believe it, but I’m sure he had some post at the alleged company based on his very professional sounding communication skills. At any rate, when I asked him how many hours per week he could dedicate to my project he said 15. Then I talked to him two days later and he accused me of trying to take up too much of his workweek, and that he didn’t want to work for me at all. I mentioned that it was HE who volunteered 15 hours a week when I only needed 5. I think the real reason he didn’t like me was that I insisted meeting him at his SHARED office which was a source of humiliation to him — perhaps because it didn’t exist at all.

(2) I hired a sidewalk mechanic long time ago. He didn’t have a garage. In any case he did some wiring for me that resulted in years of having to replace starters. I had to have a two hour session with Toyota many years down the line to finally figure out that the source of my trouble which had cost thousands was because I hired a cheap rate unprofessional who didn’t have an office.

(3) I hired another guy in California who was very nice to work on one of my sites. He had 30 years of experience. He looked at my site and told me that it was in PHP, not ASP (which is what I thought the site was in). Then, after six weeks of waiting for him to learn a little more PHP which he was weak in — he announced that he had no time to work for me at all. What a waste! So, I took it to a company that did have an office (a shared one — better than nothing), and lo and behold, they told me that it was in ASP, not PHP (the story keeps changing), and they got the job done in days.

(4) I hired a printer who USED to have an office, but started working from home. I questioned him as to whether he was still in business or not when my order was delayed when I stopped cracking the whip. I am busy and don’t have time to harrass people who don’t do what I ask them to do. In any case, the next year he was gone — without a trace — and all of my files were gone. Fortunately I had backup — and was able to publish a revised edition of my book!

I work from home and so does my assistant
My assistant and I, and a good friend of mine all work from home. We are responsible. I would recommend ONLY hiring someone who works from home if you either know them, or know they have a solid reputation. Otherwise it is too risky.

Someone told me — how can you speak so poorly of people who work from home when you do too?

I replied — with me it is DIFFERENT because I KNOW MYSELF!!!! And therefor can trust myself.

Hiring people with great personalities?

September 17, 2012 by admin
Categories: Hiring & Firing, Outsourcing Articles, Semi-Popular | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Hiring people with great personalities?

Most companies follow the same hiring strategy. Hire anti-social geeks to do technical work, hire a people person to do customer service, and those are the basics.  But, you tend to create large divides in companies that are built like this.

I always realize the vast difference in the feeling when I leave the room with the sales, marketing, and customer service people and go into the room with the technical people.  It goes from friendly to  depressing in only seconds.  My question is, what would happen if you employed a new strategy — a strategy where you create a work culture that is really friendly.

Employees choose where to apply to, and good employees have many choices.  India’s economy has a labor shortage (for the first time in recorded history), and good workers have many choices as to where to work.  So, if you have a company that has a reputation of being fun to work for, then you might be able to attract the best workers even if you don’t pay the most.  Remember — job satisfaction is high on people’s lists these days.

So, what if you had an attractive office, and hired people with great personalities — even the computer nerds would have colorful and engaging personalities (if that is possible — there is a first for everything).  You would be really mastering the art of attraction here.  You would attract great workers, and your workers would quit less, because they liked working there.  You would also attract more clients.

Some clients interact a lot with the employees at particular companies, while others interact mostly by email.  For the clients who talk with people, imagine how they will feel if YOUR company has personal people at every level of the company. Most companies won’t let you talk directly with a programmer, but what if YOUR company has friendly programmers who actually don’t run for cover when a client is around?

In today’s business world, people often ignore the personal aspect of business, and this is the worst mistake they could make. Deals are won and lost, often because someone doesn’t like someone else!  Sure, they want someone who can get the job done, but they might also want to feel comfortable with the people involved.

I wish someone would try this experiment and get back to me — but, someone already has. Cliff Bar hired gung ho and enthusiastic people to run their energy bar company.  For those of you overseas, Cliff Bar makes health bars that have oats, chocolate, and fruit flavors, and they use brown rice syrup and other ingredients to hold the bars together. Hikers and outdoor enthusiasts typically love to eat Cliff Bars (me included).  The result was that they had a company where everyone was happy and felt good coming to work, even if they only made minimum wage!  Can you create this atmosphere at your company? It is worth a try.

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Top employees get poached

May 8, 2011 by 123outsource
Categories: Hiring & Firing, Of Interest | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Top employees regularly get poached

This is a common theme in India, where highly skill employees are a commodity that companies will die for — or poach for.  One of the recent episodes of the television comedy “Outsourced” was based on the theme of poaching call center employees.  Someone got laid off at the call center, and someone new needed to be hired. There was a line of two-hundred people, but only one was well qualified, and was hired immediately.  This new employee was of Indian ancestry, but grew up in Texas and understood the American culture and American expressions well which made him a dream employee.  Unfortunately the girlfriend of the manager of the call center also liked this new employee and offered him double the salary.  The manager, Todd, who first hired this Texas raised dream call center employee decided to get even. Todd and his friend, a manager from American Hunter, found a way to get into his girlfriend’s office, find the resume and  salary information for the new employee, and forwarded it to another fancy company who was in the same building.  The fancy company who had very well trained workers who showed up in suits and had snooty attitudes quickly swallowed this new employee and got him in uniform immediately — a suit and a mobile phone which is permanently glued to his ear.

Outsourced is America’s most interesting and endearing television comedy, but the theme of poaching employees is a nightmare for Indian bosses.  India’s economy is growing so fast, that employees are getting better and better offers by the day.  Its common in places like Bangalore and Mumbai for employees to jump from company to company.  If they have a job at one company in Koramangala at a particular salary, they might jump to another company in Whitefield because they have a nicer looking office, better benefits, or nicer females working there.  If you heard the reasons why employees jump boat in this employees market, your jaw would drop.

It is expensive to interview, hire, and train new employees.  If an employee is so bad they need to be fired, or jumps boat prematurely, this causes a huge loss to the boss.  It makes more sense for the boss to think ahead.  If you hire someone good, its like having a really good looking girlfriend. You will not be the only one who likes her, and your offer is not likely to be the best offer either.  If the girl is not the loyal type, and girls these days rarely are, then she will quickly wander off with some guy who offers her more.  It makes sense to pamper a good employee.

Get to know them?  Sure!  If you get to know a good employee, and develop a good personal relationship with them, they will feel happier in that environment and be more likley to stay.  This is true with customers too. It pays to get to know your customers.  Don’t spend all day with them, but a simple phone call makes all the difference.  Give them some freedom.  If your star employee needs to have a dental appointment during business hours, let them go!  Just have them make up the hours some other time.  As long as they are on schedule, let them work from home a day or two per week two.  Find out what they like, and cater to them.  It might take a bit of research, but its easier than hiring someone new which costs lakhs in lost productivity! Giving raises every three months makes sense too.  Having regular evaluations costs money, but is cheaper than losing employees to poachers.  Or, giving employees an incentive plan giving them a percentage of their output. If the market is growing fast, their percentage will grow fast too.

Caring for your star employees will reduce poaching by leaps and bounds.  People today are obsessed with numbers and overworking.  This is important.  But, caring about relationships is even more important. Business is based on relationships.  People will spend money on a service provider they know and trust.  Nobody wants to do business with a stranger in any country.  People want to leave business relationships where the personal relationship is not good.  Emotions speak louder than rupees.

The authoritarian culture.  India and Arab countries have a very authoritarian culture.  Bosses often like to treat their employees as lesser and employees traditionally have to bow down to their employers.  As an American, I think that class and position is overemphasized in India.  It seems like it would be more helpful if less emphasis was put on position, and bosses treated their star employees with the same care they might a family member.  I am by no means suggesting that the boss let the employee run all over them, but a caring attitude without compromising authority seems like a super idea to me!

A hiring technique similar to 2nd interviews: The emailed question technique

September 30, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Hiring & Firing | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

I invented yet another technique for screening companies that is similar in philosophy to the 2nd interview. I call it the multiple email question technique. During an interview, it is good to ask probing questions that reveal the person’s thinking style (if they have one), their personality, and ethics. You can also ask funny sounding questions that reveal a person’s willingness to answer questions as well as their personal style. Unfortunately, we learned through trial and error that Americans are not good at finishing jobs on time, while Indians are not good at answering questions that involve creative and innovative thinking. I blame it on the school system! Americans tend to be good at interviewing, but the results can be deceiving.

During the initial interview, you can ask a handful of questions and just talk. But, save a few of your canned questions for email conversations. During the interview, people are trying to impress you. If you catch them when they are NOT trying to impress you, then you know how they will act in the long run which is what you really need to know!

After the initial interview, you can send three emails at 48 hour intervals to your prospective outsourcing company or prospective employee. Do not ask funny sounding questions like how to fit a giraffe in a refrigerator (I am famous for asking this one). Ask serious technical questions in the email and give enough background information so the person can give an intelligent answer without asking you for clarification or more information. There are four typical types of results of this email test.

(1) Failure to return the email. See if your prospect will even return the email. Many won’t. You can not hire someone who doesn’t get back to you or you are asking for trouble.
(2) Unnecessary requests for clarification. There are those who email you back to tell you that the question is “complicated” and they need more information from you to answer the question. If you included sufficient background information to give a basic opinion, their requirements for additional information are only an excuse to avoid thinking and acting.
(3) Thoughtless answers. If you have a job that involves thinking, stay away from brain dead people.
(4) Quality answers. Finally, you might get a few answers that are thoughtful and indicate that the prospect is really trying. What I learned is that even the best prospects do not give 100% quality answers to complicated questions. They might have an innovative way of solving part of the problem, but few will be able to have a multi-dimensional strike that will solve the problem from multiple viewpoints. You need to compare answers from different prospects to judge who is the smartest. And remember that brain power is no good without timely delivery of finished work!

Please keep in mind that the outsourcing company or prospect might answer the first question, but get tired of your nonsense and fail to answer subsequent questions. If you are hiring someone on a serious project, quitting halfway down the road doesn’t work.

Another technique you can use is to ask questions that might make the prospect feel weird. Obviously don’t ask anything inappropriate, but we found that people backed out of deals if we asked for astrological information. For Americans it was “too weird”. We saved ourselves from being in a few bad work relationships by asking too much in the beginning. Remember, if you are going to be in a serious work relationship, it is like a marriage. You will go through a lot and you will be asking a lot of the other person or company. If a simple question is too much for them, dump them and you will be glad you did, otherwise you will have serious trouble down the line.

Hiring analytics: How much does the other person like you?

September 29, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Analytics, Hiring & Firing | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Does it really matter how much people like you?
According to serious researchers it does. Harvard Business Review documented studies that documented the fact that managers can rarely have successful teams if the members don’t like the boss. But, this applies to outsourcing work as well. If the people doing your outsourced work don’t like you, you are in trouble. It doesn’t matter how good they are, how experienced, how meticulous, or how cost effective they are — if they hate you, the relationship is unlikely to work.

Can you find out BEFORE you hire someone if they like you? Sometimes that is not so easy to know. If they start out liking you on Monday, they might change their mind about you in a month if one little thing goes wrong. People are fickle and that is not going to change. You can see how long you talked to them on the phone which is some indication. Someone who doesn’t like you will not talk to you for 2.5 hours like my recent call with a software developer in Massachusetts.

Can you test how much people like you? Offer to take them out to dinner. Tell them you will pay for everything. Do they accept or decline? It makes a big difference and says a lot. Or, do they turn the offer around and offer to take you out and pay? The money means very little, but the intention means everything.

Here are some “likeability” tests
(1) See how long you talk over the phone
(2) See if they return calls or contact you on their own initiative
(3) Offer to treat them to dinner
(4) See how willing they are to answer far too many annoying questions during the 2nd interview. If they don’t like you, they will stop answering questions a lot more quickly. How much more quickly? Hmmm. Why not experiment and get some test results analytics yourself and tell me! I’m curious to know your experience!

If you were American, would you hire your company?

September 26, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Hiring & Firing | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Look into the mirror and ask yourself this question:

Q. If I were American, would I hire my company?

A. If you start screaming and running the opposite direction, that is a subtle hint that you need to change certain things about how your company functions. Have you ever thought about asking an American what they think of your outsourcing company? Even if your clients are not American, Indians love higher standards. Indians are very tolerant of LOW standards because they have no choice. However, the minute you offer them higher standards, they like it a lot.

A#2. If your answer is that you WOULD want to hire your company if you were an American, that is a subtle hint that you need to change certain things about how your sense of REALITY functions which is a lot harder than giving your company a tune up. My assistant calls dozens of overseas companies. We have yet to find a company that she would be enthusiastic about hiring in India or the Philippines. I am sorry to say this. Every company we call needs a tune up. The companies that we think well of are multinational companies functioning in India — but, those are not Indian companies (technically) — unless they are bid multinational companies that originated in India, but that have global standards. The little companies we deal with seem to not have global standards – or any standards.

So, what can you do?

(1) Answer the phone professionally (less than 10% of Indian companies do this)

(2) Get back to people who ask questions (good luck if you are dealing with India)

(3) Make sure your staff does their work correctly (this is a problem worldwide, but worse in India)

(4) Make sure your staff gets work done on time. (India is actually better about this than America)

These are only four things to master. They are really critical, and I have not seen too many companies who can get all four points correct. If you master these four points, the rest is details. BTW, point #1 takes 5 minutes to master, yet 90% of companies in India seem to refuse to learn this point. It makes such a strong impression with overseas clients when you answer the phone well.

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out how to run a quality outsourcing company!

Just apply basic common sense. And if you don’t have common sense — no problem, just ask me!

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For English, Press One. For barely speaking English, depress more than one!

September 22, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Hiring & Firing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Many call center managers screen their workers. They require their workers to be fluent in English and have certain capabilities. But, my experience on the phone suggests that this is not always true. Different call centers have different standards. Some don’t seem to have any standards.

It is not easy testing people out. There are different situations that can arise. My strategy is to find situations where most call center clerks fall on their face or fly off the handle. Throw a few curve balls at people and see how gracefully they react. Skill in business is NOT about how you handle daily business. It is about how you strategize, and how well you handle ugly situations.

Americans are sick of dealing with callers who can’t function in clear English. Thick accents, mangled names, and incompetent answers are not going to make you popular. Even those who speak the queen’s English show their true lack of colors when asked to pronounce place names. Los Angeles, Newark, and Tucson are some good ones to test people out with. Try a few Spanish city names in California if you want to throw someone off fast as well.

Another factor to remember is that call centers need workers in a hurry if they have a new project. If you need people fast, you have to take who you can get. If only unqualified people come to the interviews, you have to pick from them. In a situation like this, by definition, you will end up with some substandard people. And since you are in such a rush, you won’t have time to train them either which will make matters worse.

My suggestion: Screen your workers
Never hire people when you need them.
Hire people when you don’t need them, test them, train them, and get them ship shape. That way if they don’t work out, you can fire them before putting them on a critical project. And if they do work out you can train them before putting them on a critical project. Having a little too much labor comes at a cost, but losing a prized client due to having lousy workers is much more expensive! Also, if you hire people when you don’t need them, if you are in a bind and can’t get any good applicants, you will already have someone in house. Large companies have lots of screened people hanging around. They can always transfer from one department to the other if necessary. That way they don’t have to repeat the screening at the last minute all over again!

Discrimination is bad for optimizing your business

September 22, 2010 by admin
Categories: Hiring & Firing, Outsourcing Articles | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Discrimination is bad for optimizing your business

In America, we are well aware of how wrong and harmful discimination is. We hear every day about how people suffer due to discrimination and how lives are ruined.  We hear all about the various legal battles in court that happen because a large company or university discriminates against someone on the basis of race. Minorities are not the only ones being discriminated against, as whites and Asian-Americans are discriminated against by affirmative action policies at universities and especially for government jobs such as post office, bus driving, and other jobs.  Although discrimination is prevalent, or perhaps rampant in the United States, at least we have been educated to know that it is wrong.  In other countries, it is common to discriminate without even a nanogram of remorse or discreetness.

If you run a small or large company, you need the best possible workers for all jobs.  If you have two applicants for a job, and one is a Kshetriya caste like you, and the other is a Brahman — you might be tempted to hire the person of your caste, even if he or she is slightly less talented at the job that you need him or her to do.  Lets say that you hire the person of your caste, and he only functions at 90% of the output that your other applicant could have.  You just lost 10% of your output, but your expenses remain the same.  If you are in a business where profit margins are thin, then you can not afford to lose even 1% of your gross productivity, or you might be in danger of going out of business.

Another more comical reason why you are benefitted by hiring people who are NOT from your community, is that you might have LESS in common.  If you have too much in common with people you work with, you will be tempted to spend all day chatting far too much, and your work will not be done with full efficiency.  Hire someone from a community that has as little in common with you as possible — to the point where there is nothing to talk about other than the weather — this way you will not chat at all, and productivity will be at an all time high. Anti-social people are great to work with.  They are no fun at all, and they will not join you for drinks after work, but you might get your best work done with them.

Another great hiring strategy is to hire people who don’t speak your language. Even if you have a lot in common, there will be no way to talk about it.  Communication will be very basic, and lots of work will get done.

On the flip side, if you hire great workers who are antagonistic to your clients because they don’t like the community your clients are from, then you will find that technical skills do not always make up for negative social interaction traits.

I had an experience with a company that did printing for me.  This company had workers of different races working there.  There were a handful hispanic guys there, two were very polite to me while two regularly gave me dirty looks and made rude remarks to me.  There was a black guy who was slightly friendly, but didn’t have too much to say. There was an Asian-American who was polite, but indifferent and not too friendly to me — not too friendly. I notice that the Caucasians at that company made an effort to be very friendly and warm towards me.  This example is sort of extreme, and unusual in my experience.  Did people treat me well or poorly because of the color of my skin? Or, were those people I encountered just individuals who are just being themselves?

So, if you want to get ahead in business, forget about hiring people who are the same race or caste as you, or “like you”, or who are “the right sort of person”, or “from a good community” whatever that means.  Hire people who get the job done best.  On the other hand, don’t hire super workers who treat your customers with contempt, or you might not have customers for long!

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Can they do it on their own?

September 16, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Hiring & Firing | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

I hire people to do all types of tasks for me. The ones who last can do what they are supposed to do without any intervention from me. I hired someone to do sales. I don’t need to badger her to ask if she did what she was supposed to. She just does what she is supposed to and I just pay her. It is simple.

But, I sometimes unknowingly hire other people who just don’t do what they are supposed to. None of the programmers who I have hired get anything done without me constantly cracking the whip. They complain bitterly about how they don’t like me bothering them all the time, but they don’t function on their own, so I wasn’t given a choice.

Then, there are writers. I find people who can write. But, the writing process involves more than just writing. Topic selection is very important. There needs to be some analytics knowledge to be able to pick the type of subjects that will be popular with your audience. But, to pick catchy and unique titles is not that easy. So far only two of the writers I have worked with can come out with lots of ideas. The only problem is that one of them comes up with the same ideas every time I ask him to brainstorm. Once again, if I am not part of the process, things go sour. The other writer just sends me articles. They are pretty good. I don’t have to tell him anything. The articles just come, and enough of them are popular so that I can keep him. Minimal intervention is okay, but constantly having to oversee someone’s work is too much for me to do. If I do that, I don’t have time to do my work!

The best worker not only gets work done on their own, but offers helpful ideas without being asked. Obviously they shouldn’t shove the ideas down your throat, but the idea that they offer on their initiative is amazing, particularly if their ideas are useful.

When you are doing your work, ask yourself if you do what you are supposed to without intervention. Do you get back to people when the job is finished, or do you make them track you down to find out what happened? People who get ahead have their own initiative and crack their own whip. I am saying this after staying up until 4:30am to finish writing 20 blog articles in a single day. I hope they are entertaining!

Is it better to outsource to one blogger or build a team?

September 16, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Hiring & Firing | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

It might be better to outsource to several part time writers instead of one full time writer. If one drops out, you will still have other writers who are trained and know what they are doing. It is always risky to put your full dependence in a new and untested writer, especially if you might have to go through several until you get someone tried and true who you can use in the long run. It might take you two months, when you are too busy to play games testing out new writers — to find your new writer. Then it might take another two months to get them experienced enough to the point where they can function on their own.

Having only one writer puts you in exactly that position where you will be left high and dry every time someone quits. Having a small team makes more sense. That way you always have a few tested people while you are in the process of testing new people. The momentum of your blog is never compromised in that case. By having a small army or gang, you can test the new writers more slowly, and at your leisure. That way if you get slammed with a huge amount of work and don’t have time to test people for a few months, you will not lose momentum on your blog.

Professional comedy writing teams operate under this principle. Sit-coms generally will have a dozen writers. Some of them quit, get sick, or are busy, and they need a quantity of writers who are experienced on that project to continue the momentum and collaboration. Think about it. We live in the real world Be prepared.

Unfortunately, in real life, if you don’t have a dedicated person who you can depend on for everything, you need multiple backup and redundant resources for each task which is necessary. If you need a writer, an outbound caller, and inbound phone agent, and a database manager, you might need multiple individuals for each task. If you are lucky, there might be some crossover for some of the tasks. Your inbound phone person might like doing a little writing, and your writer might not mind doing a few interviews.

How to gauge someone’s learning speed at work!

September 15, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Analytics, Hiring & Firing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Although I have hired several dozen people in my lifetime for various tasks, I lack a clear method to quickly determine someone’s learning speed. I developed methods to test work competency. However, when I hire people to do tasks they have never done before, they will all fail the first time around. If you hire people to do what they already know how to do, then test their communication and their work, and don’t forget about meeting deadlines! But, if you hire people to do customized tasks like I often do, then the most important factor is how fast they learn.

Imagine that one person has worked with you for a year. They know how to do most tasks that you require of them, but they don’t cooperate, they pester you, and they never completely follow directions. Imagine that you don’t want to fire them, because then you will be left with someone else who doesn’t know how to efficiently or correctly do the tasks that you require. Please keep your eyes closed — I saw you peeking. Yes, that’s better. Now, imagine (seriously, keep them closed) that a new person arrives who doesn’t know anything, but has the capacity to learn quickly. I had a miracle unfold before my very eyes (which are closed because I’m doing an imagination drill) today. My newly hired help, learned to be an expert at a phone task in a week. Ten days ago she couldn’t function at all or get a single result after two hours of work. Today, she is doing flawless work and getting time efficient thorough results too.

Rather than just hiring someone, it makes sense to try them out and give them multiple tasks and instructions plus some coaching. See how fast they learn. If they learn fast and follow directions, you might be in luck. If they don’t, then get rid of them before you hire them. Save yourself a headache. If you give four separate tasks to someone with four separate instructions, see how they do. After thirty minutes on each task, evaluate their work and give them a coaching session. See if they learn effectively from your teaching session. Let them do another hour on each task, then evaluate again. See how they do after three coaching sessions. Three is the magic number. If they do okay, and don’t run away or procrastinate getting anything done, then hire them!

Don’t try this at home
Try this at work!

You can open your eyes now. We are done with the imagination exercise.

Tweets:
(1) Test a newly hired person’s learning speed. Give them an assignment + 3 short coaching sessions.
(2) Assign, coach, review, evaluate. See how fast your new employees learn new tasks!

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Willingness to work should be the high on your list of criteria

September 11, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Hiring & Firing, Of Interest | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

If you are hiring a company, look for willingness
 
I had to look for programmers this year, and I had not gone shopping for programmers since 2005.  Back then, I sort of knew what I was doing, but there is always more to know about who to hire and why.  In any case, shopping around for American programming companies was the worst nightmare I have ever had.
 
The first tricky point was told to me by one of the programming bosses I spoke to. He was by far the most professional, but too short-staffed to be able to help me out.  He liked to keep his operation lean and mean. He told me that many American companies hire Indian companies to do the work without telling their clients here.  This turned out to be an issue many times.  I told each company I wanted to hire, that I wanted to communicate directly with the programmer. I ran into all types of excuses and frustrations.  Several companies told me that I was not a “good fit” for them, since I wanted to interact more, and since I was not a multi-million dollar company.  Another company told me that it would be frustrating talking directly to the programmers, and had tremendous difficulty telling me where all his programmers were. The story kept changing as we kept talking.
 
I hired a good programmer… but…
Finally, I found a company with a good programmer who knew all the languages that he needed to know.  We signed a contract and started work.  I was to visit them for two weeks starting in October.  After the contract was signed, and right before I was to come, they announced that they would not be available on the Monday and Tuesday of week two.  I came anyway hoping for the best.  Little did I know that while I was giving them time on Wednesday of week two to finish up what we started on week one, that they would completely blow me off and work on someone else’s project since I wasn’t physically watching them…. A lesson to be learned.  Thursday I was there, and work got done, and Friday I showed up late to allow them time to finish work up, but work never began until I was in their office.  The moral of the story is that the minute you stop watching people, they might start slacking off.  Also, don’t book a two week trip with a company with an unknown track record.  Make them prove themselves before you invest your time in them.
 
American companies who refused to work
The bottom line is that I found one company who slacked off, and all of the other companies I talked to REFUSED to work for me.  Americans are complaining bitterly about outsourcing, but when you try to hire American companies, most of them say, “Gee, I’m sorry, but you are not a good fit for us”.  I have come to the conclusion, that if you want any serious type of programming work to happen, you are forced to hire an Indian programming company. 
 
So, I went back to my trusty company who I have been using in India for years.  Communication is hard since calling them is difficult and visiting them involves 36 hours of travel.  Other than that, they are wonderful.  So, now they have started the project and done a lot of work in a short time.
 
Willingness
What I learned, is that skills are an important factor in hiring a programmer, but willingness to work, and availability to work are equally, or perhaps more important.  If you hire a company that doesn’t want to work, or a company with only one programmer who suddenly gets busy, your project will be permanently on hold.   My experience is that if you want any type of serious programming work to happen, hire a company with at least four programmers, and make sure they are willing.  I would not judge a company based on what country they are in, but based on the attitude of the boss and the workers, and how good their work is.  The quality of a company is on an individual basis!