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!

Outsourcing: Kenya vs. Nigeria in Africa

September 29, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Africa | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

I am writing this entry with happiness and sadness.  Happiness for Kenya, and sadness for Nigeria.  Africa is a part of the world, that had a hard time developing and has been plagued with disease, famine, civil war, dictators, and blood thirsty rebels.  Although the people are very charming, the continent doesn’t sound like my type of a place — even to visit!  I went to college with dozens of African classmates from all over the continent from Morocco, to Cote D’ivoire, Kenya, Lesuthu, Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania, and many other places as well.  So, I’m familiar with people from Africa, at least educated ones. But, running 123outsource.net has made me become painfully aware of the economic realities of modern Africa.  Certain countries are serious about doing business, while others are not.
 
When I started 123outsource.net, I assumed many things. I assumed that our web design section with it’s 800 listings (largest section on our site) would do well. I was not aware that web design as an industry was failing.  I assumed that India would be our #1 country — I was correct on that guess.  I assumed that South Africa would be the most active African country in outsourcing on my site — wrong again.  Kenya wins the competition. We get many serious companies in BPO, Data Entry, Call Center, Accounting, and other specialties signing up from Kenya regularly. We see a little activity from South Africa too, but not as much.  Nigeria has been a disaster. Yes, the sign up numbers are there, but most of them look like schemes, or businesses not relevant to our site such as money changing.  Hopefully none of the companies are fraudulent.
 
Nigeria leads the world in corruption and internet scams as well. It is scary and sad.  If a country is to get ahead, they need a strong work ethic, and a good reputation. Nigeria seems to be shooting itself in the foot, even on our site with it’s questionable listings.
 
Things seem to always change.  Twenty years ago, the world was a very different place.  Perhaps in another twenty, Kenya will rise to be a very powerful country, and we will all have to learn Kiswahili.  We’ll see. They are on the right track for now, based on how they are performing on my little directory. In the mean time — “kwahairi”.  So long!

Office Prices and Outsourcing

September 28, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Outsourcing Articles | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Office Prices and the Outsourcing Industry

India’s main problem with outsourcing is that the rents are getting so high, that Indian outsourcing companies must raise their rate for outsourced work to be able to cover their costs. Looking at a list of global office occupancy costs worldwide from scribd.com, I can share some of this information with you.

PSF – costs in dollars per square foot for office space in 2010.
Numbers have been rounded to the nearest dollar

Hong Kong 161
London 130 (West End)
Tokyo 101
London 62 (Docklands)
Mumbai 60
Delhi 59
Singapore 59
New York 42 (Midtown)
Los Angeles 39
Madrid 37

The irony is that in places like New York where incomes are roughly five times what they are in Mumbai for similar work, the price is 43% higher in Mumbai for office space. In the long run, America has many advantages that lead to national economic stability. We have endless land, and fast roads and airports that connect every single corner of the country conveniently to each other part of the country. There very few strikes effecting transportation, and political stability is something we take for granted. India has none of these advantages. It will take India 40 years of hard work to catch up to Western countries in terms of infrastructure.

One aspect that doesn’t show up in the above quoted statistics is that the data is for certain neighborhoods where offices are generally located. There are other parts of the above metros further away from the downtown that have less expensive prices. For example, in Delhi, it is $59 psp in the business district, but I’m looking at an ad in Noida where 1500 sf of office / factory space are being offered for rps35,000 / month which translates into less than one dollar per square foot per month. So, prices can vary tremendously within the same metro area depending on conditions.

High office prices have run many call center outsourcing businesses out of Bangalore, Mumbai, and Chennai, leading them to outskirts of Delhi, Assam and other areas where land is plentiful. Mumbai is on a peninsula, making land a scarce commodity, especially with the lack of skyscrapers which help to conserve land. Bangalore is surrounded by hills and mountains making growth difficult. Chennai is bordered by an ocean on one side making expansion possible only to the West. But Delhi has land around it and remote parts of India still have cheap land to expand to. So the future of Indian outsourcing work seems to keep migrating further and further away to where the cheap land and labor is. In another few decades, much of the outsourcing work will be redirected out of India entirely, perhaps to Africa, Bangladesh, and other areas.

Choosing the programming language

September 28, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Software Development | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

This is a funny story that happened in real life

Unfortunately, this story was heartwrenching for me.
I had a great programmer. He worked for a company that I had hired for many years. He knew my sites well, and there was another programmer who knew the site well too. In any case, these two software developers both knew ASP Classic. I thought that lots of people knew this language and that there was no problem. I was wrong.

He started with 2 years of experience
At the time one of the programmers was hired, he had only two years of experience. His salary was modest. He was a fast learner and accumulated up to eight years experience during the time I knew him. His salary went up, but not that high. The boss was a very sharp guy (I know him well). However, the boss didn’t scour the market looking for ASP Classic Developers (Programmers). He already had his two programmers and that was all he needed. The boss didn’t realize that the market value for someone as capable as his head programmer was a lot higher than what he was paying. We both didn’t realize this — until the programmer got offered DOUBLE his salary and promptly quit.

5 programmers later
That left me in a bind. I didn’t know who to hire for programming. I went through five different programmers until I found someone really acceptable (not perfect, but quite good). So, the plot thickens.

Translation to PHP or .NET?
As the head programmer announced his departure, he gave me some good tips. He said that I needed to recode my site into .NET because very few programmers knew ASP Classic these days. In just a few years, the world’s supply of ASP Classic Programmers had dried up. The boss couldn’t find anyone good to replace the leaving employee. One suggestion I got was to translate the entire site into PHP — the reason being that there are far more PHP programmers than .NET, and also far more .NET developers than ASP Classic.

Later I learned, that it is easier to translate the site to .NET, since you can do this little by little, module by module — and there are many modules. Imagine the complication of tranlating the site to PHP and launching the new version all at once. There would be 100+ bugs that would take half a year to build.

So, I decided NOT to translate the site. I voted for .NET programming simply so I could do the work gradually. I wanted to rebuild each module to much better specifications than before. I had learned that my old way of running the site had much room for improvement. Some of the older modules didn’t need to be used anymore, and there were many new functions that needed to be built.

The irony
After much shopping around for programmers, I found that not only is there a bad shortage of Classic ASP programmers, but in America, you can no longer get any programmer who has good skills and availability. You have to go to India or offshore no matter what the language is if you want more than a handful of hours per week of actual work. What I learned is that there are many Classic ASP Developers in India. The trick is finding them, and finding ones that I like. So, I didn’t need to rebuild anything — yet. Although, I eventually would have had to rebuild anyway, because even India’s supply of developers who know Classic ASP is a diminishing pool

Is Twitter for People With Attention Deficit Disorder?

September 28, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Of Interest, Social Media | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Tweets, little snippets of written conversation stripped of grammar or punctuation, would have been unthinkable for adults ten years ago — and certainly would not have earned a passing grade in school. But who remembers that far back? And who besides college students these days takes the time to focus on a whole paragraph?

It is true that a segment of our society is actually suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)… and cannot focus on more than a Tweet’s worth of information. Some reports say 11% of the population has ADD or ADHD (includes attention problems and hyperactivity), doubled from 5% decade ago…but the real numbers may be even higher. It seems that everyone is highly stressed and low on concentration compared to the years when we were growing up (if we ever did, that is).

Is Twitter merely fun–a powerful tool to convey information in a concise and clever, brief format–to stimulate further communication? Or is it a product of our ADD-prone culture and inability to communicate in complete thoughts for an extended period of time? Is it good for us?

Common symptoms of ADD are inability to concentrate, being disorganized, forgetful, late all the time, always in a rush…and there is evidence that our impersonal, fast-paced work environment promotes ADD. Instead of solving the problem through patience, education and training, our culture has catered to the level on which many people function, reducing the amount of information people take in or provide at one time. According to a March 31, 2013 NY Times article, ADHD (essentially ADD with hyperactivity and inability to focus) has increased 41% in the last decade (some sources say the increase is as great as 66%); sales of drugs to treat the condition doubled in 2012 to a record $9 billion.

Does continually using sites like Twitter–or beginning to think in Tweets–help people focus and concentrate? Does it give them the patience to become good writers? What is the effect of a daily diet of Tweets?

Tweets are thought-provoking, short, quickly written statements that convey a main idea. The push to communicate briefly to so many people in so little time may harm our ability to communicate well for longer periods of time–and to a very few people. Unless they are aphorisms written by masters of the English language (Emerson, Thoreau, Atwood), Tweets are easily forgotten…and will they save the world? What does our addiction to Twitter say about our ability to communicate and our interest in forging real adult relationships?

Maybe Twitter should create a site called Sing it to Me Slowly…for those who want to take more time and have more to say?

Tweets:
(1) Some people tweet about business, life, or love. But, I tweet about Twitter
(2) Tweets, little snippets of written conversation stripped of grammar or punctuation, would have been unthinkable for adults ten years ago
(3)
Tweets are thought-provoking, short, quickly written statements that convey a main idea.

You might also like:

How to attract clients to your call center – presentation
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/03/29/how-to-acquire-clients-for-call-centers-presentation/

Optimizing your Twitter PPC campaign
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/12/10/optimizing-your-twitter-ppc-campaign/

Are you running out of workspace? Outsource a few tasks

September 28, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Outsourcing Articles | Tagged , , | Leave a comment
Are you running out of workspace?
Maybe you can afford new employees but have nowhere to put them until you move into that new office space that costs 5x as much. So, what do you do?  You can outsource a few tasks to companies overseas in the meantime.  A wide variety of tasks can be outsourced including web design, personal assistants, accounting, legal support, programming, call center, data entry, e-publishing, medical billing, medical transcriptions and more.  Back office tasks are typically done at outsourcing companies — miscellaneous tasks.
The irony, is that when you think you are running out of workspace, you have not seen the workspace of the outsourcing companies.  They typically have workers crammed together like sardines or ants in an ant hill.  If you don’t want to outsource, you can consider smaller cubicles, or cramming small desks together. Just because you need your elbow room, doesn’t mean you can’t find some employees who don’t mind being squeezed.
Another idea is overflow workspace.  There are places that sell office space by the cubicle.  You can negotiate a nice price by the day, month, or whatever time period you like.  Have that extra worker be a mile away in a shared work environment. It is a great idea and those shared office spaces tend to be lively fun places to be as well!

Mixed-level software teams: a business model that works!

September 28, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Software Development | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

I have talked to people at all types of companies. I know people who have one office and want another. I know people who work remotely. I know people who have an office in India and a sales office in the United States. All of these company structures are part of the bigger picture of what a business model is. But, I learned a secret from reading blogs and seeing who performs best in real life — and I am going to share this with you.

Bottom heavy
Typical companies in India are bottom heavy. They have lots of workers, but very few managers. Many workers are self-managing. This type of business model could work if you exclusively hire workers who are capable of doing a great job being self-managing. Most people are not self-managing, so I would avoid this business model.

Mixed teams — a winning idea!
But, companies with what I like to call, “mixed teams” seem to work optimally. They have a skill mixture in each team. Teams could even have replaceable members just as rickshaws all use the same parts which you can transfer from one rick to another in seconds. Imagine a team of five people. You have a project manager who is very seasoned, a mid-level worker, and three junior programmers. The grunt work gets done by the lower level workers. The planning and supervision gets done by the project manager. The more complicated work gets done by the mid-level employee. Brilliant and cost effective too! You are still getting cheap labor for the majority of the project paired with the superior thinking skills of a seasoned professional! But, there is more!

If the lower level employees get stuck, they have not one, but two seasoned people to ask for help. But, there is yet another even bigger problem that the mixed level model solves. It is very hard to hire higher level programmers in any country these days. They are systematically gulped up by big companies and seldom available. It is easier to hire inexperienced people since there are so many of them and nobody really values them. So, what is the strategy? If your high level programmer leaves the company after a few years, your mid-level employee will be experienced enough to promote to that higher position in many cases. Internal hiring solves this huge problem of a worldwide shortage of experienced programmers.

You might also like:

How to make sure that the software company you hired will deliver!
Click here

How to test a software company
Click here

SEO Strategies — Revolving content & 2nd generation linked content

September 28, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: SEO | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Is SEO complicated?
People think that SEO is complicated. I don’t know enough about it to understand its complications. Google’s algorithms change unpredictably, but certain principles hold steady. Content is king, and good content draws in traffic. Google can tell if people like your content. Different IP addresses will come and spend time reading if it is good, plus people will tweet it, link to it and more. But, what is the secret?

Obviously, each page has to have some keyword focus with pre-planned keyword variations. But, there is a lot more to my style of simplistic SEO strategy. Keeping the content changing is critical. Busy pages should change their content every 10 days or so, while less traficked pages, perhaps every few months. You don’t have to change the entire content — just a link or two, or perhaps a paragraph. You need to schedule time to change your pages, and pre-plan what content you are going to put in at set intervals.

But, what about 2nd generation links? (not a real term by the way) What should my home page link to? Google likes it if a home page or big page links to pages that themselves link to good content. You link to pages that link to other good pages. Let’s say you have an informational site. Let’s say that you have a separate page for various types of sports. One main page for rafting, one for rock climbing, and another for skiing. Let’s say there are many more pages like this. The page could be purely paragraph style and have a few links embedded in the text. However, you could have another format for informational pages which would be link oriented pages that might look a bit like search results.

Imagine a page with 20 links. There could be two lines of commentary about each link under each link, and then a line of space. Imagine a home page that links to a dozen or so of these info-link pages. Great. But, it gets better. Imagine that these info-link pages are rotated every month. Each month you get a different dozen. Perhaps each month you cut one link to an info-link page and add another. You drop the page about rock climbing in June and add a page about baseball in its place. That way, your home page will be connected to 240 super content pages. Each of your 12 info-link pages that are linked to the home page link to 20 pages related to their theme content (a particular sport), and then the content is rotated so there is always something new.

What is the next step? Those info-link pages could also evolve and revolve as new links could be added to the list of 20 and others could be removed. Google likes live sites, so if yours is always having little changes happen, that counts in your favor.

My story is that my directory site 123notary has good rankings for city search results pages simply because the content is always revolving. However, our home page doesn’t change much and Google doesn’t give it a good ranking. We will change the programming soon to include revolving content. But, it is not a big deal, because our site is about search results and giving great information to the public — and we do this well.

Medical Transcriptions – a trip through a city

September 28, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Medical Transcriptions | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Medical Transcriptions – a trip through a city
 
Americans always hear about outsourcing, and it makes people upset.  Why are “our” jobs going overseas.  It is because companies can’t find qualified people “here” that will be reliable about doing the work for a reasonable price, or even for an unreasonable price.  There is a labor shortage here in America.
 
But, it is hard for people to imagine in real life what outsourcing operations really look like.  I remember a comedy video on one of our late night television shows.  An American needed tech support for his computer and wanted to go to the source. The American got on a plane with his computer and  flew to Hyderabad. He got in a rick shaw, saw people going down the street in bicycles, ox driven carts, cars, buses, etc.  There was pollution everywhere.. Finally, after a long drive down a filthy and congested road, there was a beautiful modern looking office building.  Our American friend walked in the building, went up the stairs, and met a nice Indian girl who helped him fix his problem.  The technical support session took only ten minutes, and the problem was solved.  I believe he likes the girl and asks her to lunch, and she politely declines.  It was a fun video. If the man had been more educated on Indian culture, he would have asked the girl’s mother for permission to marry the girl and THEN asked the girl to have lunch with him. There is an order to these things in India.
 
I remember taking a long rick shaw ride down small roads on my way to a medical transcription and software programming house. One road had pot holes riddling the road for two blocks.  The rick shaw went all the way around each one and had to grind to a stop several times. The last several minutes of the trip included a trip past a block that was vacant and completely covered with garbage.  I can’t believe that people live next to this filth, but they do.  After that, we got into an affluent residential neighborhood.  There was a young man around 18 years old washing the bosses car.  He washed the car every day and got chai for everyone.  250 rupees later, I had reached my destination.  I went up the stairs that were spattered with drops of paint.  I guess that it is against the law in Tamil Nadu to use a drop cloth, and painting the leaves of the trees is customary there too. The room was filled with nicely dressed ladies wearing selwar kurtas, and a few young men. They worked in crampt conditions in a nice room with 10 foot high ceilings — all glued to their computers typing away.
 
All I can say is that I am glad I don’t do Medical Transcriptions in India, or anything else there.  I like clean air, and I like having my space.  I have my own room to work in and peace and quiet. On the other hand, I am happy that India is moving up in the world and getting lots of Medical Transcription outsourcing jobs from various sources.

Tips for hiring bloggers who charge by the word

September 28, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Management | Tagged | Leave a comment

I talked to a blogger who wanted to charge me by the word. I had a few questions for him/her/it.

(1) What if the word is a really long word — perhaps a multisyllabic word, or a polysyllabic word?
(2) Do I get a discount if you use short words in a sentence such as:
He uses me for work a lot.
(3) What about hyphenated words? Any room for negotiation there?
(4) Do you charge extra for foreign words like Masala Dosa?

Jokes aside, to me the value of a blogger is purely based on what they can do for my stats.
Can they make my blog traffic spike?
Will their articles get many views per article?
Those are two great analytics in which to judge a blogger.

I’ll tell you a quick story. I wrote a bunch of blogs on a topic that my readers had been begging me for months to write. Quick articles on how their businesses could attract more clients. So, I thought of six sub-themes on the general subject, and published them a few days apart. My blog traffic spiked. It was the most wonderful analytics experience I have ever had as a blog writer.

No blogger will agree to be paid based on performance, so it is up to the business owner to know what their audience likes, otherwise they will get negligible traffic for their blog. Although you have to pay by the word, you can have someone write six articles, publish them all in the same week or two week period, and see if your blog spikes. No spike = no repeat business. Or you could just say that if there is no spike, that you get half off for hyphenated words! Either way, watch your stats and scrutinize people who want to work for you!

How to Optimize Your Facebook PPC Campaign

September 27, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Analytics | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Many of us use Facebook for our business and almost all of us use it for fun. But, how optimized is your Facebook campaign? Here are a few tips to help you use Facebook and social media optimization to your advantage.

(1) Where do you get your best browsers?
I noticed that blog visits deriving from Facebook resulted in longer browsing sessions. This is a huge advantage. Use Google Analytics and see for yourself where your best browsers are coming from. Sometimes people spend longer on particular topics than others while certain social media sites might generally create better traffic. Pay attention to that.

(2) Pay attention to what topics work
In some industries people are more talkative than others. Facebook will help you realize this fast. But, perhaps you can figure out which types of topics get responded to the most. Try a different topic every day — plan long ahead of time. See which do best and create other topics that are slightly similar to the successful ones to duplicate your winnings!

(3) PPC for getting new followers
If you use Facebook’s PPC, there are two amazing ways to capitalize. You can use PPC to attract new followers. I learned that this is best done on full blast for a month, and then let it sit for a month or two. You will get a more efficient price per new follower if you are not always available!

(4) PPC for blog promotion
But, you can also do blog promotion using Facebook PPC. Certain blogs and topics will do better than others. Once again, pay attention to what types of things generally work, and repeat your success. I pay $30 per blog entry and get anywhere from 80-300 clicks. If it goes well, sometimes I put a little more money into it. I also select blog articles to put on Facebook PPC that ALREADY did well when promoted from another medium. Duplicating success can easily be done if you are constantly watching your statistics on your analytics tracking system. We got some of our best new browsers for our blog from Facebook. We found that the quality of a Facebook follower is better than from Twitter or Stumbleupon for my particular blog. What about yours?

(5) Engage — obviously
If you get to know your followers one by one, they will be more responsive. That is a law of human nature. Don’t interact with all of them, but choose the ones that seem promising. You can also follow others who are relevant to you in hopes that they will follow you back.

You might also like:

Prospective employers are watching you on Facebook
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/07/07/prospective-employers-are-watching-you-on-facebook/

BPO and Social Collaboration
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2012/04/05/bpo-and-social-collaboration/

In 1880 Arizona you’d get scalped; But, in 2015 India, you’ll get Skyped.

September 27, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: India, Outsourcing Articles | Leave a comment

Skype with Outsourcing

Getting Scalped in the Old West
People in foreign countries may not be aware of how dangerous America used to be, particularly in the Old West. Many folks would come from back East (America’s East Coast) to make a new life out West. Many knew what the perils consisted of. There were outlaws, bank robbers, gunfighters, pick pockets, swindlers, and worse. During the 1800’s there were Native American tribes that would scalp you if they thought you were an enemy, or in some cases if they didn’t like the way you looked. Scalping is a practice where you take the skin off someone’s head as a punishment or act of revenge. That person will never be able to grow hair on the top of their head again. Getting scalped is a cruel and horrifying practice which no longer exists in America. But, now there is an equally horrifying practice going on in India. Getting Skyped.

Getting Skyped in India
I made a sales inquiry to one of those smaller companies in India using an Indian number. The prior call I made was to a larger company in Noida who had a dedicated U.S. phone number. So, I called the smaller company and got the manager. He was very accommodating and offered to call me back to save me a little money on my phone bill. I thought that was very generous of him. The next words to come out of his mouth were, “Do you have a Skype number?” I then realized what had just happened to me. I had gotten skyped.

Skyping your clients may seem more cost effective and convenient in the short run, but how effective is it on your bottom line in the long run? Skype connections are not as clear as phone connections. They also require a specific account which needs to be kept current if it is a paid account. To me, being on an unclear phoneline undermines the quality of the call. My main issue with Indian companies is that I can’t communicate with them clearly, and if you further complicate this with a bad phoneline, I won’t be able to understand them at all which could lead to costly mistakes being made on critical projects. What is even more costly is that customers will have significantly less faith in them and not hire them in the first place if they are not satisfied with the quality of their phone line and phone communication. So, as it seems that you are saving money with Skype, you might be losing 20% of your customers. How much will your net savings be then, bhai-sabh (brother)? And if that happens, your boss will have your scalp!

BPO BOSS: Yes, is this India International Phone Service?

IIPS: Yes, how can we help you.

BPO BOSS: I want to invest in a professional phone system that accommodates international calls at a reasonable cost. Do you provide that service?

IIPS: Yes, that is our specialty. I can tell you the details now. The first month includes…

BPO BOSS: Yes, I’d like to know all of the details. Can you Skype me?