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oDesk, like Elance, is a community that brings together contract workers and employers. The company has been in business since 2003, and now serves hundreds of thousands of clients all around the world.
While oDesk was primarily known as a place to find programmers, it is also a great place to find a virtual assistant, and administrative support is one of their fastest growing categories. I found over 5000 matches for a recent oDesk search for “virtual assistant”.
oDesk has no sign-up fees to access their network of freelance virtual assistant service providers. In fact, you can create an account, post your requirements, and have workers bidding for the job within a few minutes. The company makes money by taking a fee from the contract price of the work. That means if you agree to pay an oDesk virtual assistant $500 for 100 hours worth of work (not an uncommon price!), they are really collecting slightly less than that.
The oDesk system offers the benefits you’d expect from this type of marketplace, including feedback mechanisms and dispute resolution. One thing that sets oDesk apart is their monitoring software. Some say it’s a little Big Brother-ish, but others swear by it because it makes sure the work that is paid for is the work that gets done. The software, which workers turn on when they begin a job, tracks keystroke volume, takes screenshots at certain time intervals, and even has an optional webcam feature. If you’re wary about hiring a remote virtual assistant, it can definitely help overcome some of the fear of not being able to manage their working hours effectively.
When searching for virtual assistants on oDesk, pay close attention to their account history. How long have they been working? What does their feedback say about their work? Another thing to look for is to match the virtual assistant’s specific skill set to the tasks you need done. Everyone has certain specialties, so seek out those who have good ratings in the areas you need the most help with. Alternatively, you can post your own job requirements and have workers bid on them.
Have you worked with oDesk? Please share your experience below.
I was less happy with odesk then with elance since the programmer I had working for me never actually finished the project I had him doing. He kept drawing out the time further and further and never actually got there.
I was very happy with oDesk. I would recommend it to anyone. I really have enjoyed working with the people I have found there.
I think the thing is to separate the providers from the individual VAs. You can have bad experiences with either. To the comment above, if you had a programmer not finish the project, that’s bad news, but the longer-term “projects” that programmers face are very different from the type of work a VA would be doing through oDesk or eLance. My view for VAs would be to give them short, manageable, well-defined tasks out of the gates to see if they can execute. If so, start feathering in more difficult tasks.
I talked about our experience in great detail here: http://www.profitably.com/finance/roundtable/operations/why-everyone-can-and-should-have-a-virtual-assistant
…if you’re interested!
I have worked exclusively with Odesk and do not have experience from working with competing services. From what I know, many contractors are registered with several different service providers. However, for reasons I can not quite recall, I started using Odesk and have been satisfied ever since.
I have been able to find writers, designers, programmers, translators, and computer engineers. Basically you can find specialists in virtually any field imaginable. The cost structure is what you’d expect. Contractors in developed countries are usually more expensive than contractors in developing nations, and a low hourly cost often means poor English skills.
I’ve had only a couple of negative experiences. One lady I hired surfed Facebook for an extensive period of time while she was supposed to be working. After bringing the issue to Odesk’s attention, they quickly refunded me the money. Another technology project ended up costing me a significant amount of money and ended up not being completed. Outsourcing a project can be difficult if you do not have the skills and/or time needed to monitor the project. In these cases it is important to do the project on a fixed fee basis, otherwise the project can drag on and on.
I’ve used oDesk for several different tasks. So they were a natural choice for me when I wanted to look for a virtual assistant. I found one that I am in love with. The most important thing was to read the past reviews on the applicant, and also ask for (and check) references. After a couple of months I am still using the same VA.
I love oDesk and highly recommend them. They are also the only service that I know of where I can look over the shoulder of my VA with regular screenshots.
oDesk has been very successful for us. Being located in an area where skilled technicial developers are rare to come by, it is refreshing to connect to so many skilled programmers and developers on oDesk, and their eagerness to do the work is refreshing.
I started one contract to “test the waters” and it turned out so well, within 24 hours I had 5 contracts in the works. All of the jobs have been completed and I could not be happier with the results. I have made some great contacts with the contractors in oDesk and will continue to invite them to future projects.
oDesk has been a great service and I would recommend it to anyone seeking small projects to be completed without having to hire expensive third parties.
I tried hiring someone to post ads on craigslist for me. The guy I hired, Akenja or something, kept on insisting I get on skype to talk to him when I had already laid out all the information he needed on odesk, where we were communicating just fine.
I had already paid him $20 upfront. I can’t seem to find the refund option anywhere on Odesk. It was all just a hassle to me.
I’m also into odesk!
One bit of advice though, it is quite important for any relationship to have a good communication, no matter what your freelancing site is, because a great partnership between two people creates successful and high quality results.
If I could add a tip on hiring virtual assistants: creating a test with 3-5 questions is a great way to evaluate your applicants. It should be similar to the type of job they would do. This way, it would test not only their written English but also their problem solving skills.
One other thing to consider is their attitude. You would want someone who is consistent, driven and loyal.
We are a new travel mobile application called Locish. Locish is a travel application for web and mobile devices, where travelers can ask questions about the cities they are visiting, and local people answer in full details. Our main competetive advantage is the language. We are launching the application in 9 different languages, which is a very difficult task as you might imagine. Time consuming and expensive. That’s why we thought about trying one of the available paid crowdourced website. So after some research we tried odesk.
We are very happy. I think is very easy to use and understand the philosophy of the site. For me is very important to be easy to use and oDesk has a neat and clean GUI which helps you a lot in navigating through the site. Also it is very easy to search for people as well as posting the job. The thing I really like about oDesk is the test. Any candidate can compete each other. You can create a test similar to your job and evaluate the applicants. I think this is great.
Finally the communication and payment through the site made it an enjoyable experience. I’m sure we will use it again in the future.
We have been using oDesk to revamp our video tutorials for DeskAway. We found a freelancer within a day and got all narrations done within a week. Loved it!
I really don’t care even if they say odesk’s tracking diary is a bit big brother-ish. The employer deserves to be given the right output especially if they have their payment method verified. I remember staff.com also has a monitoring tool like that of odesk. It’s always nice to have accounts in these freelancing sites.
I recently hired my first Virtual Assistant from oDesk. Today makes 2 weeks and she has been great! She is a self-starter and not only does what I ask her to but she goes above and beyond. I was nervous at first but after the first day, I knew I had made the right move.
A big plus for oDesk is their Work Diary. I can actually see what my VA is doing through screenshots. I do think I got lucky though because I went looking for a VA BEFORE I placed my ad. Then I invited the contractors I was interested in by looking at their profiles.
I did a lot of research on a lot of companies but eventually oDesk won my business.
@Carlton, that’s a great idea to invite promising contractors to bid on your ad — thanks for sharing the suggestion!
Love using oDesk for simple tasks (building email lists, etc). We also enjoy using oDesk for simple development tasks when our product team is overloaded. Never had a bad experience with an oDesk contractor to date!
There are some nice articles in Business Week about oDesk and the trend towards using Virtual Assistants and Virtual Office.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-09-04/how-to-get-rid-of-your-office#r=auth-s
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-09-04/why-some-company-offices-are-virtual#p1
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-09-04/when-your-personal-assistant-is-virtual
We are clearly big fans of oDesk. It takes work to research, screen and onboard great candidates but it’s totally worth it. There’s less work screening with other services because you get very few responses. I definitely prefer to have a lot of potential candidates as opposed to just a few.
I used oDesk for our first foray into outsourcing, and I was very impressed. I have used two contractors (one is still working on a job). Both high quality contractors. One worked on an urgent job for me and made a very big effort to meet a tight client deadline – very impressed. The user interface is very, very easy to use and intuitive. I like the inbuilt message centre – it helps to keep all my communication with the contractors in one place.
We did have one slight glitch. I needed an urgent job done, but the system defaults to having the job start the next day so my contractor was unable to log hours automatically. He had to log hours manually for that job until the job officially “started”. That was annoying but we did manage to overcome it. I held an online chat with the Help Desk and they were very efficient.
I will certainly continue to use oDesk.
I have used oDesk several times, along with other sites like Elance, OnlineJobs.ph, etc. From my experience, it’s difficult to find high quality workers on oDesk. Most people bid low and underdeliver. I have had people who disappear halfway through a project and others who promise to deliver within a certain time frame but end up taking 5 times as long.
This isn’t to say that there aren’t good people on there. There certainly are. It just takes some experience and persistence to find them, or in many cases, a higher budget.
I followed Nick’s free guide on how to find VA’s and I posted for jobs on both oDesk and Elance and found great VA as well as research assistance help on both these sites.
I’ve since hired programmers and designers as well and have had good experiences with a lot of them being pretty capable technical wise.
Its a bit intimidating getting bids from 10-20 people within 2-3 days and I felt bad having to turn a few down after going through a few rounds of back and forth with them – but if you put in real clear requirements, asking them for some “input” into your project to get a feel if they “get it” and checking their feedback – it will get you a long way.
If you’re looking for technical help and you’re not technical, its hard to select the right person. A suggestion is to create really small paid test projects that you can give to 2 or 3 of the folks you picked, give them really detailed instructions and see which delivers what you need. Also don’t be stingy. The average in 2012 for a good developer is about $33/hr plus/minus $10.
As far as oDesk vs Elance. Its a tossup. I’ve found great help on both these sites so I use both.
We used oDesk for our email campaigns and the result was great. We also outsourced simple development tasks when our inhouse team was not set up and we got the jobs done dot in time. Great work at prices which fit a start-up budget!
I have been consistently using oDesk since I opened up shop almost 3 years ago. In that time we’ve had a ton of work completed, and spent near 50k via oDesk. May not sound like a lot, but we aren’t generally hiring 1st world – so 50 goes a long way.
Using oDesk comes with it’s risk, just like hiring anyone – heck even face to face. You need to know that you will find some lemons, but if you are patient, there is gold in them hills.
oDesk basically enabled me to get into business in the first place, so I have nothing but good things to say.
I just started using oDesk in the last 2 months and it’s been really great. I just keep hiring more people! At this point I have a video editor, a Virtual assistant and a web developer. It has helped me get the leverage in my business I’ve wanted for a long time. I’ve found that these employees are so eager to do good work. Their work ethic is really inspiring! One thing I would recommend is be sure to do a Skype phone call with them before hiring. If they want to just SMS, that’s a red flag. You need to talk with them to tell if they really speak English. I can’t imagine working well with someone who really can’t speak English well, so you have to test that with a phone call. I found that searching for the exact tasks I needed them to do, including the software I needed them to use, helped me find great candidates quickly. I looked at their length of employment, star ratings, comments, etc. I love how easy oDesk makes everything with payment, monitering, communication, etc. My VA offered to email me a daily written report of her activities, and that’s been great.
I’ve had tremendous luck over on oDesk with over 100 different jobs. Granted, like any site (or even hiring domestically) you do have to wade through to find the best talent, and even so I sometimes can have some jobs which crash and burn, but on the whole, I really like oDesk’s ease of use, and large pool of VAs to draw from.
The one drawback I see is for software development and engineering work, there tends to be a smaller pool of high quality talent, and so I would consider Elance or Guru for larger and more complex jobs.