Why some Virtual Assistants get bent out of shape by cheap overseas labour?
By Gavin | April 15, 2008
There are 2 main breeds of Virtual Assistants, those that are based in western countries like the US, Canada, UK and Australia and then those based in developing countries like India, Philippines, China and Mauritius.
The VA’s from the Western Countries often market themselves as being an extension of the clients business, being able to think for the client and be proactive taking care of things before they become an issue. They can be a bit like the right hand person or, executive assistant a MD may have when running a multi national corporation.
A number of the Western VA’s think that the Indians et al have jumped on the bandwagon and hijacked their industry. Welcome to globalisation. The more people that use cheap overseas VA’s will help raise awareness of the industry and grow the numbers of people wanting their more expensive option.
Obviously someone as competent and experienced as that is going to cost more money than a Virtual Assistant from India; they may be 5 -15 times more expensive, charging anything in the range of $35 to $100 an hour
If you or your business is already cash rich then it might be worth hiring someone from the US or UK who can work like this for you.
Most business owners though cannot afford this luxury and if the truth be known would be quite happy to be earning that sort of money themself.
If the tasks that make up your business are well documented and systematised then hiring an assistant at over $50 an hour is an unnecessary luxury when there is a plentiful supply of VA’s who will work for around $10 an hour.
If you’re able to systematise the tasks there is no reason why a $10 an hour VA can’t do as good a job as a $100 an hour VA.
I’m interested to hear your views would you hire a virtual Assistant at $30 plus an hour?
Topics: outsourcing, Personal Outsourcing, Virtual Assistant |
4 Responses to “Why some Virtual Assistants get bent out of shape by cheap overseas labour?”
Comments
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April 24th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
at $30 plus an hour, they need to have good knowledge in the areas of expertise rather then ‘just’ a generalist. The challenge is the risk in determining where their real limits of knowledge (scratch that, I don’t really care about knowledge, it is ability) ability to produce results.
I am always looking at how much does the result cost. If someone can produce it for $50, I do not care if they are charging $400 an hour or $4 a day (well actually I do - the lower price probably will take longer to complete so the higher price/rate is better). Of course there are a lot of other variables - quality, timeliness, innovation. But one of the underlying issues, is ease of producing results. It is easier to work with someone who is like me, but that is a cultural prejudice that we all work through throughout our lives.
April 25th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
The simple, straight-forward answer is that Virtual Assistants in western countries can’t compete against so-called third world Virtual Assistants; our cost of living is higher and so is our break-even point.
The more complicated answer has to do not only with economics but also with culture and training. Western Virtual Assistants invest a lot of time and money training to be just like their brick and mortar counterparts. This investment results in a Virtual Assistant who is not just task oriented, as most third world Virtual Assistants are, but is client oriented. Western Virtual Assistants see the big picture, and not just the task at hand. As for culture, well, the chances are better that a Western Virtual Assistant will notice things like incorrect word usage (I know a blogger who uses the word, there, when he means, their), typos and horribly incorrect grammar than a third world Virtual Assistant would.
In the long and short run, I guess what kind of Virtual Assistant you hire depends on what kind of business image you want to project.
May 1st, 2008 at 8:11 pm
I wrote a blog post, “Disadvantages of Outsourcing to Offshore Virtual Assistants,” and in it I pointed out that one of the disadvantages is language barrier, in addition to culture barrier. To read the other disadvantages I mentioned, please visit http://rjswordprocessing.wordpress.com/2008/04/27/disadvantages-of-outsourcing-to-offshore-virtual-assistants-2/
May 29th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Donna makes a good point - Merging the 2 ideas together, I wonder how often using a ‘Western Virtual Assistant’ to manage and leverage a ‘Global Virtual Assistant’ provides the greatest Return on Investment. I seem to read that Tim Ferriss seems to use this format pretty successfully. Of course it depends even more on having good systems in place.