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Diversity in the Workplace
As you look around your office, is everyone just like you? Probably not. The demographics of the American workforce have changed dramatically over the last 50 years. In the 1950s, more than 60% of the American workforce consisted of white males....
Employer’s Quick Guide to Avoiding Sexual Harassment Liability
Employers can be held liable for any sexual harassment that occurs in the workplace. However, if they take reasonable care to prevent and correct harassment, they will not be liable. The following article looks at the elements of reasonable care...
Increase Exposure To Your Website for Free
When I first began attempting to make money on the internet, I fell into the trap of advertising my website with "get rich quick" promoters and products, thinking I'd get my money back immediately with their allegedly wonderful services. After...
PR: The Thrill of a Good Idea
The notion that a business, non-profit or association manager can actually hold a big key to success in his or her own hands IS a thrilling idea!
And it becomes more thrilling as the manager actually alters individual perceptions leading to...
Residual Income -- Making Money while You Sleep
What exactly is Residual Income?
"Residual income is the reason that MLM business opportunities can be so lucrative. It's the reason why as many as 10% of new millionaires made their money in MLM... and who knows how many settled for just ...
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Hire a Virtual Assistant
So, the decision has been made to hire a virtual assistant...
Knowing your business needs and clearly defining them will be the first step in the process. A good virtual assistant (or VA) will be asking you these questions and having the answers ready will get your project moving in the right direction faster.
Truly assess your needs. You may find that your current needs and future needs are different. An honest evaluation of these needs will lead you in the right direction as some virtual assistants can offer services that are specific to your current needs, but may not have the skills for further demands. This is not a negative thing, however, you should keep this in mind when interviewing your perspective VA. If that VA can not provide, do they belong to a network of virtual assistants, or associations that they could pull help from?
Translating Budget Goals...
Most of the time you will not be pleased with the answers to questions like “How long is SEO going to take?” and then the answer... “we charge $x.xx for that service.” WHY SO MUCH?! These answers can be the wrong answer to you and your perceptions of the VA could be distorted unless you know your budget. The business owner usually thinks in terms of total costs, the VA usually thinks in terms of hourly rates. Set your budget, then take a look at the hourly rate: $25 an hour translates into $1000 at 40 work hours. How many hours will your job take to do? Add in the extras and you can determine how much you are ready to spend. Is the service an ongoing service, or a “one-off”? What is the industry standard for the work you need done? The more prepared you are with your budget and how the budget relates to an hourly rate, the better your search for a VA will be.
Learn the Lingo…
Excuse me? What are you talking about? What is a SOHO and do I need one of those in my home office? Trade jargon can confuse you or even be intimidating. Being in a position to make an
uninformed decision is not where a businessman needs to be. You can loose the pace of your interview when having to ask what an acronym means, or why you might need whatever it is the VA is talking about.
You can do a simple term search on Google or any search engine, start with the type of work you need ( i.e. “search engine optimization”) and then look for unfamiliar words or phrases. Look these new terms up and you will be a more informed and prepared to contact a VA. Most of the time you will find other useful tidbits like standard rates and how much competition there is for the service.
Sometimes it would be nice to just to dump the project onto the VA and forget it, hoping the work is in competent hands, but that can lead to disaster. You could be charged for services you don’t need or are too complicated and difficult to maintain if your relationship with that VA ends (for what ever reason). Your VA may not even be able to provide the service needed. For this reason it is wise to at least get familiar with the technical details and language.
Word-of-Mouth Referrals
What can be said about word-of-mouth referrals, other than they can not always be trusted but are better than a blind pick out of a directory. Having said that, you can trust a referral if you have done your research, set your budget and feel prepared to discuss your project needs. I am including this information because a referred VA might still not be the right virtual assistant for you or your business.
Armed with this information, your search for a virtual assistant will be easier and in the end, the match you make with be a better fit for your needs.
2004 World Wide Virtual (http://www.world-wide-virtual.us)
About the Author
Damian Hons is World Wide Virtual, a virtual assistant practice that offers a wide variety of services from Word Processing to Search Engine Optimization. His web site can be found here - http://www.world-wide-virtual.us
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| Language Tools |
| Translation of text and web pages between English and several European languages. |
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| Language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
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| en.wikipedia.org |
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| English language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
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| en.wikipedia.org |
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| Free Translation and Professional Translation Services from SDL ... |
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| AltaVista - Babel Fish Translation |
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| yourDictionary.com • Comprehensive and Authoritative Language Portal |
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| iLoveLanguages - Your Guide to Languages on the Web |
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| AltaVista - Babel Fish Translation |
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| world.altavista.com |
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| BBC - Languages - Homepage |
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| Online Dictionaries and Translators |
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| The Klingon Language Institute |
| Nonprofit organization offers language tutorials, related merchandise, mailing list and membership information. |
| www.kli.org |
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| MARC Code List for Languages |
| MARC Code List for Languages prepared by the Library of Congress Network Development and MARC Standards Office. |
| www.loc.gov |
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| Python Programming Language -- Official Website |
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| www.python.org |
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| SYSTRAN Language Translation Technology |
| Machine translation products. Free online translation available (the engine used by Altavista's Web translator) - English to French, German, Italian, ... |
| www.systransoft.com |
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| Project MUSE - Language |
| Language, the official journal for the Linguistic Society of America, ... Edited by Brian Joseph , Language serves a readership of over 7000 and has been ... |
| muse.jhu.edu |
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| Learn a Language :: English, Spanish, German, Italian, French ... |
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| Parlo - Welcome to Parlo - learn to speak a new language. |
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| PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor |
| PHP is a server-side HTML embedded scripting language. It provides web developers with a full suite of tools for building dynamic websites: native APIs to ... |
| www.php.net |
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| Ethnologue, Languages of the World |
| Home page of ethnologue.com, a searchable database of language resources. |
| www.ethnologue.com |
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| Language Log |
| Weblog run by University of Pennsylvania phonetician Mark Liberman, with multiple guest linguists. |
| itre.cis.upenn.edu |
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