Startups look to minimize their costs until they become profitable. Often times this means that some of their work has to be outsourced because they cannot afford to hire a full-time employee to handle these things. The world of technology has many different affordable options for nearly any company and there are companies internationally that will accept the outsourced work for a fraction of what you would have to pay a US contractor. The following are some tips on outsourcing for your startup.
Read the Reviews
For every great vendor to outsource work to, there are about 20 vendors that do not produce quality work. Reading the reviews of the vendors in different forums and discussion boards is a great idea. Oftentimes customers are critical of their vendors, but getting an unbiased opinion of someone who worked with them is invaluable during the hiring decisions that need to be made. If you have a professional contact who has used a vendor before, then reach out to them to see how their experience was. Professional contacts will not recommend a vendor unless they are sure about them as this can impact their professional credibility.
Test Out a Few Vendors
Testing out the vendors you are considering is important as you might sign a long-term contract without seeing how they perform. There are horror stories about off-shore SEO companies getting their clients deindexed from Google then suddenly dropping off the face of the earth. Just because there is a website and good communication does not mean that the company is legitimate. While trying out the vendors, you can slowly up the volume of work you give them to see how they react to the increase workload. For an ecommerce site, having a great vendor for hosting and keeping the website from going down can be the difference between millions of dollars in sales in just a short time.
Outsource Things You Aren’t Sure About
Marketing is something that many startups usually outsource. Hiring qualified marketing professionals can be expensive and doing the marketing for the startup can be a full time job in itself for anyone who tries to take it on. Even at startups, the managers still outsource their IT work. This is because there usually will be at least one tech guru but depending on this person can be hard especially since they already have a full time job. Outsourcing the things that the current staff isn’t quite sure how to do is much more efficient and in the long run it saves time and money.
Consider an Outsourcing Platform
There are a few outsourcing platforms like Upwork that protect both the contractor and client hiring. There are a few tips to using these sites though, make sure that the job description is elaborate and put some more parameters on it as well. Have the people applying answer relevant questions to see if they even have the skills to perform the job. Usually the low bids are international contractors who might be a nuisance to communicate with. This is not saying always take the higher bids but on these sites you really do get what you pay for sometimes.
Interns Can Be Invaluable
Having a good intern program at a startup can be important in a variety of ways. It can help those groom possible employees without cost to the company and it benefits the intern with something they can put on their resume if they aren’t hired on or want to work in the industry. Treating the interns in a respectful manner is important as rumors can spread about a terrible place to intern at.
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