2) Start with a small task to test the person, ideally something that doesn’t require giving them access to your site, such as: graphic design, writing content etc.

3) Just because a VA appears to have lots of experience and knowledge, a great web site etc. that doesn’t mean they’ll care about you as a client or do a good job. I’ve learned that the hard way.

If they’re very busy, they may rush and make careless mistakes or delegate it to a less experienced person (without your knowledge).

4) I would not commit to paying someone a retainer or a monthly/weekly minimum unless they go through a brief trial period or trial job. If they don’t accept it find someone else.

5) It’s very tempting to hire someone from overseas to save money.

If you go that route, keep this in mind:

Besides the time zone difference (12 hours or more in the case of the Philippines), and frequent natural disasters in the Pacific Ocean, there’s also the language barrier.

Even if you only hire someone to do graphic design, if you cannot convey the message and the vision clearly in their own native language than you may not get the results you expect.

I hired a guy from South Africa through ODesk and we communicated it well since he spoke British English so I thought “what could go wrong?”

I told him “this is for the US market, please include ingredients that are commonly found in the US”. About half the recipes he sent I could not use because of the exotic ingredients he used.

So watch out for both language and cultural barriers when hiring from overseas.

Hope this helps and good luck!

If you’d seriously like to trade some time as a pseudo-intern, please just drop me a line at johnny@johnnybtruant.com and let me know your situation, what you know, what you’d like to get out of such a relationship, any qualifications or specialties… you know, the works.

This reminds me of the problems I had finding a good Tattoo artist. This person is going to be working on something very important and permanent. How do you know you’ve picked the right person? Trial and error, it seems.

I wish you the best of luck. {Also, if I were to apply to be on that list of possible unpaid interns, how would I go about doing that?}