Outsourcing Tasks: Writing Effective Job Descriptions

by Jimmy Cox
Nicolas Darvas Trading

When I give a job spec to an out tasker, I sometimes use a video. What I did on one occasion was I got a pen and paper and mocked up what I wanted to have happen from a little software flow chart and then used the iSight camera in the Mac. I held the note up to the screen and took a photo of my notepad. I then just opened up the image on my computer screen and then screen captured me talking through the notepad. It was my mouse moving on the screen going through, talking through my really bad sketch. It was really basic. That's the detail of what you have to do when outsourcing tasks today.

So I did those little mock ups that I cut out of Word, did another little screen capture video of the original sales page that I wanted to have changed and then sent this email. 'Basically it is a redesign of the sales letter, you'll see a bunch of videos on the blog that I want to incorporate and then check out the other videos I talk about.' This is basically the brief that I gave, the name of the videos and the screen shots. I got back an amazing full sales letter for about $200.

I did another one. I needed another sales letter for that website recently where I sold for Father's Day some unframed carpet for $90 that I got hold of from the Cricket Club in Melbourne. I did a little four day marketing Frank Kern style cash machine launch. This was my original brief to him: 'I've mocked up a sales letter in Word. Could you just make it look pretty?'

So I just cut and pasted some images dragged off a website, copy, inserted some images just choosing the basic drag and drop into a sales letter side of things. I did my version of a call out box. Here's some screen capture material done, add to cart button. Rather than say, I want a sales letter written for my small business outsourcing projects, here's the copy, I mocked up roughly how I wanted it to be. I got the end result for $150.

He did make one slight tweak to it, rather than go back and forth for an hour and a half because I gave him a pretty ugly, yet detailed brief. It all comes back to how close you can get to giving the brief.

The work was done by a guy I send regular work to. Keep that in mind when you first work with someone, because you may need to give more detailed briefs. But I now know where this guy is at and I pitch the work to where I am at with him.

When outsourcing tasks, I make sure that I prepare everything that they would need to accomplish their tasks as required. For example, at one time I included a wording brief with the video that I took of the hand written notepad. I provided an overview of the project, a link through to the video and then walked through each one of the steps I talk about in the video with a little bit more detail. I gave some references, some tweaked style links I want to integrate, links to the buttons. This is what I want, rather than I want a button of, tweak this, here is the actual button I want to use or something similar. Here are some audio book download buttons, something like this. I gave him some pretty detailed brief of exactly what I wanted to have done.

He came back with exactly what I wanted first go. Yes it's because I've used this guy a few times but it's a pretty detailed brief in terms of what I was after.

What I got as a result of that really bad hand sketch note pad drawing, plus the email I got back seven one page website templates all in PSD for about $200. Again $10,000 for an eight page website or $200 after a decent brief and the design all laid out ready to be cut up from a developer. I got the PSD, images that I just gave to a developer to cut up for a site for $200 as well. So for a five page website, which is a bit different from a normal business website, for $400. I gave some pretty detailed briefs and got a great result.

That's how I prepare a job spec for anyone when it comes to outsourcing tasks. When I'm about to record a video, I'll get a notepad like that. You just do bullet points just so you know what it is that you're going to go through. I'll set up my screen capture software, I'll have my notepad just out of shot because you can define the area you're going to be screen capturing on your computer. So you have that out of shot. You follow through your bullet points just to make sure that you hit on everything and then I'll send them, here's a link to the video, P.S here are the notes from the video. Then I'd just cut and paste what I need to have included.

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Article submitted Sunday, August 21, 2011 & read 23 times.

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