Business Fit Magazine August 2017 Issue 1 | Page 48

46 Article
Creative tasks are the ones that you have the vision for, but don’t have
the skillset to execute on, things like; logo design, content creation,
and website building.
Here I’m giving the hire a level of creative freedom but to make both
our lives easier, I always include:
•
•
•
Three to five visual examples that I’d like the creator copy the style of
A list of at least three “design” words to tell the creator what I’m looking for
(great resource here: https://designschool.canva.com/blog/graphic-design-
terms/)
A list of at least three emotions or values that I want the logo/content/
website/whatever to express
Always ask the hire to send you a list of questions that they have for
you. Remember that they are a tool for you to use, you need to have
the inspiration and vision.
04
I was unrealistic in my expectations
This is something that now seems so obvious, but at the time I was
blind to. My expectations were too high.
I was frequently getting frustrated that my hires weren’t doing a good
enough job… and then I remembered that I was paying them $2.43
an hour. You can find some fantastic people out there that will work
for a suspiciously low amount, but they’re rare and you have to dig
through a lot of coal before you get to the diamond.
Remember the engineer’s triangle? If you want something good and
cheap, it’s going to take a while to find that person who’ll do it for you.
Make sure that you go into the outsourcing process with the mindset
that most of the work you’ll get out of it won’t be of the highest
calibre… until you’ve been through a few.
This brings us to my final mistake.
05
I gave hires too many chances
Back when I was the Editor of ITProPortal I was tasked with rebuilding
the editorial team. In my naivety, I was certain that I could hire people
and train them up to the standard that I wanted my hires to be at.
That’s not the outsourcing game.
The sad truth is that many of the hires you’ll use won’t want to improve
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