A new hire to do article re-writing

This past weekend I decided to take on a new hire in the Philippines. Basically, I had a job posting up on OnlineJobs.ph a while ago and I never took down the post after hiring my full time candidate. I got an email from a young guy who seemed keen to work, had decent english, and wanted to work part time. He wanted me to "test him out" by giving him a writing task.

I never ask anyone to do "free work", but I do often ask candidates to write me something about themselves, or about a hobby they enjoy, in order to test their writing. It's stuff that is obviously not useful on my websites (so it doesn't come off as me asking for free work). Anyway, since the guy offered, I figured "what the heck". I asked him to write about a hobby he enjoys.

Tip - it may be obvious, but I find that Filipinos are often casual writers when it comes to spelling and grammar, even when applying for jobs. Make sure you tell them that you want them to be meticulous about checking the work before sending it to you.

Anyway, this young man did a good enough job. I wouldn't want him ghost writing for me yet, but he's certainly good enough to do re-writes on my original articles so I can submit them to other high PR article directories like Buzzle.com

I can also easily have him setup a Mini-Net and write articles. The trick is that as long as he can write basic stuff, he can then always LEARN the other stuff such as setting up blogs, doing directory submission, forum posting, keyword research, etc.

ALWAYS focus on hiring people who have decent english. Then the rest is much easier.

My challenge will be to load this guy up with a lot of stuff he can do when I don't give him other specific tasks. Mini-net and article re-writes are a perfect "perpetual" task.

I figure each re-write he does for me is going to cost me about $1. Seriously. That's it. Why not give it a shot?

Here's where I learned how to outsource.