Should you do a Paid Trial Before You Hire Someone?
So, you've narrowed down your candidates and you're not quite sure which one to go for. And this is a perfect time for a trial, now depending on the type of job they're going for it will either be a free trial.
Say, it's a trial under 30 minutes, so you're just asking them to do a piece of work. So that could be good for writing tasks, for general VA tasks.
Just to get an idea of that they can follow instructions clearly, or you probably aiming for a paid trial. Now the reason for doing paid trials is. Say, you've got something a bit more complex, like a video to edit you want to do someone to do demonstrate the program and ability by. Setting them a task and saying right ok over the next five days.
I want you to do the following things. I want to see how you progress and how you got on with instructions and so on. Now, because these tasks generally are more than 30 minutes. You want to be offering some sort of money because it puts a lot of people off. The think you're just at it. You're just trying to get them to do labor for free.
This unfortunately happens a lot to Filipinos where they will get jobs. They will work away to for like a week or two. And then the boss just disappears on them. They get no money, no security, nothing. So, they're obviously very wary of people who are doing that kind of thing as well. So, what you want to say up front is, okay, so I've narrowed it down.
I've picked my top three or top five people, I can't decide between you all. So, what I want you to do to find out who's going to get the full-time job is, do this trial. Now set a fair price to it. Doesn't have to be anything amazingly huge. But for example, if you're going to be doing it for several days and you're wanting to look at around about five thousand pesos minimum, it also depends on the type of job you're doing.
Also if you're actually going to use the work afterwards, I tend to not use the work because what I do is in the case of the video editors the last job I had for that, I had three people apply for it. Oh, no, sorry. Narrowed it down to three people, I had like about 60 odd people apply for it, but when I got it, narrowed down to three people.
They did have different work that I could see online, but I wanted to find out, if, they could do the skills. Well, the style that I wanted for the videos that I'm going to be doing. So, I set them a task, all of them, exactly the same task, told them what I wanted to give them all the exact same footage.
And I left them to see what they came up with. Now, what actually ended up happening was one of them just didn't bother submitting anything after was given five days to do it. It was expected to be done within two days, but I gave five days simply because some people are working other jobs during the day and so on.
So, you want to give them enough time to actually be able to do it. The other two submitted they were really good. They were all given money for their trial and obviously ultimately one person was selected for the job and I think that's the fairest way to do it. So if you're going to be, you know, offering trials, pay people, now if you're not going to be paying people.
AKA its under 30 minutes so for example, if it's a job that involves writing, you will already have decided from all your communications backwards and forward all your questions you've asked and so on to narrow down the people. So, you've already got a good grasp of how the written English is, but say, you need an actual piece written just so you can check the styles.
Then of course it would be okay if it would only take like 30 minutes if, its going to be like a blog or a full-page worth of stuff then you want to offer a little incentive for it. It doesn't have to be loads, but just a small amount and you can use services like PayPal for the one offs to send money.
Cause at the ends of the day, it's a quick and convenient way to do it. When you come to pay staff, really though, I would fully recommend TransferWise, and there'll be a link up there for you to click on the video to see what I talk about the best way to pay Filipinos, but anyway yeap, trials, free is ok, as long as it's not very long, but if it's going to be longer than say 30 minutes, you want to offer some sort of money.
It doesn't have to be huge amounts of money, but just has to be fair. And you have to explain to people why they're doing it. And it's always good in your job advert at the very beginning, if you say that you will be narrowing people down to the best sounding, people, and then you're going to have them do a trial and it will be a paid trial so that way.
People are already know up front. What's going to be happening. So anyway, that's my tip on doing trials. If you liked this video and you enjoyed it, please give it a like, subscribe to the channel. Share this video with a friend, please. Well, business friend would be good. And yeah, if you want to watch any other videos, there down the side.
And I'll see you all later. Bye.