Federal News Radio: Telework Rate Jumps As Agencies Take Advantage Of New Law, Guidance
In 2010, President Obama signed the Telework Enhancement Act, allowing the Federal Government greater flexibility in its telecommuting policies. Two years later, the bill has changed the way many government employees work, with 25% of eligible employees working remotely at least one day a week. Teleworking has helped government organizations reduce office space and lower costs, while being cited by policymakers as a crucial tool in “recruiting and retaining the best and brightest workers.” It took some initial attitude shifts, especially for managers to get used to not being able to see their employees working, but executives learned that “you need to focus on the results and the rest will follow from that,” as one federal official told the news program.

Inc.: Letting Employees Work Remotely Pays Off
Have you ever dreamed of leaving winter behind, taking your work with you and setting off for the tropics? This past January, mobile app development firm Dimangi did just that, sending much of its staff on a ‘work-cation’ to Brazil. After securing a high-speed Internet connection, the team found they had all the tools they needed to interface with the home office and work effectively. Far from a vacation, the team experienced improved communications, impressive productivity and “a really cool level of bonding” during their stint in Brazil―benefits that carried over when they returned home.

Intuit Blog: Six Mobile Apps For Recognizing and Rewarding Employees
Rewarding employee achievement is a great way to engage your staff, reduce turnover and improve productivity. When you’re managing workers located around the globe, however, recognizing a team member’s success is no longer as simple as a kind word and a pat on the back. Liz Magill reviews six mobile apps that help you virtually give your workers the credit they deserve.

Mashable: Six Etiquette Rules For Coworking
Coworking spaces have become a mainstay in the entrepreneurial community thanks to the flexible work space they provide, as well as the collaboration and networking opportunities they support. Eager to try coworking but not truly sure what it entails? This article from Mashable should get you started, providing six best practice tips for successful interactions with your fellow ‘coworkers.’

Harvard Business Review: Mind The (Skills) Gap
The true value of an undergraduate education has become a popular topic of debate in an era rife with high student debt and widespread unemployment. In this article for the Harvard Business Review, William D. Eggers, John Hagel, and Owen Sanderson claim that the skills attained through a bachelor’s degree will be outdated within five years of graduation. They argue that an increasingly technical focus among high-growth jobs has made—and will continue to make—the skills of many contemporary workers obsolete. In order to remedy the ‘skills gap’ and to help businesses address the talent shortages they are experiencing, the authors propose a renewed focus on retraining—both within firms and by the government—to prepare workers for the jobs of tomorrow.

Did we miss anything? Are there any insights you find particularly interesting? Let us know in the comments section below!

The post This Week’s Perspectives on the Future of Work: Week of September 28th appeared first on oBlog.

1. Unit testing
2. Functional testing
3. UI testing
4. Performance testing

Here’s a closer look at how we approached each one.

Unit Testing

We invested quite a bit of time to cover our code with as many unit tests as possible. Of course the decision on how to develop unit tests was pretty easy, given that we are working on Django. We used Django’s testing framework and standard library unit test from Django utils. Currently we have an overall coverage of ~85%, and here is an example of how it changes over time.

Functional Testing

Selenium is the standard way to perform functional testing, as it simulates a user’s browsing behavior on a site. This is also what we used for oDesk’s functional testing. Since version 1.4, Django supports native selenium testing.

[...] LiveServerTestCase allows the use of automated test clients other than the Django dummy client such as, for example, the Selenium client, to execute a series of functional tests inside a browser and simulate a real user’s actions.

For every basic group of pages the oDesk visitor site supports, extensive functional tests are written to identify and report broken pieces of the site.

UI Testing

This is where things got really interesting. When we talk about UI testing, we mainly refer to testing the actual visual result that the user sees in their browser, and also making sure that the structure of the page is as expected. To give some examples of what our expectations were, we wanted to detect:

• broken images in the site
• broken layout on a page
• missing text

There are various tools that can do this, but integration is not always easy. The tools that we ended up researching were:

1. Quality Bots
2. Fighting Layout Bugs
3. validator.nu

All of those looked pretty promising and are open source.

Performance Testing

We used—and continue to use—various tools to test our site’s performance. A well-known tool we use is Apache’s ab tool, used for benchmarking Apache’s HTTP server. It shows how many requests per second (RPS) an Apache installation is capable of serving.

We also use Apache’s JMeter and bash scripts to produce heavy load on our servers to test their strength on different load types. With those tests:

• we check response codes for various groups of pages
• we measure the minimum, maximum, and average response times for accessing these links
• we display the success rate for accessing all of the links
• we issue random requests to our servers with various concurrency levels

Last but not least, something that we are currently looking into is a log replay mechanism to measure our performance. In general with performance testing, we can test with various loads and for some specific URLs, though the traffic we produce is not realistic. With log replay functionality we have the ability to “replay” requests based on Apache’s access log. This way, we have the ability to measure our performance under traffic that is produced by real users.

I would strongly recommend, if you’re interested in reading about performance testing, to go through this very useful resource.

Testing Results Presentation

All our tests are run with a single Fabric command, to which we can pass arguments to disable specific stages if we want to. This command is invoked in every build we run via Jenkins, and if our tests fail, the build also fails. Code coverage, counts of failing tests, screenshots of broken layouts (found via UI testing) and soon performance results are all presented through graphs in Jenkins. Here are a few example screenshots:

Screenshots of broken URLs in UI

Counts of successful vs broken tests

Example of text overlapping with edge

Testing a large webapp, like oDesk’s visitor site, can be really challenging. We heavily invested in our testing infrastructure, because we strongly believe that this is an essential component for the project’s success. We still continue our research and experimentation with various tools, as we strive to provide the best possible user experience.

What testing tools have you had success with? We would love to hear your experience in the comments section below!

The post Behind the Scenes: Testing oDesk’s WebApp appeared first on oBlog.

“Joie de vivre is an attitude. It’s a decision you make to live a life of joy. It’s an invitation to this dance called life. All you have to do is leave the door slightly ajar and listen for the music.”
— Jamie Cat Callan, from Bonjour, Happiness!

Work, family, friends, self — I spend so much time considering work-life balance it’s practically a hobby. And I’m not alone: The Society of Human Resource Management found that 89% of working Americans think it’s a problem.

A life where work is part of you but doesn’t define who you are — despite my mobile office, it’s my ideal more than reality. A few days spent wandering in northern France this summer gave me plenty to ponder, however. I couldn’t help but wonder: Have the French had it figured out all along?

La vie en rose

(“Life through rose-colored glasses” or, literally, “life in pink.”)

Long leisurely lunches. Bikes everywhere. Cell phones off the table. Gourmet food and excellent wine around every corner. A schedule that prioritizes time with friends and family.

If you’ve read anything about balanced living and stress management, you’ll know advice generally follows a theme — like these pillars of happiness recommended by the Mayo Clinic:

• Devoting time to family and friends
• Appreciating what you have
• Maintaining an optimistic outlook
• Feeling a sense of purpose
• Living in the moment

In living color, I’d found a beautiful country that seemed to have evolved around these principles of healthy living. Within a few short hours of landing, for example, I had stumbled into town with nowhere to go as shopkeepers stepped out for their noon to 2 p.m. lunch break.

Sunday shopping was off the agenda, too. “We take Sundays to indulge in parks, picnics and socializing,” noted one Parisian on a TripAdvisor forum.

I had landed in France, and found myself surrounded by people effortlessly living the kind of life I strive for. The question I couldn’t help but ask: Does it work?

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

(“The more it changes, the more it’s the same thing.”)

“Alternating periods of activity and rest is necessary to survive, let alone thrive. Capacity, interest, and mental endurance all wax and wane. Plan accordingly.”
— Timothy Ferriss, from his book The 4-Hour Workweek

The French seem to revel in the moment, holding fast to a lifestyle that prioritizes friends, family and self.

Legislation to allow Sunday shopping in select regions passed by a slim majority a few years ago, with opponents arguing against what they saw as the erosion of family values.

And French workers rank third for fewest hours worked among 35 countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) — likely due in part to the cultural emphasis on leisure time.

These details point to work-life boundaries that echo what so many professionals struggle to put in place. The problem is that the numbers don’t seem to back it up.

Just a few years ago, Business Insider argued that, when GDP per capita was compared against the number of hours worked, the French were the most productive people in the world. However, the recent economic lag has been tough on developed economies — the Eurozone perhaps most acutely among them. While France weathered the recession better than many of its neighbours, recent indications hint that all is not well. For example:

• Economic growth in France has stalled, with the most recent data from the Bank of France showing that the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) will shrink in the third quarter.
• Peugeot-PSA’s recent decision to eliminate 8,000 jobs in France has highlighted France’s difficulties competing with neighbors like Germany.
• France has dropped from 15th place two years ago to 21st in the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index for 2012-2013.

The numbers today paint a weaker picture than the French have come to expect, a fact that’s been driving controversial labour reforms in France that business leaders and French President Francois Hollande hope will put the country on more competitive footing.

The mental health numbers aren’t much better. Given that stress busters seem to come so naturally for the French, I was surprised to learn not only that the World Health Organization (WHO) found the U.S. and France almost nose-to-nose when it comes to depression rates, but that another survey found French women to be among the most stressed in the world.

“There’s no change in biological depression, but what’s going up is the more mild depression,” Ronald Kessler, a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School and co-author of the WHO study, told Bloomberg News regarding the rise in depression rates for U.S. and France.

“Objective things haven’t changed,” he said. “We have an expectation that everything’s going to turn out perfect but it doesn’t.”

Le bon vivant

(Literally “the good liver”; someone who loves life, loves pleasure.)

“Our needs and interests are different. Our hopes and responsibilities are different. You must create the optimal individualized work-life balance strategy for yourself.” 
— Mireille Guiliano, from her book Women, Work & The Art of Savoir Faire

Economics and statistics aside, I still think the French are on the right track — although many an expert has noted that it’s not about copying a particular formula but figuring out what works specifically in your life.

Back on this side of the Atlantic, I’ve been on a mission to recapture some of the joie de vivre that inspired me:

• Making time for a real lunch break, and even a quick walk, instead of dropping crumbs over the keyboard as I eat and type;
• Visiting my local farmer’s market for local produce and fresh baking;
• Defining clearer boundaries between time at work and time at play;
• Keeping my phone in my bag — on silent — when spending time with family and friends;
• Appreciating what I’m doing in the moment, whether I’m working or relaxing, without worrying as much about what comes next.

Old habits die hard, so my conversion is very much a work in progress. However, with a clear vision of lively bistros and lounging in the park on a sunny Sunday afternoon to draw on, I remain hopeful.

How have your travels inspired you? What cultural elements have you worked into your life? I would love to read your tales and observations in the comments section below.

The post Joie de Vivre: Inspirations From the French in the Quest for Work-Life Balance appeared first on oBlog.

Week of 9/21/2012:

BBC: The Workplace Of 2025 Will Be Wherever You Want It
Would you like to be “virtually transported” to the office? Ever wish you could interact with your colleagues via holograms? Writing for the BBC, Mark Heraghty suggests that those scenarios might not be too far off, because by 2025 telecommuting will be standard for workers everywhere. Citing corporate studies, MIT research and emerging technologies, Heraghty makes his case for why the future of work will be dispersed, interactive, and extremely fluid. The best part? He argues that “technology will be able to set us free from many of the restrictions of current work patterns” and even allow us to draw clearer work-life boundaries.

Bloomberg Businessweek: Don’t Ignore Those Non-Job Creating Entrepreneurs
While the growth of small business has been a prominent topic in the current presidential election, issues affecting freelancers have largely been missing from the political rhetoric. Richard Greenwald, a professor at St. Joseph’s College, argues that the explosion of self-employment in the United States is a key issue that politicians must address because all too often, the self-employed “fall through the cracks” in the current legal system. As the freelancing community continues to grow in size, policymakers must recognize and meet the needs of an increasingly nuanced employment system.

BBC: Speeding Up Work For People With Disabilities
While advances in telecommuting have enabled millions of professionals to clock in from home, these breakthroughs have had an especially significant impact on professionals with disabilities. In this article for the BBC, Barbara Otto describes the many ways that technology is helping people with disabilities find satisfying employment opportunities around the globe. Otto singles out oDesk for creating “a very level playing field for people with disabilities,” as it is accessible to all. She concludes that continued innovations in the online work area will have a huge positive impact on the economy, as these talented and creative individuals enter the workforce.

The Asian Age: For Tech Savvy Youth, Home’s The New Office
According to a recent survey by Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM), the majority of Indian workers prefer working at home to commuting to the office. This article, published last Friday in The Asian Age, suggests that in today’s ultra-connected society, a trip to the office does not necessarily increase productivity or even the ability to collaborate as a team. While the virtual workplace continues to develop in India, the spread of crucial infrastructure (such as high-speed Internet connections and secure servers) will be a deciding factor in how quickly online work will become a reality for the majority of Indian professionals.

Open Forum: Why A Flexible Workplace Makes Sense
In this article for the American Express Open Forum, Millennial Branding’s Dan Schawbel discusses the rise of “workplace flexibility programs” in large corporations, and why he believes fluid work strategies can help your business thrive. Schawbel states that implementing flexible work policies can fundamentally improve your business, from attracting (and keeping) top talent to lowering costs and increasing engagement.

Harvard Business Review: The Rise Of Co-Working Office Spaces
Motivated by a desire for greater community and efficiency in the workplace, workers and companies have begun ditching traditional office paradigms in favor of new, alternative working spaces. From open offices and local coffee shops to futuristic corporate campuses, work is moving to new and exciting spaces (and away from the traditional cubicle). To better understand the ever-evolving workplace, author Anne Kreamer spent time at Grind, a popular coworking space in New York City. In this article for the Harvard Business Review, Kreamer explores the coworking experience of various Grind members, and discusses why she believes the trend will hold an important place in the future of work.

Did we miss anything? Are there any insights you find particularly interesting? Let us know in the comments section below!

The post This Week’s Perspectives on the Future of Work: Week of September 21st appeared first on oBlog.

The user group — oDesk’s second to date — featured an introduction from oDesk CEO Gary Swart and a presentation on product initiatives by oDesk Vice President of Product Strategy Michael Levinson. It also included a panel with Sigma Partners Senior Associate (and former oDesker) Josh Breinlinger, TalentBin founder Peter Kazanjy, and Stanford Fulbright Scholar Tayyab Tariq (an oDesk contractor). The panel, moderated by oDesk’s Client Marketing Manager Shareen Lal, centered on online work best practices. Here were some of the most helpful tips from these veteran users:

1. When evaluating candidates, ask contractors for sample work or hire them for a small test job. Tayyab said, “That to me as a contractor is more important than an interview over Skype. There’s only so much you can know about a person’s skills from a 10-minute Skype interview, and you don’t want to miss out on a great contractor because they’re having a bad day. It’s very important to take the time to work out a small mini project on the fly that they can do, and use that as a benchmark for short-listing or hiring.”

2. Speaking of test jobs, think outside the skill-evaluation box with real-time tasks. Tayyab noted that one client he has worked with requires contractor candidates to write code in a Google Doc, so they can observe the coding process in real time. This can be a great way for clients to get a sense of how a contractor works, and for contractors to showcase their skills in action.

3. Leverage long-term relationships; they are a powerful thing. Both Peter and Josh are no stranger to long-term projects. In fact, Josh’s oDesk contractors are almost all long-term, since it’s more efficient than finding and training people for each short-term project, he said.

From a contractor’s perspective, Tayyab added that it’s important for clients to make their timeline commitment clear upfront. “What motivates contractors is the promise of a long-term, healthy relationships,” he said. “It’s very important for contractors to know that clients aren’t going to disappear. It’s good to give people job security, or at least be upfront about when the project is going to end. Tell your good contractors you want to work with them for a long time. It’s the same whether you’re in a brick-and-mortar office or online — you want to make the people you hire feel secure and enjoy their work.”

As a testament to the power of long-term projects, Josh told the story of how, in the early days of oDesk (when he used to work for the company), he wanted to hire someone for voiceover work and needed a female voice. There was only one female contractor on all of oDesk at the time, named Stephanie, and he hired her. That project has long ended (and of course there are many female contractors on oDesk now!). But eight years later, not only is Stephanie still on oDesk, she leads a Customer Support team for oDesk itself.

4. Keep an open mind — the possibilities are unlimited. Who says work can’t be fun? Peter talked about one of his most interesting oDesk projects, which involved hiring comedy writers on oDesk to turn a standard questionnaire into an entertaining experience. He even used a crowdsourcing site to grade the questions for humor, and picked the 10 most successful writers out of the original 100 to bring on board.

Or, on a more serious note, Josh told the story of how one entrepreneur decided he wanted to move on from his startup, and found someone on oDesk to be the CEO and take over the company reins.

Josh also reminded attendees that just because it’s online work, doesn’t mean you can’t take advantage of geographic perks — for example, one user uncovered his family history in Belgium by finding a contractor in that country to do in-person research. The contractor found postcards the client’s grandmother had written 80 years ago, and helped piece together the family history. “Most of what you can do with online work is location-agnostic, but you can also leverage the fact that there are millions of contractors just about everywhere in the world,” Josh said.

What are your top online work best practices? We’d love to hear them, so share yours in the comments section below!

The post Veteran oDesk Users Share Their Best Practices at Recent Bay Area Client User Group appeared first on oBlog.

Week of 9/14/2012:

NPR: The ‘Skills Mismatch’: Failing To Meet Demand
oDesk CEO Gary Swart was featured on NPR’s Weekend Edition show on Saturday, discussing the issue of unemployment in the U.S. With more than 3 million jobs currently unfilled in the United States, Gary suggests that online workplaces such as oDesk can help match companies to workers with in-demand skills. This has clearly resonated with businesses, as “demand we’ve seen year-on-year [for online workers] is growing off the charts,” Gary said. The article additionally features an interview with UC Berkeley economics professor Brad Delong, who believes that the issue of unemployment is due to a lack of demand in the economy, as businesses and the government are not spending sufficiently to employ the entire population.

FastCoexist: Working From Home Makes You More Productive
In this Fast Co.Exist article, Ariel Schwartz discusses the results of a recent remote work experiment conducted by the Chinese travel company CTrip. The study, run by Stanford researchers Nicholas Bloom, John Roberts and Zhichun Jenny Ying, assigned a randomized sample of CTrip employees to work from home for nine months and monitored their productivity during this period. The results were impressive, with telecommuting employees outperforming office-based workers by 13%. The most impressive gains were made in the number of minutes worked per shift and the volume of work each employee could handle. You can read oDesk’s coverage of the report here.

Inc.: How To Interview A Job Candidate–The Best Technique You Never Use
When hiring online workers, interviews are a crucial tool hiring managers can use to gauge a candidate’s fit and qualifications. Want to get the most out of your interviews? Slow down and listen. Jeff Haden writes that by “listening slowly” and pausing between questions, an interviewer can turn the exercise into a conversation, and elicit further insight from the candidate.   

Harvard Business Review: Bring Courtesy Back To The Workplace
Between dispersed teams, busy schedules and global travel, modern professionals are increasingly turning to digital methods of communication in order to collaborate with colleagues. Ron Ashkenas, a managing partner at Schaffer Consulting, suggests that a byproduct of the switch from personal to virtual communication can be a breakdown of courtesy in the workplace. Ron suggests that speaking openly about workplace courtesy and encouraging team members to speak out against poor behavior can help improve team relations and “bring courtesy back to the workplace.”

Did we miss anything? Are there any insights you find particularly interesting? Let us know in the comments section below!

The post This Week’s Perspectives on the Future of Work: Week of September 14th appeared first on oBlog.

It all started with a pink slip. For both Dini Jaskowski and Suzanne Davis, economic downturns meant the end of one chapter of their working life and signaled the beginning of a new career in online work—one that freed them from commutes and time restraints, and provided the ability to work wherever life took them.

Laid-off to full-time

Davis lives in Burns Flat, Oklahoma. This rural Midwest community has one main thoroughfare and one stoplight. “I chose to move here for my kids. I wanted to be close to family,” she said. Her previous job as an executive assistant was in a larger metropolitan area. But in Burns Flat, there’s not much demand for that skill.

As she discovered, that’s okay.

At the time Davis lost her job, there weren’t a whole lot of other options. “The economy at that time was not conducive to finding another office job,” she recalled. But there was a silver lining in the cloud. “I wanted to be home more with my kids. I wanted to be able to take them to school and pick them up from school.”

Knowing she needed a flexibility that couldn’t be found in the few in-office jobs there were, Davis struck out on a new path.

“I started doing a lot of Internet research,” she said. “Through that I came across a company that was hiring online workers.” This initial job provided part-time work, but it took several years and perseverance before Davis ended up with a full-time job that paid all the bills.

The journey hasn’t always been enjoyable, but Davis, who does customer support and writing work, thinks it’s been worth it. “I don’t have to make a long commute, I’m available for my kids after school and I can live in a peaceful community with less stress,” she said.

From hillsides to seascapes

Jaskowski’s hometown of Picabo, Idaho is barely a blip on the map. With a population that, as of the last census, numbers 128, life is nothing if not quiet. But while the peaceful surroundings can be relaxing, employment prospects aren’t so sanguine.

“There’s no work here—none,” Jaskowski commented. “If it wasn’t for online work, I wouldn’t have a job.”

Online work not only makes living in rural Idaho possible, it also allows Jaskowski to freely travel from one side of the country to the other. Six months out of the year, she and her husband live in Idaho. But the other six months find them located in Mexico’s sunny Baja California Sur.

“Our home is our fifth wheel trailer. The back of the trailer is all windows,” said Jaskowski, an accountant and bookkeeper. With a desk and a laptop situated in front of the windows, she enjoys scenic views that most of us only dream about. “In Mexico, I look out at the sea of Cortes. In Idaho, I look out at the view of rolling foothills and green pastures.”

This mobility is a perk made possible by the ability to work remotely. Jaskowski loves the freedom. “I can work as little as I desire or as much as I desire,” she said. “My hours can start early in the morning or late at night.”

Learning to succeed

As technology has matured, Burns Flat, Oklahoma has developed the infrastructure to make online work easier. But as Davis remembers, it wasn’t always so painless. “When I first moved here, there was no DSL available. I had to connect through a radio-frequency provider and speeds just weren’t that great.”

Even now, Davis admits, there aren’t a lot of options for high-speed connections. “Our choices are limited,” she noted.

In Idaho, Jaskowski also faces connection issues. “The challenge is the speed of the Internet, plus I have to watch my broadband to make sure I don’t go over 10 GB. Internet and phone service are expensive in the U.S. But it’s the cost of doing business here.”

Creating a successful career working online involves more than just a good high-speed connection, as both women will tell you. Jaskowski advises serious commitment. “This is a job, not a hobby. Set your hours and work them. You are not working for a boss, but you’re working for your client. Stand up for customer service. Go the extra mile to do what it takes to be a professional.”

“Be patient,” Davis added. ”Don’t get discouraged if you don’t get that first job. Also, don’t underbid just because everyone else is doing it. You need to value your abilities and be confident in what you can do.”

Living where smog is never an issue. Escaping the long commute. Traveling cross-country while still earning a paycheck. These are just a few of the benefits accompanying the online-work life. As Davis and Jaskowski can attest, big-town jobs aren’t dependent on urban living; you can work for anyone, anywhere, while living in a locale that’s home to fewer people than a New York City apartment complex. That is truly freedom to work.

What’s your remote work story? Tell us about it in the comments section below.

The post A World Of Work From Your Small-Town Office appeared first on oBlog.

The topic is an important one: currently 19 million Americans are without Internet access. That represents 19 million Americans who could be working online, building their careers and bringing money into the U.S. economy. For a sense of the opportunity lost there, consider that, to date this year, businesses have spent $32 million hiring U.S. contractors online through oDesk. But that’s just the beginning—the overall online work market is expected to reach $1B by the end of this year.

The issue of broadband Internet access and its impact on job creation is especially critical when we look at people living in rural areas, where Internet connectivity is often lacking and local job opportunities can be limited. For the FCC’s visit, we looked at the potential for rural Americans in particular.

oDesk CEO Gary Swart & oDesk client Marjorie Asturias

There are currently 2.5 million unemployed rural Americans, not to mention the number of underemployed. When you calculate the earnings potential of working online, bringing broadband Internet access to just the unemployed population represents billions of dollars in potential income from online work.

The Chairman and I also discussed the FCC’s goal to provide high-speed broadband Internet access to all Americans by the end of this decade. Chairman Genachowski noted that, while more than 80% of Americans have access to networks technically capable of high-speed service (100 Mbps or more), just 27% are being offered broadband services at those speeds. What’s more, U.S. prices for these higher-speed services are greater than in many other countries.

High-bandwidth categories of online work are growing particularly rapidly—135% year-over-year globally on oDesk. But without a high-speed Internet connection, contractors are unable to access that rapidly growing segment of work at all. Expanding the reach of high-speed Internet services will allow workers to capitalize on this promising opportunity.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski

The FCC is doing many great things to ensure that all Americans have access to broadband Internet access, from establishing the Connect America Fund and investing $4.5 billion to increase broadband deployment in difficult-to-reach areas of the U.S., to a Broadband Acceleration Initiative that aims to improve Internet speeds throughout the country.

Considering that between online work, telecommuting, distributed workforces and flexible work arrangements, the majority of workers will be working online in some capacity in the very near future, we believe these types of initiatives are essential to improving job competitiveness and work opportunities for everyone. There was a palpable energy that night around this discussion and the possibilities it brings, and we look forward to working with the FCC to help make this vision a reality. In addition, I encourage countries worldwide to think critically about their own broadband infrastructure and initiatives, to determine how they can best position their workers for success in the online economy.

The post Connecting Americans to Jobs: FCC & oDesk Discuss Broadband Internet Access and Job Creation appeared first on oBlog.

The Wall Street Journal: Step Into The Office-Less Company
Do companies need an office at all?  The Wall Street Journal’s Rachel Emma Silverman discusses the rise of the virtual office. While the number of “office-less companies” remains low, a significant increase in the number of employees working from home (66% from 2005 to 2010) shows that the segment is quickly expanding. Silverman concludes that while using a remote workforce lowers overhead costs and widens the available talent pool, the lack of personal contact (and the ensuing communication issues) can be an issue for some employees, leading virtual companies to adopt creative solutions.

Harvard Business Review: The Rise of the New Contract Worker
The contingent workforce is rapidly expanding, projected to grow at potentially three to four times the rate of traditional workforces. In this article, award-winning author Tarara J. Erickson delves into the reasons why professionals are going independent, and discusses how “tapping the contingent workforce as part of your talent strategy” can provide significant advantages for businesses. Erickson argues that leveraging independent professionals can help businesses allocate capital effectively, adapt to competitive challenges with more speed and agility, and boost innovation.

MBO Partners: State Of Independence Career Study
MBO Partners, a staffing organization for independent consultants, released its yearly report this week on the state of independent professionals in the U.S. The report provides useful insights into the lives of high-end professional freelancers, as well as data about the independent workforce in the United States. The takeaways? Independent workers are satisfied, committed, and their ranks are growing fast. Small Business Labs has a helpful summary of key findings here.

Chicago Tribune: Temp Workers Carve Out Alternative Careers
The Chicago Tribune’s Cheryl V. Jackson investigates the state of temporary staffing in the United States through chronicling the experiences of four contract workers in Chicago. Ranging from a freelance television producer to an experienced finance executive, the stories of these workers serve as a window into the impressive breadth—and success—of the freelance community.

BusinessWeek: When Your Personal Assistant Is Virtual
Govind Davis, an oDesk client in Cleveland who runs business software firm MCF Technology Solutions, is no stranger to distributed teams and remote work. His business is almost entirely virtual, with most of his 45 employees working from home, and they work with six to eight virtual assistants. Govind is one of a growing number of business owners turning to virtual assistants to get work done while containing costs and improving payroll flexibility, Verne Kopykoff wrote for BusinessWeek.

Did we miss anything? Are there any insights you find particularly interesting? Let us know in the comments section below!

The post This Week’s Perspectives on the Future of Work: Week of September 7th appeared first on oBlog.

It’s funny. What started out as a couple of nice, friendly emails a week turned into more than 20 hours a week of stressful emails three years later.

I used to enjoy reaching out to customers (and I still do), but after a while it became less and less personal and more of a chore because I was getting so bogged down with sending emails every day. I wasn’t able to do to things that I really wanted, or needed, to do. The support issue had become a bit of a nightmare.

What’s worse was that I knew customer service is probably the most important part of any business, and the customer must know that they are valued and that we have all the time in the world for them. In reality though this wasn’t true, because while I was writing the emails I knew I was supposed to be getting on with some development or a new marketing campaign.

The emails I was sending to customers were getting shorter and less friendly. Not good. I was getting stressed by it, and the business was being affected.

Enter the VA

The solution? A virtual assistant.

I had thought about hiring someone full time to do support. I figured that getting someone full time would be better because they’d have more time to ‘get’ the business and be much more committed long-term. However, the budget was tight and we couldn’t really afford it.

I had also been reading a book by Rob Walling about staying lean in your startup. He makes heavy use of virtual assistants (VAs) and talks a lot about it in his book. His methodology is to have lots of small, automated businesses that use virtual assistants for marketing, development, and of course, support.

I didn’t think you could even hire a virtual assistant for customer service; I thought they were just for things like “make a spreadsheet,” or “create some backlinks.” Rob encouraged me to explore oDesk for some VAs, to create a job posting and see what happens.

My First Job Posting

I was very excited because I was about to make my first hire. Apart from me and my wife, there was no one else on the team. We’d hired a few local contractors from time to time on a project basis, but I’d never hired anyone in the U.S. dedicated to a particular task, either part time or full time. So this was going to be a fun project.

The job posting went up, and within about two hours I had about 30 requests for the job. Wow! Most of them were actually people who fell outside of my requirements, but I had a short list of about five to work through.

Hiring is an interesting process. One the one hand you have the side of you that wants to find the perfect person for the job and who will benefit the business. On the other hand there’s a side to you that thinks, “I really want to help this person out and give them a great opportunity to work for a cool startup.”

There were some who looked less experienced in the field but more likeable characters, there were some who seemed like they really needed work and could have valued the opportunity, and there were others who were really experienced but were expensive and seemed rather cocky, like they just expected that you would hire them.

I then came across someone who ticked most of the boxes, but what stood out was that she had taken the time to read about us and actually respond to my points in the job posting.

She wasn’t the most experienced and also looked a little less comfortable in tech and startups, however I had good feeling about her and wanted to give her a shot. The fact that she had taken the time to research us and also expressed a passion for learning about what we do made me quite excited about the prospect of hiring her.

So I did.

The next few days were incredible as she basically learned our system in about 24 hours. She also had initiative, which was the main thing I wanted but couldn’t really describe in a job posting. She went over and above what I asked, and did things like read our blog when a customer asked a question about something she didn’t know. She only reached out to me when absolutely necessary.

The Results

After a week she was very comfortable responding to emails and she knew the system pretty well. She was even taking the initiative to create a training manual, documenting what she had learned so she could ultimately pass it on if necessary.

Now I don’t know if all of that is just her, or if that’s the general experience you will get from a virtual assistant, but I was very impressed.

The results were that after a week or so, I had stopped needing to spend three hours a day on emails. I was now spending about 10-20 minutes a day on emails, if I wanted to. Also, the speed at which customers were getting replies was dramatically improved from about 8-10 hours to 1-2 hours on average.

Happy Customers, Happy Business

Customers are now happier, and so am I.

I’ve been able to spend time doing other important things like marketing and development without worrying about support emails. Also, when I do jump on the emails, I’m a much nicer person!

We are also saving money, as she will only work the hours she tracks time for. You can also set a weekly budget so she won’t go over the number of hours I specify. For a growing startup, this is perfect.

At the end of the week I can find out exactly what she has been working on, with screenshots, as well as find out when she worked and how much for. The report is then emailed to me at the end of the week for me to look over.

4 Tips for Finding an Amazing VA

So here are some tips that might help you in hiring the right VA.

1. Put together a cover letter with specifics on what you want from the candidate and details on the company. Give them something to read through and you’ll notice those who actually took the time to read about the role and those who didn’t.
2. Don’t be in a rush. Take your time to prepare the job posting and take time to search through the candidates. Don’t be afraid to wait for candidates to come in a few days after posting. You’ll get those that initially respond but then those that come a few days later who might be just what you’re looking for.
3. Arrange an interview over Skype or phone. Be friendly with them and see if they are behind what you’re trying to do. Get a gauge for their enthusiasm and passion, because this is what will make the difference to your business.
4. Welcome them to the team and be really proud of them. Make sure you encourage them once they are hired so that they don’t just treat it like another job. Don’t forget they are likely working for other businesses too, so you want yours to be their favorite.

Good luck, and let me know how you get on via Twitter (@stulogy).

Stu Green is the founder of Project Bubble, an online project management and time tracking tool for small businesses.

The post How a Virtual Assistant Rescued Me From a Support Nightmare appeared first on oBlog.