How Does A 4 Hour Work Week Sound? Part 25

February 17, 2011

Negotiate Long Term Relationships

Competition among overseas workers for North American projects can be just as cutthroat as competition amongst domestic workers applying for domestic jobs.  Remember that developing countries like China and India have colossal populations:  40% of the world’s population comes from China, India, and Pakistan alone.  Oddly, in all the projects I’ve posted I’ve seen mostly bids from India and Pakistan yet virtually no bids from China.

At any rate, as an employer you have the ball firmly in your court when it comes to negotiating power for workers  in these countries, especially when it comes to administrative positions or any jobs or projects requiring minimal skills.  If you post a project it’s normally considered by workers to be a short term project lasting several weeks max unless you specify otherwise in the project description.  

Understand that US or Canadian currency has anywhere from 3-10 times the buying power in other countries as it does in North America.  So if you’re paying someone overseas $5 an hour in US or Canadian dollars, for the worker it might be like making anywhere from $15-$50 per hour if they lived here, depending on where they live in the world.   So don’t ever think you’re exploiting these people in paying them at a low rate relative to domestic workers.

Use the first few weeks of working with a given person as a probation period just as any domestic job would be.  If you like the person’s work and want to work with them on a long-term, ongoing basis, tell them this and ask them to provide you a quote for their services for 1, 2 or even 3 years.  Remember that the hourly rate they charge for a long  term project can be substantially lower than what they’d charge for a short term project.  Having this much steady work paid in a relatively valuable foreign currency can be a huge benefit for these people.

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