The Cost To Hire A Contractor

So you've documented your processes, created systems and you're now ready to make your first contractor hire. Where do you start? What do you need? Should you hire someone locally, near-shore, or off-shore?

In this video, I share my experience with hiring contractors and some things to consider (besides price) when making a decision.

Transcription

Hi, it's Xavier Chang, Principal of XC Consulting.

Today I'm back with another episode of Xcel with Xavier and today we're talking about the cost to hire a contractor.

In previous videos, I've talked about growth, scaling the company and figuring out when is the right time to bring on resources: either if that's an employee or a contractor, and this is a direct follow up to that.

Once you figured out if you are ready to scale or you definitely have enough work and you want to try to scale by adding more head count or contractors to your organization, then this is the video to watch. For today's video, we are looking at two different types of contractors.

The first is the virtual assistant and the virtual assistant, many times it could be somebody that was previously an executive assistant at a large corporation or maybe a midsize firm, or it could be a student that is doing this as part-time work. Those are the typical profiles that I've seen with virtual assistants and some of the tasks they cover include, handling inboxes and scheduling calendars, other general administrative duties, like sending out emails or doing bookkeeping.

They're great at taking on repeatable processes in your business. So the important thing about that is you definitely need to have your processes documented to make them repeatable. The VA can manage those processes. They can improve on them, but you need to have some type of documentation in place so they can follow that.

For this contractor, expect to pay between 20 and $35 per hour. Now these are US rates, so if you are hiring a contractor outside of the US it's going to be a lot cheaper.

The next are project managers and project managers, in my experience, they've been project managers at large companies, midsize companies. They might have certifications, such as, PMP certified or Green Belts, and maybe even, black belts. They're great with handling timelines and milestones, and they can handle managing internal, as well as, external stakeholders. That could even be managing you as an internal stakeholder, managing you to a certain timeline.

They're great with tasks with some level of ambiguity. It's a little bit different than the virtual assistant, as they are used to having ambiguity and things change. That's the project manager and expect to pay between 30 and $50 per hour.

Now, like I said before, with the virtual assistant, these rates are for US-based contractors. Once you start going near shore, and that could be Latin America, your rates are going to be cheaper. You go off shore to places like India, the Philippines or Eastern Europe, the rates will be drastically lower.

But one thing to remember when you figure to go off shore, which is maybe Eastern Europe, Philippines, or India, culturally it's different. Time zones are different, as well. You have to make that trade off, it will be a lot cheaper, but you will have to consider some of those hurdles that you're going to come across.

There's nothing wrong with going off shore, but those are just some of the things that I've come across that might be a challenge. I haven't really found this challenge with folks that are located in the US as it's the same culture and it's also a very similar time zone.

Once you're doing that hiring, keep that in mind. So those are the two types of contractors that I wanted to share with you today, and some of the experience I've had hiring these folks.

Thanks for watching another episode and I'll see you next time.

Thanks for watching another episode of Xcel with Xavier. I've got new episodes coming out every Thursday morning. Please, don't forget to like this video and subscribe to my channel to receive notifications of new content. Thanks again and I hope to see you again, next time.