Google Alert brings some interesting snippets in from time to time. Today there was an advert placed at Craig’s list for a Virtual Assistant (Php9k-Php15k) so I went to investigate.
Have a look at what this American businessman wants – someone who will work his hours, 8-10 hours a day, six days a week. That’s 192-240 hours a month. And for that he claims he will pay “good wages to highly qualified, hard-working individuals, including bonuses on any new business we develop together”. I did the sums. Using the currency conversion site I found that the maximum he lists of 15,000 Pesos equates to 1,400.50USD at today’s rates. That’s only $7.92- $5.83USD an hour. Oh, and there is mention of commission in very small writing at the bottom – since one of the duties mentions assisting identifying new clients I expect that means there’s some kind of sales involved?
So, let me get this straight. He wants a fully qualified VA (read the list of duties and qualifications he has which includes a B.A. or similar, and must be familiar with the US), for 192-240 hours a month, working his hours – so he wants someone virtual (read outside of his country and at cheap labour rates) to provide a service inside his work hours, monitoring his phone, voicemail, email, instant messaging contacts as well as handle his travel arrangements, general PA support and his website. Yeah, right.
For the record, I looked up information on the minimum wages in Mexico (since I believe this virtual assistant role is aimed at this workforce) and what he is offering is less than the minimum wage for a shorthand taker or accountant assistant – the closest roles I could find to match a VA.
Has anyone mentioned to this guy that means this ‘VA’ would actually be his employee? And that he will also then have to pay additional items such as their insurances, taxes, etc?
virtual assistant, cheap labour, American businessman, good wages
Addendum: I’ve been informed the Pesos are actually Phillipine and not Mexican in the advert I mentioned above. I’ve done a currency conversion and find that it is now only $344USD per month he’s willing to pay – that’s even worse! And it means that the VA would have to work through the night to fit into his time frame. This by the way is less than the daily wage minimum from what I can work out – but perhaps I’m not reading it right.
15,000.00 PHP | = | $343.985 USD |
Wendy Weightman says
I find similar ‘cheap labour’ adverts in my Google Alerts for Transcription…
It’s very sad that there are people (obviously not bona fide Transcription VAs) out there willing to transcribe five hours of audio for a mere $30. Even if I’m interpreting their responses wrongly and they mean $30 for each hour of audio, this is still only an hourly rate of $6.
These low rates are absolutely ridiculous and are obviously coming from non-English speaking countries. I fail to see how the transcripts produced at such low rates could possibly be considered useful in any professional sense of the word! They will need extensive editing of spelling and grammar. In the end it will cost the client their own precious time, which I’m sure they value highly. Otherwise, why are they outsourcing their transcription work in the first place!
Varju Luceno says
Ladies, many of these people doing VA work for $5.00 per hour or sometimes even less live in India. Go to http://www.elance.com and take a peak. They work while we here in the U.S. sleep.
Kathie Thomas says
Thank you Varju, we are aware of elance. Our concern is that many listed there do not have the qualifications of a Virtual Assistant and this means clients get an unreal idea of what a VA truly is. A good majority of VAs are listed at Virtual Assistant Networks and you can see one at http://www.vadirectory.net.
Varju Luceno says
Thank you for your reply, Kathie! I have to agree that many of these people don’t have the qualifications of a VA. We have a new client who used services of a low cost provider he found on Elance. He told me that he got what he was paying for.
Joe says
The daily minimum wage link that you provided mentions 313 PHP and 350 PHP depending on the sector. That is the daily rate, not hourly. 15,000 PHP a month works out to more than 500 PHP per day.