Virtual Employees

I’ve posted several job postings for “virtual employees” and am now swamped going through the resumes I’ve received. What’s a virtual employee you ask? It’s someone who works regularly (as opposed to a contractor), but remotely located and working over the internet. I wanted to explore this concept for a few reasons.

First, it opens up the options for whom I can hire. If I were hiring someone locally, the person would have to already live here or be willing to move here. Second, it reduces expenses. For the price of renting office space alone I can hire several people. Plus, salaries in the Boston area are among the highest in the world. Good programmers are still wanting $6000 a month and more here. Third, it doesn’t tie me down to the Boston area. Should I decide to move (which I’m in the process of doing), it would be difficult to uproot an office of employees, and it would be pointless to start hiring now when I might just move in a few months anyway.

So, the hard part is who to hire. I have three job postings. I’ve gone through resumes for one posting so far. About 500 resumes. I’ve eliminated 90% off the top, just because the resumes don’t mention the desired skill sets. I’ve traded emails with a few of the appliants, but it’s difficult for me to evaluate beyond this. I’m considering hiring a company to do online screening test for me, but have no experience with that either. I think I’ll give SCORE a shout and see if anyone there can advise me.