Outsourcing is a great way for small businesses and start ups to remain competitive. Companies have been outsourcing departments and services for a very long time, however this hasn't been affordable for small businesses until the introduction of global and virtual outsourcing. Today there are many ways to find outsourced staff from all over the world, and using our currency advantage you can hire highly skilled and affordable outsource staff to take care of anything you need from admin to marketing and website development. However even thought it seems very easy to find contractors, its also hard to find good contractors and for tips on managing outsourced staff please read this article.

Here are ways on where you can find outsourced staff:

1. OUTSOURCING WEBSITES

Outsourcing websites are the most direct way to find outsourced staff, it's simple to use and the websites generally make it easy for you to post job ads and hire contractors.

oDesk

oDesk is a great freelancing website where you can find the right worker for your work. You can select the contractor based on ratings and reviews. You can review the work and pay the contractor with ease.

Pros: Large network of developers, tools for tracking employees (keyboard, mouse activity, screenshots), no limit on bids so you can find cheap work 

Cons: No limit on bids so jobs often reduce to pricing wars and quality can fall by the wayside, no escrow system, users can game profile ratings by hiding negative reviews and having friends provide reviews, etc. 

Elance

You can find top skilled workers on Elance in almost all fields such as writing, web designing, programming, software development, graphic design, medical transcription, legal and finance. You can post your work on Elance and get proposals instantly. This site has more than 1,300,000 professionals ready to be hired.

Pros: Geared towards fixed-bid work (hire-by-hour or by-project), minimum bid ($50) keeps out some lower-quality programmers (also requires payment to start account) 

Cons: This applies to ODesk too but sometimes contractors will try to sell your projects or solutions to other employers, pricier than ODesk, dispute system incurs fee for both parties, buyers sometimes avoid giving bad feedback b/c they find that it becomes more difficult to find bidders if they do 

Freelancer

It's a great outsourcing market place where you can outsource anything you can think of. You can find hundreds of skilled programmers, web designers, content writers and ghost writers at highly competitive rates. You can pay your freelancers only if you are fully satisfied with their work. You can also post your first work for free over there.

Pros: Pay through milestone complete, suited to smaller jobs, good for project-based work 

Cons: Similar to many of the above i.e. game able ratings, lack of talent in pool 

Getacoder

This is a popular global services market place that is doing business in more than 200 countries. You can find great talents in all fields at very competitive rates.

Pros: Has a reasonable dispute resolution policy. 

Cons: Harder to navigate than other sites and offers fewer features. Can be more expensive for freelancers to use this site 

Guru

This freelancing site has over a million registered users. You can find the right freelancer for your work at affordable prices. You can post your job for free. You can pay after the satisfactory completion of your project.

Pros: Lots of US-based workers, pay for completed work via escrow system 

Cons: Costly if non-member (10+%), otherwise monthly fee 

2. OUTSOURCING AGENCIES

Outsourcing agencies have the benefit of having people on board to help you manage your contract staff, in addition if your staff is sick or unable to work, they will usually have extra resources on hand to replace and retrain without you having to do it yourself. You are essentially hiring a manager. This is great if you are not experienced with handling outsourced staff and don't have the time to manage an extra resource. You will usually be paying a bit more to agencies, but you are guaranteed quality staff that have already been trained. In addition these agencies usually have offices that your contractor works from as opposed to working from home arrangements and this usually improves accountability and reliability of your staff member.

3. HIRING A PERSON TO CONNECT YOU TO THE RIGHT PEOPLE

This is essentially like a recruiter for outsourced contractors. You can hire a skilled recruiter to find you a list of candidates, usually a good arrangement is a bonus if you hire a candidate that they send to you and an extra bonus if you are still happy with the candidate at 6 months or 1 year. Having this tier arrangement allows you to ensure the recruiter is kept accountable to give you a candidate that is good enough to keep for the long term.

Outsourcing parts of your business can be a challenge at first, but once you find the right people and have the right processes in place it can be a very efficient and cost efficient way to run your business.