Project Manager Job Opportunity
 

Thank you for expressing interest in this administrative work. So that we do not waste your time by having to read this long page, we are setting up a virtual office where project managers and other remote personnel can log in from different time zones around the world to produce a 24/7 agency (operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week). And to help us remain globally competitive (as we charge a low flat markup rate on top of whatever the translator charges), we are looking for project managers living in such countries where 3 USD/hour is considered an acceptable or attractive wage. Added to this would be a percentage of all work managed by you, which could increase this to about 4$/hr (potentially much higher with very large projects), and in the longer run a higher basic rate, and eventually a share in the company, for those who prove competent and reliable for such a position.

We have set up a virtual office on the web where remote employees can log in and perform certain tasks. Meaning they can do so from the comfort of their own home, or wherever it is convenient for them (faster internet connection is required), on their own time schedule, and do not need to spend hours a day in traffic or work in a large city. You will not have a supervisor standing behind you and breathing down your neck but you will have much greater freedom and flexibility. However, in exchange for this freedom, you will need to have initiative and be someone we can rely on. If you cannot motivate yourself properly to do this job, you are not the right person for it (which time will disclose for us).

Project Management – requires fairly good knowledge of computers, although this knowledge will also be provided to you. You will need to log into a server through Remote Desktop Connection (on Windows XP, but perhaps on older versions of Windows as well). This will require a fairly fast internet connection (probably 256 kb/sec or more), which will log you into our server running constantly in Prague, so that you can work on that computer and run programs on it. This is the main and most important job;

Tech Support – mostly answering questions for translators, often simple ones, like how to download files, work with zip files, and when the translators will get paid etc. You will be provided an Excel sheet of prepared responses and you will need to understand everything about a project to help the translators with it;

Vetting – comparing a translated document against the original to make sure nothing is missing and that the formatting is correct. This often requires a good knowledge of Word, for which we can provide you necessary training as well;

Other jobs – perhaps processing files, for projects or for our accounting. Knowledge of Excel is good for this, but again, training can be provided.

These are most of the tasks required in running a translation agency, so we would like to have several project managers on different time zones, as our translators are located on different time zones, to help us keep things running.

To give you an idea how things might operate, a file might come in from a customer and subsequently saved on the main server. At that point a project manager can prepare the files for the translators, open them, read and understand the instructions from the customer, and prepare instructions for the translators. Once this is ready, emails would be sent to selected translators to see who is available. The chosen translator(s) would download the work and you would be able to communicate with them through the special website. So that you would be able to answer all their questions, see the progress of the work, inform the proofreader when the file is ready for downloading (although the special website should do this automatically as well), vet the files as they come in to make sure everything is okay, perform word counts of each file and fill in the accounting files so that we know how much to charge the customer and pay each translator. Basically like running a translation agency, but from the comfort of your own home.

And this is only the very basic tasks of what may be asked of you. A more complicated task, for example, is when the translation project is larger and we decide it is advantageous to use a translation memory program, such as Transit. You could also control this program while logged into the server, Remotely, importing the files sent to us by the customer and processing them for the translator, again importing the translated files once received from the translator and, based on that, prepare more files for the other translators, eventually exporting the translation back into the format the customer sent to us. It is a rather complicated procedure but you will be provided detailed instructions for this as well.

To give you motivation, we’d like to offer you a base per hour salary, plus a percentage of any projects you work on (which can be substantial when the size of the projects are larger – our largest so far was 5 million words in eleven languages into English, due in about one month). This is because sometimes the projects are large and require dedication so that they can be delivered successfully and on time. In the more distant future, once there is enough work and the virtual office is large enough, a selected and dedicated few will be chosen for upper management and offered a share in the company, in addition to any percentage share they make as a result of their involvement in various projects.

Right now though we are in the earlier stages and setting up a small database of available project managers on different time zones. We will occasionally test your skills with actual projects and rate your reliability. As the work load increases, we will assign you more work, each time assessing your meticulousness and adherence to our requirements below, in that this is a very important job and requires exactness, meticulousness, and dedication. If you are rated well the first few times, your work load can increase, but each time it is important that the requirements be met.

Following you will find the most important qualities we require from our RemoteWorkers. If you do not feel you can fulfill all these requirements, it might be better for you not to provide the first test, so that you do not waste your time, because we will test you over time and divert work to those we can depend on.

Attention to detail:  whether responding to an email, vetting a translation, or doing anything, the most important is your attention to detail. If you do not meticulously answer all the points in an email but rather read the email quickly and not answer some of the points properly, you will force someone else to repeat their question, wasting their time and slowing down the entire process. If you are on different time zones, this is delayed at least 24 hours, which cannot occur in the translation industry, because customers generally need their translations completed yesterday and they do not tolerate delays. As a project manager, you are an important step in the entire process, which includes the translator, proofreader, consultant of terminology etc. You will be coordinating work, communicating with translators (for which an appropriate level of understandable English is required) and managing files between all these people, so if you overlook or do not respond properly to important points, the whole system gets delayed unnecessarily. Which is something we cannot afford to tolerate. The same goes for your work in general, whether it concerns the vetting of a file, or punching into the accounting the word counts for a translation. If you overlook some missing text or do not vet a file properly, the customer can find out in a few weeks, perhaps after it has already been printed the translation, and it makes us look very bad. So we cannot afford to tolerate this either. Or you might not take great enough care when punching in the accounting information such that we either charge the customer too much or pay the translator too little. Either of them will not be happy and lose some trust in us, which we cannot afford. So every single job you do for us must be at least very carefully double checked to make sure it is correct.

Initiative:  if something is not clear, rather than write a simple email to the head project manager asking them what to do, it is important to take initiative and try to resolve the problem yourself. Perhaps by surfing the internet or asking someone you know. Not only do unnecessary questions waste the time of the head project manager, if you are on a different time zone from him, it once again leads to an unnecessary delay of 24 hours, during which time the translators may not be translating because the issue is unresolved. Or even worse, once the issue is resolved by the head project manager 24 hours later, the translator might respond, "Sorry, I was waiting for a response, and in the meantime I accepted a project from another customer and will not be available until next week." In which case we will be forced to find another translator, and you can imagine what delays such a small oversight can lead to.

Dependability:  if you accept participation on a project and then cancel due to some problem, we will be forced to find someone else, again causing lots of delays. Generally we prefer project managers who are always available, so that we can nurture our cooperation with them. But if we do not offer you enough work to fully dedicate yourself to us, this is understandable. Nevertheless, it is better for us to work with fewer people to whom we can give most of the work and who we can always depend on.

Honesty:  if you are not honest with the number of hours you have worked on a particular project or task, or work more slowly than you need to, we will be less likely to want to work with you in the future. We know how long certain jobs take, and we can compare your time against how long the other project managers are accomplishing their work.

You might also be interested helping us find customers, the details of this job found here.

If you feel you can fulfill all these requirements and are interested in this job, please perform the following so that we can begin to test you. Based on how you perform the following you will be rated and put into our database, then tested further with actual work. The work load will increase depending on the amount of work we receive and how well you perform your work once you do start receiving some.

* if several email addresses, separate them with a comma. Do not put any other information in this cell than your email address(es), each separated by a comma.
** which kind of Pentium or AMD, processor speed, and RAM
*** in one hundred words or less.

If you perform this first test properly, your details will be put into the database and we will contact you once we are ready to begin our cooperation.