I’m getting to the point where I need to acquire more assistants, though, and I’ve pretty much exhausted the personal contacts. I’m not looking forward to the training process:-(. I am also ready to outsource the weekly bookkeeping– it’s not a lot of stuff, but I just hate doing it.

@Alice: I was thinking about address e.g. serving papers too LOL. But at the very least, I think if I want to give my assistants a nice surprise in the mail that’s a good reason too huh?

@Melissa: I wonder too! Thankfully no one has refused to give me any such information. I have initially hired them without knowing much but now, I either don’t work with them anymore or have since found out.

@Christina: That’s actually what prompted me to post. When hiring an employee, you have face to face meetings and a real resume at hand. But online it’s all so easy to fake.

@Andrea: You hit it on the nail. I like to know things like what they did before, their age and even marital status. It is not for info mining. Just to know someone a little better.

Even if we’re “just” working together, I think it helps thing run more somoothly when I can relate to them. And to relate, I need more info.

Yes, resumes can be padded and people lie in regular interviews, but lying for an internet/freelance job seems easier to do, so you need to be more diligent, IMO. In the end, this person’s work will reflect on your business so you need to know pertinent info about your freelancers.

Phone number is important because as we know, email isn’t always reliable and things can happen.

Mailing address is important in case, heaven forbid, something bad does happen and you need to serve papers or something like that.

I’ve never had to do the latter, but you should be prepared.

I think that if someone wants to work with you, asking for information from them isn’t too much to ask. If they don’t want to share it with you, then I’d have to wonder why?