There’s real money to be made in virtual work

Grace Muriuki, 34, thought she had everything going for her. But in the space of a few months, everything fell apart: Her family broke apart, she got fired from her job and had to start life all over again with her two sons. Yet, despite going through a season where life threw her one curve ball after another, Grace’s face doesn’t betray the events of 2015, when she lost not only her marriage, but also a job she had held for 10 years.

She used to work as an administrator at a hotel in Nairobi, and says the loss of her job jolted her into the reality that life can always get worse.

“My parents were middle-class – my mother, who’s now retired, was a nurse, and I had never been exposed to hustling in the true sense of the word,” she says.

That was until one afternoon nearly two years ago when she was called into work and handed a retrenchment letter. She left her job with Sh40,000. Having separated from her husband, she moved with her two children to a single room in Utawala.

Getting online

Grace’s turning point came after a one-week course that turned her life around to the point where she now says she’s not keen on regular employment – unless it pays really well.

“I had to think fast after I lost my job, so I applied for a five-day course that I came across three months after I lost my job. I was the oldest in my class, but I knew what I wanted out of the course, so I gave it my all.”

Her classes were at the African Centre for Women, Information and Communications Technology, where she was taught how to code and got online work skills training. All for free.

Since she was looking for a job that wouldn’t take her away from her children, and that would reduce her reliance on househelps now that she was in a small house, she knew her options lay online, which is why she signed up for the class.

Virtual assistant

And it was a godsend. Today, Grace works as a virtual assistant and is a full-time employee of a publishing firm in the UK.

She does all her work from the comfort of her house, which has given her the time she wanted to raise her two children. She works off of a computer linked to a TV monitor.

“I bought the computer for Sh8,000 and connected it to my TV screen to make my work easier,” says Grace. She gets paid Sh500 an hour.

“I am a secretary. I do data entry, write minutes, do marketing and manage social media sites for the company. I am also a personal assistant. We hold our meetings online.”

There is a tracker that ensures the work she does is recorded and paid for.

But the job didn’t just fall in her laps. She sent out applications and it was six months before her current employer responded and asked for a Skype interview. During the interim nine-month period, she relied on the support of her mother.

When she’s not working for her UK employer, Grace does other online jobs to grow her nest egg. And it helps that her costs have been minimised by not having transport or lunch expenses to think about. She has since been able to buy land in Utawala, which she plans to build her house on.

She also mentors students looking to start working online, and hopes to set up a centre that will teach women and the youth to become self-reliant.

Grace’s advice to those looking for a job like hers is to be keen with communication, as any distortion in messages relayed online can hurt a company. One of the ways to achieve this is to ask questions if there’s no clarity.