Hire a Virtual Assistant

Sometimes the amount of work you have to do can become overwhelming. This problem is compounded when simple daily tasks take up a lot of your time. If you find yourself struggling with completing your work at a reasonable rate, it may be time to consider getting a virtual assistant. By offloading administrative, technical, or creative tasks onto a virtual assistant that works remotely, you can increase your daily productivity and spend more time concentrating on things that will improve your future. However, hiring a virtual assistant isn't as easy as just selecting a person at random. To get the most out of your VA you must prepare for their employment, sort through and interview the best candidates, and be prepared to train and manage them until they become efficient at their jobs.

Steps

Preparing for Your Virtual Assistant

1. Write down a list of tasks for your assistant. Before hiring a virtual assistant, it's important to make sure that you'll have pre-determined tasks for them to do. Evaluate your daily and weekly workload and identify things that you can offload onto your assistant. Common tasks include organizing and filtering e-mail, setting up appointments, responding to general inquiries, booking flights, or managing your blog and social media.
   • If you are working in a highly technical position, it's possible that your virtual assistant will need experience within your particular industry.
   • Programs like Evernote allow you to track tasks that you complete on a daily basis so that you can better understand what you do each day.
2. Do a cost-benefit analysis of hiring a virtual assistant. Ensure that hiring a virtual assistant wouldn't put a financial strain on you. Calculate how many hours per month you would have to invest in an assistant and how much time they could free up for you. Think about whether you want to hire someone from your country or outsource the job to another country to save money.
   • While getting a virtual assistant has upfront costs, the opportunity cost or amount of time you save by not doing lower-level tasks, allows you to make more money over the long run.
   • Outsourcing can save you money. Average pay for virtual assistants from countries like the Philippines is only $2 - $4 an hour, though if you can afford it, you should pay them at least the federal minimum wage.
   • The average pay for US-based virtual assistants is $10.16-$29.79.
3. Create organized processes for your assistant. Your assistant may not know how to do things, so it's important that you have an organized system laid out for them. By creating the steps on how to complete tasks before you hire them, you'll save valuable time and money training them. Consider creating tutorial videos or generating a document with instructions. Compile the materials in one place and provide the information to your virtual assistant as a reference.
   • For instance, if you want your assistant to use a specific scheduling software, you could create a word document with step-by-step instructions.
   • You will also need to create an invoicing process to pay your new assistant.
   • Plot out the responsibilities of your virtual assistant on a daily, weekly, and monthly calendar. Share it with your them so that they have an understanding of their workload.
4. Ensure you have enough time to allocate to training. While your virtual assistant may already be proficient at some of the applications you'll have them use, there's also the chance that they may not understand or do things the same way as you're accustomed to doing them. For this reason, it's important that you allocate enough time each day to get your virtual assistant up to speed about the most efficient methods on how to do the work you are assigning them.
   • Set aside a day or two to get your virtual assistant up to speed and allow them to download the apps and software they will need.
5. Research virtual assistant tools. You will need to use different software applications to effectively work with your virtual assistant. This could include calendar programs or documents that provide passwords for the accounts they will need to use. It's also a good time to create a login for your virtual assistant. Having to constantly relay login names and passwords for different applications can waste valuable time.
   • Some common virtual assistant tools include, Google Apps for Work, Dropbox, Boomerang, and Doodle.
6. Prepare a freelance agreement and other paperwork. A freelance contract lays out terms of the job with your virtual assistant. In the agreement, you can declare how much the assistant is paid, the scope of the project or service provided, a timeline for the project, and offenses that could result in termination. If you are working on something that shouldn't be kept secret to the media or public, it's important that you contact an attorney to draft a non-disclosure agreement. This binds your virtual assistant to keep confidential materials secret.
   • If there is a violation of an NDA you can sue for damages incurred as a result of breaching confidentiality.
   • A breach regarding the freelance agreement could be considered grounds for termination.
   • You must also issue a 1099 tax form by January 21st if you've paid your virtual assistant more than $600 and you've hired them as an independent contractor.

Searching For the Best Virtual Assistant

1. Write down a list of personality traits you want in an assistant. Determine the most desirable personality traits based on what you need for your industry. For instance, in a high volume business, you'll want to make sure that your assistant can meet timely deadlines, can hustle, and is resourceful enough to overcome problems. If your assistant will have to interact with clients or colleagues, it's also important that they have solid communication skills and can make people feel comfortable. Determine the ideal traits for your assistant, and keep them in mind during the interviews.
   • Other character traits to look for in a virtual assistant include being reliable and having good time-management and organization.
   • Just because you like an assistant doesn't mean that they are the best candidate for the job. Determine what it will take to get the tasks completed the most efficiently and select the candidate that can get it done.
2. Create a job description. Now that you have your personality traits and tasks written down, you can create an accurate and detailed job description. Your job description should have the responsibilities, duties, hours of work per week that you expect, and required qualifications. You should also have information on who you or your company are and the industry you specialize in. Before you get ready to post it, double check and make sure that all of the tasks you'll require your new assistant to perform are listed in the description.
   • Double check your work for misspellings or typos.
   • Things you can have as requirements include special certificates, required education level, years of experience, or knowledge of specific software programs.
   • While posting the person's pay is not always required, it may help you on freelance sites because job seekers will throw on filters based on their desired salary.
3. Post your job description on popular job boards. You can post your job ad on popular job boards like CareerBuilder, Monster, Craigslist and Indeed. Some of these postings will cost money. Another option is to use websites like UpWork or Freelancer, where freelance assistants are looking for projects to work on.
   • Job posts are free on some websites like Indeed but can go up to $500 for websites like LinkedIn.
4. Consider reaching out to a freelance agency. If you've have had a hard time finding quality talent or don't have the time to go through resumes and applications, then a freelance agency may be your best bet. Search for freelance companies online and find a company that specializes in virtual assistants. Look for websites and candidate pools that can efficiently complete the tasks you create for them.
   • The benefit of going through a freelance agency is that freelancers are vetted which will ensure a higher quality candidate pool.
   • A drawback for hiring an assistant through an agency is that are typically more costly than working directly with the freelancer.
   • Some of the most popular freelance companies online include, 24/7 Virtual Assistant, Fancy Hands, FlexJobs, and Virtual Assistant USA.
5. Review the applications and select the top candidates. After you post a job ad, you should receive emails from candidates with their resumes, cover letters, and applications. Sort through them and try to find candidates that meet your criteria. Many candidates will most likely not meet your expectations, so it's important to go through all of them so you can find the best candidate for the job. Once you evaluate the applications, choose the best five to ten candidates for the job.
   • It may also be a good idea to request references and salary requirements to narrow your search.
   • If a candidate requires a salary that's more than you can afford, see if you can come to a compromise. If an agreement can not be made exclude that person from the running.
6. Contact and interview the candidates. Contact each candidate and set up an interview time that works for both of your schedules. For virtual assistants, a live video call is usually one of the most effective form of interviewing for remote employees. When you are on the interview with the candidate, make sure that take notice of their skills and experience. Determine if they would be able to fulfill the duties you require of them and ask them specific questions on the software applications they will need to use while on the job. If they seem like they have experience and are confident in their ability to use it, weigh that heavily on the decision of whether to hire them or not.
   • You can ask questions like, "What is your experience with Github and PHP?" or "What software programs did you use in your last job?"
   • Make sure that you take their tasks into consideration. For instance, if they need to communicate with potential clients or partners it's essential they can enunciate their words and clearly communicate. If they are tasked with more organizational or editing responsibilities, this aspect of their personality is not as important.
7. Offer the best candidate the position. Once you thoroughly interview each candidate and check their references contact the candidate that best meets what you're looking for. Set up one final talk and provide the documentation that your personal assistant will have to fill out. This should also be accompanied by an official offer letter that outlines their duties and pay.
   • You can say something like, "Henry, out of all the candidates I interviewed I was impressed by you the most. I'd like to offer you the position."

Managing Your Virtual Assistant

1. Onboard and train your new employee. Take your time and implement the training plan that you had mapped out earlier for your new virtual assistant. Train them on the most critical aspects of the job and make sure that they have what they need in order to be successful. For instance, if you are requesting that they work inside of a certain software application, it's important that they have the permission and access to that software.
   • Training a new employee takes time and patience. Unless they have extensive experience doing exactly what you are asking them, it will take time for them to become efficient at it.
   • Never be afraid to give positive or negative feedback on how your virtual assistant is performing their job.
   • Try to remedy any miscommunication with your virtual assistant as soon as it occurs.
2. Monitor your new virtual assistant's progress. Make sure that they fully grasp key concepts and can complete the work that you've laid out for them. If you notice that they seem confused or are under-performing in some way, talk to them and provide them with additional training to improve. Compare how many hours they invoiced to the amount of work that they completed. If it seems like they are taking an exorbitant amount of time or is consistently inaccurate, have an open and honest conversation about their problems.
   • You can say something like, "I noticed it took you three hours to organize the emails for the day. Are you having a problem with the app or is something else taking up all your time?"
   • If your virtual assistant is not meeting the goals you've set forth for them, consider finding a new one.
   • Set reasonable deadlines and see if your virtual assistant can accomplish them.
3. Communicate with your assistant and ask for feedback. Because you are both working a remote environment, details could become confused or lost during communication. Make sure to constantly check in with your virtual assistant and ask for feedback. Sometimes they will request a greater level of clarity or instruction on a certain task and other times they'll tell you about important time sensitive information. Either way, having clear and frequent communication will make sure you're getting the most out of your virtual assistant.
   • Video conferencing once a week can make your interaction with the virtual assistant more personal and allow them to ask questions that they have.

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Sources and Citations

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