9 Easy Steps to Hire a Virtual Assistant for Your Business
Virtual assistants are support and administrative employees who often work from a remote location and provide small businesses support from repetitive tasks and also perform a number of other miscellaneous functions.
They can serve as administrative assistants and project management specialists and they are often outsourced through a remote staffing company.
Read more about what is a virtual assistant.
Should I Hire a Virtual Assistant?
If you think you have enough sales and leads coming in and your efforts are best focused on front-end tasks, sales, and meeting with customers yourself you may consider that it’s time to delegate.
VA services can greatly benefit you by taking a load off your plate.
And if you want to offload some of your tasks without worrying about expensive overhead costs? Then you know it’s time to hire a virtual assistant.
Read more about the benefits and why you should hire a virtual assistant for your business.
Hiring a Virtual Assistant
You may be wondering where can you hire your VA from?
Getting a personal assistant onshore is expensive and you may have to go through all the trouble of setting up an office yourself.
Should that mean you go the freelance route? You may not want to either.
Because you’ll be hiring a person with their own agendas and they might not be transparent about their workflows and you can’t really manage a freelancer unless it’s a talented and exceptional worker whom you trust.
Here are the steps in hiring a virtual assistant.
1. Figure out the tasks you want to outsource.
Is it the scope of your work to outsource digital marketing chores or administrative tasks?
How much project management can you do on your own?
And are you outsourcing various tasks or do you prefer to hire a VA who specializes in a certain field like social media?
2. Set a budget for hiring a VA.
This is what you have to figure out. We’ve talked about virtual assistant costs.
But if you’re going to have to spend $25 per hour to find a quality employee and on top of that have to worry about renting an office cost which can go up to $1000 a month, you may be better off hiring an offshore virtual assistant.
Read in detail about the costs of hiring a virtual assistant
3. Inform us of the qualifications you want
If you want the VA to have experience in accounting or social media management? Put it on the list.
If you need a person who already has had experience working for real estate clients, then add that to the list.
If you prefer a person who can work night shifts, then you can put that in too.
4. Interview them – sift through your VA applicants
iSuporta remote staffing allows you to conduct interviews via Skype or Zoom to have a personal vetting process for your applicants.
You may also ask them the specifics of certain tasks you’re going to ask them to perform.
For example, if you want a virtual assistant who also is a graphic designer, you may ask them if they’re familiar with XD or Illustrator?
Or do they know a little bit about style sheets and web development?
If you’re hiring a social media virtual assistant, ask them what campaigns they’ve used, or are they familiar with payment schemes in campaigns?
5. Have your VA applicants background checked
Your VA may not be the person they say they are.
In interviews, people always want to present an impression of themselves.
Having an outsourcing partner with a full HR who can perform these checks is paramount.
It will allow you to make sure that those applicants who make it to your Skype or Zoom calls will be qualified from the get-go.
And making certain you are familiar with who this person says they are is critical in order to land a really great employee.
6. Make sure your VA candidate has attention to detail
Working with your VA is absolutely going to require focus and a person who is both curious and also conscientious.
This is why testing them for their attention to detail might be necessary from the start.
Any good company with a fantastic HR knows how to put these little tricks and tidbits in their testing procedures.
However, you may ask them to write the phrase “I love working on Trello.” in the subjects of their first emails.
Or throw them off. Have them translate Russian at the end of the test!
A person with initiative will know how to translate anything or perform something that is not otherwise indicated in an elementary way during their series of tests.
7. Inform your outsourcing provider of what software and hardware you want
Inform your outsourcing partner about the software and collaboration tools you require.
Would you prefer Monday.com? Or Trello?
Would you be needing a faster machine for graphic designers and web development tasks? And your communications channels.
Working with a virtual assistant is best when it’s done in real-time and you can keep track of the things you need to.
8. Create project milestones and quotas.
It is important to create project milestones and a timeline you’re expecting to complete certain facets of a project.
This is a way you get measurable results and suitable KPI’s.
However, unlike a traditional call center, we won’t set these ourselves unless you ask us to.
We will work with however much you want to manage your VA vs. how much we manage.
9. Train your Results Coaches
It’s a given that you will show your virtual assistants the ropes in their first few weeks on the job.
However, one thing you don’t want to overlook is to also train your supervisors.
A great outsourcing company will offer results coaches on a ratio of 1 – 10 employees.
Keeping supervisors in the loop makes certain that when you’re away they will know how to monitor the progress of your virtual assistants.
Having a great management in addition to the remote employees you get is something you just could not achieve with freelance.
This is why it’s best to hire them through managed remote staffing.
Key Takeaways
If you think it’s time to delegate, then you’re ready for a virtual assistant!
The key is to know what specific tasks and routines are hampering you.
And when you do, make a list and be very specific about the candidates that you want.
Interview your applicants online and then you’re ready to go!
