Do you work long hours regularly needing to have a virtual assistant? Are you losing your clients and potential leads because you can’t respond to emails on time? Are you overwhelmed by the time you do at times? Are there a lot of things you are not doing, that you should be doing? How about needing more leisure time to balance your life and work? Also, spending repetitive tasks throughout the day? And ending up doing tasks you don’t really like? If you answered it all YES, you might actually need a Virtual Assistant. This article talks about what a Virtual Assistant is, how you can hire one, and the different tasks you can assign to them.
What is a Virtual Assistant?
Virtual Assistant has a broad meaning. But, let’s make it simpler. A virtual assistant is someone who works remotely for another independent business owner and provides tasks for them in an online setting. May it be administrative tasks, managing your different social media accounts, business development, you name it, your virtual assistant can definitely do it.
How does a Virtual Assistant work?
Before hiring a virtual assistant, you should first identify the things you can outsource because virtual assistants work depending on the job they are assigned into. They usually operate in their respective homes while doing the administrative task given by their clients. Having access to most business documents and also strategies. They work according to specific responsibilities. Most Virtual Assistants nowadays specialize in different kinds of niches, depending on your needs.
Why do you need a Virtual Assistant?
Having a Virtual Assistant in your team may be a huge bonus. You probably can’t work on all these tasks yourself, right? Having an extra hand on your different projects is essential to your business growth. As a business entrepreneur, you may be bombarded with different tasks, wondering how to grow and advertise your business. Virtual Assistants can look outside the box and do it for you. They are able to look out for new opportunities for your business and also, potential threats that may come your way. Because you hire them as your Virtual Assistant, they prioritize the tasks you have given. They are able to schedule your appointments, meetings, answer your emails regularly, and respond to queries. Some tasks are essential to the growth of your business. You can ask them to make social media platforms and post on a daily basis. Social media is somewhat very important to your business nowadays because a lot of people use it.
- Better use of employee/employee efficiency
Wishing to run your business hassle-free most of the time, then hiring a virtual assistant is your best option. All professionals face different situations that are filled with chaos and disorder while performing different business tasks of which they are not really aware of. With so many duties performed, there are chances that some responsibilities are unattended. That’s why ordering and delegating tasks is important to achieve employee efficiency.
- Reduced costs
The cost of hiring a virtual assistant, especially from the Philippines, is half of the price you pay when hiring an office employee from your country. The primary concern of all businesses is the budget. Budget for delegating employees. Hiring a VA is much cheaper compared to hiring a full-time employee office-based. You don’t have to give office space, gadgets like laptops to use for office work, bonuses and everything associated with it like employee benefits and the like. You can also ask your VA to research cost-effective alternative suppliers and ways you can reduce spendings on your business. Cut down on unnecessary splurges.
- Saves time
As a business owner, you have to manage your time and spend it wisely. Having a trained and expert Virtual Assistant can help you manage your time and plot your schedules for the following days, weeks, or months if you may ask. Dealing with potential customers may be one of the most important things in your business, but you don’t have to do everything, a Virtual Assistant can manage, organize and respond to different queries. A lot of tasks may be overshadowed due to overflowing tasks, that’s why VAs come in handy as they are trained and hired to focus on different special tasks, like
- market research
- email management
- data entry
- online marketing
- call answering
- scheduling
- search engine optimization
- web developing
- content writing
and many many more.
Virtual Assistants are skilled in different areas. They can decrease the stress related to your work and help you be more organized. They always make sure that they are on the right track and give results in the given time frame.
How to hire Virtual Assistants?
Are you convinced enough that you need a Virtual Assistant in your team?
Here are the ways on how and where you can hire the best Virtual Assistant suited for your lifestyle and business.
Step 1
Start by making a list of all the tasks you want to outsource. The things you don’t mind others will do for you. You can create training documents for the tasks you want to delegate.
Step 2
Creating a job description. This is one of the most important things when you want to hire a VA. A clear and concise job description. A good job description is composed of the background of the company, the level of education or skills you require, the different duties and responsibilities, and the tools and apps that they will be using.
“It’s important to create detailed job descriptions so expectations are met on both sides. I always ask people I know first for referrals. A virtual assistant should be able to provide references and samples of their work. Speaking with them by phone is very helpful to get to know them and their personality to see if it’s a good fit.” – Sue Canfield
Step 3
Once your job description is ready, you can now start to find the perfect virtual assistant that is needed for you and your business. We have an article on how to find the best virtual assistants to hire.
Step 4
Review applications and you can now schedule interviews that come through. Choose top candidates for the job and conduct video interviews with them. A video call is most likely the best because you can figure out whether you will like the person or not. Whenever you interview each candidate for the job, ask them their goals, hobbies and how they would like to work, and how they want to be managed. Don’t just ask the usual questions like their work experiences and skills. Talk to the employee casually. They likely feel nervous when the job interview is too formal. You can then catch the person’s personality by doing your interviews more relaxed.
“We ask a very specific set of character questions that test how someone would treat another human being. We have “automatic disqualifiers” that kick people out of our funnel immediately based on their answers. This prevents us from talking to someone who doesn’t share our value system, without us getting glossy-eyed about their resume. It’s saved us from so many bad hires and makes our screening process go much faster.”
Step 5
Give them a test. Before hiring someone, choose at least the top 3 candidates and give them a task to complete as a test. You should give a task that would be part of their everyday responsibilities once hired. Providing them assignments will help you determine who you really want to hire.
Step 6
If you have already chosen your best pick for the job, start them off on a trial period. This will give your Virtual Assistant somehow an incentive. Now, you can talk about the salary. The rate of being a virtual assistant depends on the skills he has and work-related experiences. The longer and relevant his/her work experiences, the higher the rate for your Virtual Assistant. This shouldn’t be a conflict because virtual assistants are mostly affordable and of course, cost-effective. You can also let them sign a contract to avoid any disagreement or discrepancies in the future.
Virtual Assistants can be your secret weapon in your business. They allow entrepreneurs to be more productive and bloom their businesses. Now, you can start to identify the things you will delegate to your future virtual assistant. You can not do anything on your own, delegating someone can help you and you can also help them back. You can now save time on thinking more about business strategies and focusing on more important things for your business. After reading this article, may you have ideas on how you can land yourself a virtual assistant of your choice.
