How do I find, hire to manage, delegate, and assign to a virtual assistant
Virtual assistants can be a great benefit to growing your business. Follow our steps to find how to hire, supervise, and then delegate time-sensitive repetitive jobs.
The sun is shining brightly, and you're ready to get to work.
Today's the day you're going to make real progress in expanding your company.
You've been mulling growth strategies in your head for months now, and finally the time to implement.
Up until... you discover that you're in the middle of recording your payment, you need to book your flight to attend that conference, but you are still required to respond to those support emails, your email sequence isn't written yet, and there remain issues to be resolved regarding your advertisement campaign.
That's exactly what came out of your mind at the beginning of the morning. There's a lot more to do on your mundane to-do list.
That's why we've put together this list of tips about everything you should be aware of to locate, employ, train, manage, and delegate repetitive, time-intensive tasks to a VA.
In case you're seeking relief, continue reading.
What is an online assistant? What are the benefits of having one?
Virtual assistants are those who offers support to your company from a remote location.
VAs typically work as part-time, contract or on a project basis. They perform specific tasks of support. They typically assist small to medium-sized companies and entrepreneurs who are overtasked with the day-to-day tasks.
Nowadays, the field of experience in the field of VAs is vast. Although "assistant" is in the word, it's not the current concept that VAs only support companies with administrative tasks.
Sure, they cover duties such as scheduling and managing email as well as travel planning, expense reporting and even invoicing. They also handle invoicing and expensing. accomplish.
VAs are also skilled in different tasks including copywriting, competitive research Social media management project management, process creation and management of customer relationships.
This is a field that is currently seeing the most of expansion. In fact, the world market for virtual assistants will grow with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.60 percent until 2021.
Surprised by that growth rate? Don't be. Growth rates make total sense when you know the advantages from having an VA on your team This is the topic we'll be discussing following.
#1. Virtual assistants help you run your business in nearly unlimited ways
Today, aside from in-person tasks such as serving coffee, VAs are able to perform any role of support to help with your business needs.
If you run your business from a remote location it's not a reason your assistance can't be remote, as well.
Actually, remote work is a growing trend that has 36% of US people currently taking part in the gig economy that is remote and three-quarters of businesses having fully remote teams.
In case the local talent does not meet your requirements, or you'd just prefer to make your breaks in the office virtual, a remote team is an excellent option - and proven-and-truealternative to expand and support your business.
Plus, it's a great method to boost your efficiency.
#2. Virtual assistants supercharge your productivity
Have you heard the phrase, "work on your company, not working on your business"?
VAs can help you achieve just what you want to achieve.
If you employ the services of a VA, you can delegate your low-growth tasks and work to complete more profitable projects. Offload your menial tasks to ease some of your responsibilities and increase the productivity of your business.
Not only will your list of duties be offloaded to your VA which will give you the much-needed flexibility and space to focus on pertinent growth projects however, the hiring of a remote team member on its own is proven to improve productivity.
The research suggests that remote team members have higher productivity, they can complete 13.5 percentage more work as compared to their colleagues in the office.
As a remote worker myself, I find it much better to be productive working at home, that I control the levels of interruptions as well as "in my zone" times.
Another study revealed that employees in offices spend less than 40 percent of their working time performing their primary work, but large portions of their time devoted to various things such as email administration activities, meetings, as well as interruptions.
When you employ remote VA in essence, you're hiring an extremely efficient employee who will take on your support tasks as well as giving yourself more time to work more efficiently overall.
On the subject of efficiency, the next advantage explains how VAs can also increase your revenue.
#3. Virtual assistants boost your earnings
How? When you delegate your lower-growth tasks, you can focus on the high-growth projects that bring in more revenue.
To provide a framework of reference, here's a hypothetical math breakdown:
Imagine you are spending half of the time working on repetitive tasks that could be delegated to VAs. VA.
The VA could charge an hourly VA $15 an hour, which is $300 per week, to manage those tasks as you can free up 20 hours to pursue profitable pursuits which could earn well over $300 each week.
If your extra earnings exceed the costs of employing your VA then you're in good shape.
As you can see, increasing productivity, profitability as well as support for almost any business task the hiring of your first VA is a great investment with many benefits.
We'll now look into the methods to accomplish this.
How can you find the services of a virtual assistant?
When you are ready to hire your first VA, follow these steps.
#1. Be aware of when it's the right an ideal time to engage
The first step is to be prepared. You'll know that you're ready to engage VA VA once you've:
The hourly value of your time break down your time and projects into value units per hour, and see when it's appropriate to make the investment (i.e., when you're spending significant time on $10-per-hour instead of tasks that cost $100 per hour It's the right time to think about employing a contractor).
Clearly defined jobs that require to be completed regularly Are there repetitive tasks that you could teach someone else to do?
It is important to know what will be your focus with the additional time - Your renewed focus must be on strategic priorities that drive up the revenue of your company as opposed to the costs to your VA.
Time to train your VA It is important to be organized enough to dedicate the time needed to train your brand new VA.
Why is this? because training and support are pretty important.
It is only 48percent of the employed Americans claim to be determined to be at their best at work, and 39% of them are happy at their jobs when they aren't getting training or development from their supervisors.
In comparison the 88% of workers with trained are motivated to do the best job they can, and 86% are satisfied about their work.
Once you've decided of whether or not it's time for that big moment of expanding your team-of-one You're now ready to take your next step.
#2. Choose the details of your position
The job description should be written by specifying what duties the VA will take on and also include a timeline for each project.
Below is an example listing of the duties and responsibilities of a VA that lists the tasks that range from answering phone calls to making presentations. Some prominent tasks include:
Scheduling meetings - Your VA can manage your business calendar, coordinating with your various colleagues and contacts and organizing meetings and appointments.
Payment arrangements - Your VA can take over the accounts payable tasks and ensure all of charges and bills get paid on time.
Managing the customer service As the primary point of contact, your VA will handle all queries and questions from your customers.
Notice most of these repetitive tasks can be systematized and swiftly handed over onto your VA.
Not sure about which tasks to assign your VA?
Take a look at these top VA services to get you brainstorming:
Customer relationship management (customer assistance, follow-up on invoices up)
Data mining and entry
Email (management and campaign coordination newsletter setup, and management)
Event planning
Expensing and invoicing
Organization (cloud or cloud,)
Process development
Management of projects
Research (competitive or market research, as well as price survey development, creation and its implementation)
Schedule management
Management of social media
Reservations and travel
Vendor management
Webinar management
Administration of the website
When you've identified the specifics of what you'd like delegating to your VA You should now know the amount of time you'll need your VA to dedicate to supporting your company's needs, in accordance with these tasks.
And that will allow you to decide on the amount of time commitment you'll need from your VA, whether as project-based, part-time, or contract-based employee to handle the support duties that are scheduled for each week.
The final ingredient in this process is to establish the budget you have set.
How much do you want to pay to your VA for the tasks and commitments you've laid out?
Keep in mind your savings from "non-productive" hours and "benefits and overhead" in the event you hire the services of a VA instead of a direct hire. For example, a direct hire of $15 an hour could end up costing your company approximately 25 percent more than if you employed a VA at $27 per hour.
There's no definitive rule regarding the amount you should pay for your VA, here are some general guidelines to follow as you hire for more general vs. specialization. The current prices for VAs are:
$25-40 per hour for general administrative skills
For advanced abilities
A minimum of $50 per hour is required for specialized skills
As you can see, the hourly rate increases as the VA's skill set becomes more advanced and specific.
OK -- so now you've got a good idea of what exactly you're searching for as far as the job description. You're now ready to look for your perfect VA.
#3. Hunt to find your perfect candidate
Here are 13 popular sites to consider exploring as you begin your recruitment process for your first VA
After selecting your platform of choice, just adhere to the particular service instructions (typically, starting with creating your free account, or by requesting a consultation) to explore their list of VA potential candidates.
When you've got access to the VA network then it's time to sort through and evaluate the candidates to determine the perfect fit.
#4. Look up virtual assistant candidates critiques
A majority of the websites mentioned in the previous step permit VAs to create their profile with comments and feedback on their services. It's a good idea to look through these reviews in order to get a better knowledge of the standard and design of the candidate's work.
Here's a review example from the Upwork database :
If you visit Diane's profile, you can check out the scope of her work, including prior jobs completed, and her star review from the company that hired her, plus some comments on her work.
The reviews will also help you gauge what you can pay for the prospective VA.
When you've looked through the majority of VAs (say 20 at the minimum of 20) It's now time to select the top five applicants Then, reach out to them and invite them for an interview.
#5. Review your top five virtual assistants
The process of interviewing candidates is an essential step that will help you get to know your VA's personality and approach to work. We suggest breaking the interview questions down into three groups that are operational, situational behavior, specific to the role, and operational questions.
Operational and situational questions like the ones listed below can help you understand the VA's skills and philosophy of work:
What do you do if you were faced with an urgent need but were unable to get help from anyone?
How do you arrange this data spreadsheet?
If I assigned you tons of tasks you're not in a position to finish by a specific deadline How would you respond?
Tips: Make sure that your interview questions are relevant to the job you are applying for.
In terms of presenting the actual job when interviewing candidates Employers often miss their mark. the majority of workers saying their new job is different from their expectations at the time of the interview.
Also, giving them relevant tests is also a great method to assess your candidate's on-the-job capabilities. In the case of seeking to employ an VA to help with some writing assignments, have them write a writing test assignment.
Here are some other tests that you could use, in the event they're connected to your VA's job duties:
TypingTest.com - offers a free typing test which candidates can complete in 60 seconds
16Personalities.com - provides an online, no-cost personality Myers Briggs assessment (though the results may differ in the extent to which this test is applicable to the job)
TestDome.com - allows users to take tests across a wide array of programming languages, as well for general tests such as the customer service and reasoning and sales discipline
In continuation with the three categories of interview questions Use these categories as a guideline for role-specific interview questions:
Which tools do you have experience using? What tools do you like the most and the reasons why?
What type of projects do you most love creating? What are you best at and what do you prefer not to work on?
What are your typical work hours?
How fast do you respond to emails or other communications both internally as well as externally?
You can also inquire about questions that can help you better understand your candidates' background more than what's written in their resume -- which is something that most interviewers miss and that's why 63% of interviews fail to evaluate their soft abilities (aka people skills):
And for the third category, here are some interviews with behavioral questions to consider:
While working remotely what do you do to manage the demands of your personal life and your job?
What can you do to stay focused in the midst of repetitive work?
What is an example of a time you dealt with a grieving client or other customer?
How do you deal with stress and tight time frames?
You can customize your questions for interviewing in order to get more information about your VA's experience, years of experience, and how they'll manage their work.
A different interview procedure to consider is the the STAR approach in which you ask a question that requires your candidate to touch upon four components in their answer which are situation, task outcome, and action.
The STAR method gives you more insight into your candidate's other qualities beyond their resume as they answer your questions in storytelling form.
Once you've got a solid understanding of the person you're going to be hiring then the next thing to do is to pick the most suitable candidate and then hire your VA.
#6. Hiring a virtual assistant
Out of your most popular five candidates whom you interviewed, select and then hire the best candidate.
If you're using one of the platforms we mentioned in our final stage, simply comply with their hiring process and the terms. It should be pretty straightforward, so long as you've got your requirements for the job and the required details in place.
It is important to note that each platform will have specific steps in its hiring process. For instance, on Upwork's website, you'll need be able to make use of their authorized service for escrow to reimburse your VA as pre-set milestones are fulfilled.
It's good to know that the process of interviewing was not the most difficult part. Narrowing in on your favorite and moving forward with hiring should be fairly straightforward.
In sum:
There are some indicators to pay attention to in determining when to hire your first VA however, once you're completely clear on the VA's role and particulars, the rest will be simple.
Three mistakes to avoid when using an assistant virtual
#1. The absence of official procedure for training and operations in the business
It is essential to establish standard operating procedures (SOPs) or at the very least, any kind of procedure or set of guidelines your VA is able to follow while they take on duties.
Corporate firms refer to this as business process management (BPM) as well as they use it to lower expenses and improve efficiency, like you will see in these survey results:
In one case, at Microsoft Azure, not having the standardization system in place and properly followed by its employees cost the company 4.46 billion hours of collective downtime -which is a lot.
In order to document your SOPs take a picture of yourself doing each task with associated steps. Screencasts are free such as Jing and Loom for recording your voice training along with any pictures or videos you have on your computer screen demonstrating various duties that you or your VA will take over.
Additionally, you can develop templates that will allow your VA can refer to the same formatting and style you prefer for your company. If, for instance, you have a specific outline of emails you want to utilize for certain situations make a written script the VA can follow in the responses to customers.
This is what a possible customer service email template can look like contact with a potential customer when asking them to take a survey:
There are endless options available when it comes to creating SOPs and guidelines, templates demonstrations, training materials as well as other training materials to help your team members to adhere to.
One of the most crucial things to remember when you create your onboarding systems is that you must be precise and specific in the direction you provide. This will allow you to create the proper expectation for your VA, as well as aid them in providing the highest quality of work you're looking to achieve.
Beyond that, ensure that your method of communication is supported and not impeded by the technology available.
#2. Not having a good communication system
Without an effective technology for communication, it's difficult for:
It is your responsibility to delegate the tasks to your VA
Your VA can complete your assignments according to the method you would like
In reality, 57% of projects fail due to an issue in communications.
It's vital to establish a common application of communications tools that works for both you and your VA. The most popular online tools for communication that are used by virtual teams are:
Another mistake you must be aware of, and that's the most important one because There's nothing more damaging for your company.
#3. Doing nothing to create trust
This issue of building trust among employees is not an unimportant one.
It's a problem that is widespread, with only about 50% of all employees (across generations) being able to say they have a "great deal of trust" in their current employers.
Managers account for 70 percent of the variation of employee engagement ratings This means that it's up to you as an employer to grow and develop a trusting relationship with your VA to keep them engaged with their job.
Do you need more advice on finding an excellent VA? It is possible to find an online course outsourcing with ease valuable by Paula's VA Shop:
There is also the online class Growing a Dream Team helpful by Oh Joy! Academy:
The gist of it:
Don't make the mistake by not having SOPs in place and a reliable communication system in place, as well in not establishing trust with your VA.
The process of hiring a virtual assistant simple and comes with numerous advantages
Here's what you have to know:
Employing a VA can bring many benefits to your business including virtual support that can be utilized in a variety of ways, and can increase your efficiency as well as your profits.
The first step to hiring a VA is knowing the time when you're ready, which means you have a clear understanding of defined tasks that you want to offload and the associated hourly figures to be analyzed.
When you've got the position details worked out, your next step is to search and recruit, then review and then interview your top five candidates from the database you have chosen of VA candidates.
After narrowing down your top five candidates to your single favorite VA, it's time to sign off on your VA.
When you are going through the hiring process, make sure you avoid using a non-official process for training in place in place, using poor methods of communication, and also not establishing trust and your VA. These errors could hurt your business in the near as well as in the longer term.
Now get out there and alleviate some of your every day stress and strain by hiring your very first VA so you can focus on developing your project into a scalable business.