How to Hire a Virtual Assistant? All Questions Answered Regarding VA
- May-24-2019
- Bilal Uddin
- 0 comments
Outsourcing is a billion dollar industry valued at $85 billion in 2018. Hiring a virtual assistant is actually outsourcing your online business work and services.
Well, in case of online business many young entrepreneurs face difficulty to understand the need of hiring a virtual assistant and some faces difficulty in generating trust in outsourcing the services.
In this post, I have decided to answer all the burning questions regarding virtual assistant that are following,
- What is a virtual assistant?
- Why do people hire a virtual assistant?
- When should you hire a virtual assistant?
- How to Hire a Virtual Assistant?
- What are the Best Platforms/Websites to Hire Virtual Assistant?
- How to Post a Job for Virtual Assistant?
By the end of this post, you will have a comprehensive and clear idea about all the when, why and how to approach a virtual assistant for your online business.
What is a Virtual Assistant?
A virtual assistant is a business helper that works from his/her home to handle the functions of your online businesses.
They work as a personal assistant who takes care of emails, data entry works and administration works but they do not come to your office or demand any space to work. They work from anywhere on the working hours decided after mutual agreement.
Why do people hire a virtual assistant?
Well, there is not any dramatic answer to this question. People hire them to ease their daily business functions such as,
- Dealing with customers/clients complaints
- Responding emails
- Data entry works
- Accounts management
- Website update
- And much more. You can hire a VA for any work that you divide your work.
Although hiring a VA is not a necessary thing. However, there is a very thin line in which you have to realize the need to hire a virtual assistant or let the things handle on your own.
It is very crucial to know the right time when you should get the help of a virtual assistant before things start getting to fall apart.
When Should You Hire a Virtual Assistant?
Doing the right things at the right time is one of the founding pillars of success. How do you know that the time has come to hire a VA?
You must know the right time to get some workforce to assist your work, however, it sometimes gets difficult to figure out the best time for that.
To make it right, I am mentioning some sign down here that will help you identify the need of hiring a VA for your business.
3 signs to know that you need a virtual assistant:
1. Spending Most of Your Time in Ineffective Work:
None of the tasks is useless but some of them are repetitive and time-consuming such as sending emails for customer feedback, replying on social media comments, etc. When you start feeling like spending a lot of time in these activities on a daily basis then you should consider hiring a VA for your business.
2. Poor Customer Support Complaints:
Every customer is precious in online business; you cannot afford to lose them at any cost especially when your business is on a growing phase. Unfortunately, the major cause of losing a customer is the bad customer support services such as, not being able to respond to emails or late reply on customers messages on the social media platform. If you are losing the customer to similar reasons, you had better hire a VA fast.
3. The Work You Are Not Doing With Hear and Soul:
Doing a task consistently that you do not like may end up showing a negative impact on your work and business performance. Hiring a VA here will help you to focus on other valuable tasks to work on to optimize your business functions.
How to Hire a Virtual Assistant
1. Make the list of task for VA
Before posting a job and start looking out for VA, you need to make an organized list of task that you are willing to outsource.
One of the reasons for doing so is to clearly mention the expertise that you want for the job. Also, by making the list, you get to know how much VAs are required for the job.
2. Write a detail job description
The job description is the most crucial part of posting any job to give a crystal clear idea to the candidate about the job. Make sure to provide complete information about what you are looking for in the candidate.
Do mention all the required skill and experience that you want in your virtual assistant.
Here are some of the highlights of the main points that should be included in the job description:
- Your company’s information and sort of business you are running.
- Skills, expertise, and experience required in the candidate for the job.
- List of tasks that the VA is supposed to perform.
- Mentioned the Apps and software that is required in the jobs such as; WordPress, Mail Chimp, etc.
3. Review the Application and Give a Recruiting Test
Review the candidates based on experience and expertise required for the job and conduct a video interview so the trust could be generated on both sides.
Prepare a test for the shortlisted candidate and asked to complete it in a given time to get the best applicants out of them.
4. Hire the VA for one-week trial
The one trial will help you know the competency of your virtual assistant and after one week, you can propose a contract as per your requirement (e.g. monthly or yearly basis).
By following these steps, you can easily have the expert assistance that would help you to run your business effectively.
Where to find a Virtual Assistant/ Websites
Finding a VA is as similar to finding a freelancer to outsource your work. So, a VA hiring process is similar to hiring a freelancer from a website.
Here I am mentioning some of the best websites from where you can look out to get virtual assistant services.
How to Post a Job for Virtual Assistant
This part is dedicated to those who have never used any websites for posting a job.
Upwork is one of the leading platforms for outsourcing work. So, I am going to show how to get an Upwork virtual assistant.
1. Sign Up For Upwork and Post a Job
First, you need to sign up on Upwork for by going to upwork.com
You can either click on signup option or post a job option both the options will lead you to the registration page where you can join Upwork with your email address.
After signing up, you will land to your profile, where you will get the option of posting a job.
2. Write Title, Description, and Details of Job
Once you click on ‘post a job’ a page will open where you write information about the type of job that you are posting.
First, you have to write the title of the job.
Like here, I wrote ‘Virtual Assistant’ in the name of the job post.
After entering a keyword, a job category option where you need to select ‘Virtual/Administrative Assistant option.’
Now comes the major part of posting a job – Job Description.
Job description should be a detailed guideline of what sort of job is this and the responsibility of the tasks for the virtual assistant. It should be detailed, comprehensive and provide complete information about the tasks.
You can also add any project files, images or details that could help in better understanding of JD.
After providing all the information, click ‘next.’
Then you are supposed to give precise information about the type of project.
Choose from the options of, one-time project, ongoing project or I am not sure.
3. Mention Required Expertise and Job Posting Visibility
In expertise, mention all the skills and experience that is required for this job.
Although, it is an optional feature that will help in shortlisting the application in the first place.
After filling up all the expertise options, click next on the bottom of the page and you will be landed on the visibility page.
At visibility page, you decide who can see your post and number of people you want to hire.
4. Set Budget and Post the Job
Now comes the part of setting up a budget.
Here you decide either to pay on an hourly basis or on a fixed wage rate.
Once you set up the rate then you need to give an estimated time of the project for how long you need the virtual assistant services for your project.
Once you set up the budget and time of your project click next to move to the last part of the job posting.
In the last part, you can have a complete look of your job posting where you have the option to alter any given information.
After the review, click ‘post job now’ option and VA job will go live on Upwork platform.
The relevant candidate will see the posted job on Upwork and you will be notified when someone applies on your post.
Wrapping Up
Well, I know most the newbie are reluctant to outsource the work mainly due to the initial tight budget issues but that does not mean without a VA you cannot run your online store.
I highly recommend cost-cutting in the business and doing the maximum work by yourself you can cut the cost.
However, the time will come when you can come in the position to outsource the services and maybe at that time you do not realize the need that could lead to work exhaustion.
So, do keep a look at the signs that I have mentioned above to realize the right time of hiring a virtual assistant.