A choice more and more entrepreneurs and tech professionals are making is to hire a remote virtual assistant. There are plenty of benefits to hiring a virtual assistant. It allows you take some of the more mundane or repetitive tasks off your plate each date, and instead focus on the value-creating work you can do.
Virtual assistants can help you get organized, and to put it simply, they can do some of the things you hate.
There are logistical considerations, however. For example, if you’re working with a virtual assistant in another country how will you pay them in Mexico, the Philippines, or wherever they may be in the world?
Also, how will you make sure that you’re working well together in a unique digitally-based situation? How will you decide which tasks to outsource? The following are some things to think about if you’re hiring your first virtual assistant.
3 Tips for Hiring a Virtual Assistant for Your Business
1. Know What You Need
What often happens when people are hiring their first virtual assistant, is that they’re not sure what they need and the relationship ultimately fizzles out.
Before you ever start looking for someone, sit down and map out what you need and what your expectations are. For example, maybe you want to hire someone who deals primarily with bookkeeping and accounting tasks, or maybe you’re more interested in having someone keep up with social media.
Just make sure you’re clear on what you’re hiring for so you can find the right person and build a long-lasting relationship with them.
2. Choosing a VA
When you’re choosing a VA, you’re probably going to go through a site like Upwork. There’s going to be some great talent out there for you, and some talent that’s not-so-great. Of course, you can read through reviews and see their work history, but you might want to go into a little more detail.
Think about having a sample task that takes just a few minutes, and you can pay a little bit for. Make sure it relates to the tasks you would have the person do, and see how it goes. It can give you a little more to go on as you’re making a decision.
3. Create Expectations Before Hiring
Along with knowing the specific tasks you need help on, create detailed job expectations ahead of time. This should include not only details of the work you’re going to have them do, but also the expected hours they should work, and the tools they’ll be using.
It’s important to focus on clarity when you’re working with a virtual assistant. You want to maximize the value the person brings to your business and your life, and view hiring a virtual assistant as an investment rather than a waste of money.
Finally, you should know your budget as well. You can find inexpensive virtual assistants, but is that what you want? If the person is going to be focusing primarily on tasks like data entry, it’s probably fine to hire based on the lowest bid. If you need someone for more high-level tasks, you might want to think carefully about your budget.
Is it right to hire virtual assistant for your business? My straight answer to this depends on the nature of the work you are outsourcing to the virtual assistants. If it is for tasks that are out of your league, then yes! But if it is for those techy and risky aspect of processes in your workforce, I’d recommend you stay off and get the right hands and minds to do that for you. In closing this article, we have been able to discuss on tips for hiring a virtual assistant for your business to scale. If you have question on hiring a virtual assistant or anything related to outsourcing your business processes, use the comment section below to get us engaged.
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