How To Hire A Virtual Assistant For Your Business (Ultimate Guide)
Hiring a Virtual Assistant is quite important – especially if you want to scale your business to the next level.
Hiring a VA allows you to delegate some of your business tasks – thus, allowing you to focus on the most important things in your business i.e. those which moves the needle forward.
Thus, it's quite important to have someone who can help you with some tasks – so as to get more work done in less time.
But the question is;
‘How can you find the best VA for your business?’
That's what will be discussed in this article.
In this post, l will share with you a 6 step process that you can use to find the best VA for your business.
It includes the following steps:
Without further ado, let me explain each of these.
1. Write Down The List Of Tasks Which You Want To Delegate
First and foremost, it's important to decide on the type of tasks that you wish to delegate & write them down e.g. customer service, order fulfilment, video editing, etc.
This is so crucial because this guides you when you actually go out there and look for potential candidates i.e. you'll be able to find potential candidates based on those specs.
Without a clear definition of tasks, you might find it difficult to attract the right candidates.
Now, you might be asking; ‘which type of tasks do l need to delegate to a VA?’
In my opinion, you should delegate small menial tasks i.e. those which consumes more time – but has little impact on your business progression.
For example, if you're an influencer, you might decide to hire someone who'll engage with your audience – thus, allowing you to focus all your time and energy towards content creation.
Yes, it's important to engage with your audience – but this might consume most of your time – which might be used for other more productive things that generates more revenue for your business.
Thus, you need to sit down and think about the tasks which consumes most of your time – but has little impact on your business progression.
Once you have a list of them, it's now time to move on to the next step i.e. listing your job offer.
2. List Your Job On Freelance Sites
Assuming that you now have a list of tasks to outsource, it's important to look for potential candidates on freelance sites like Fiverr, Upwork, OnlineJobs, etc.
It's important to write a thorough description of what you're looking for – so that you can attract the right candidates for your offer.
You shouldn't generalise your job listing like; ‘looking for customer service personnel' – then you end there.
Instead, you should go into more detail about what's involved in the customer support section of your business e.g. ‘Looking for customer support personnel for a sneakers’ Shopify store'.
Once you're specific about what you're actually looking for, you'll be able to attract candidates who has some experience in that particular field – hence, the person will be able to effectively communicate with your customers.
The reason why it's important is that, customer service is a broad term i.e. almost every company in every industry has a customer support section – but their tasks are totally different depending on the type of company.
Thus, it's important to keep that in mind.
3. Screen Your Applicants
Once you post your job offer, you'll start receiving some applications from various candidates.
The crazy thing is that, you might get dozens of applications – but at the end of the day, you might only need 1 person.
So how do you screen your applicants – so that you can separate the ‘good' from the ‘bad' ones?
That's where screening comes into play.
You need to go through the applications – so as to see which ones matches with what you're looking for.
Now, lm aware that this process might be quite intimidating – especially if you get hundreds of applications.
But just to give you a tip;
You need to automatically disqualify all candidates who uses automated responses.
The thing is, you need to communicate with real people who takes some time to write their applications – rather than automated AI bots which aren't real humans.
Thus, you need to do this practice – and this will help to cut your candidates by 20% - 30%.
Another pro tip is that, you should go through their profiles – so as to see their previous performance with past clients.
This will give you a clue on whether the person is reliable or not – because if someone has terrible experience with past clients, chances are that, he/she might be a problem to you as well.
Thus, it's also important to look for reviews – so that you can work with proven people i.e. who have some social proof.
4. Give Qualified Leads A Sample Test
Assuming that you now have a smaller candidate size, it's important to further screen them down i.e. through a sample test.
Using our previous example of customer support, you can look for some complex customer queries that you got in the past – and ask each of the candidates ‘how they would deal with those cases’.
This helps to test the IQ of your candidates – hence, you'll be able to find those who're intelligent enough to address customer queries.
If you're a YouTuber looking for a graphic designer, you can give your leads a random video – then ask them to create a suitable thumbnail that suits the video.
This helps to notice how good each candidate is, and you'll be able to choose the cream ones.
Thus, you should come up with a sample test – so as to test the compatibility of your leads.
5. Interview Qualified Leads
Assuming that you now have less than 10 candidates on your list, it's now high time to do some face to face interviews.
Personally, l prefer to use Skype video calls – but you can also use other platforms that you feel comfortable with.
Thus, you should schedule some interviews with your candidates – in order to ask further questions to them.
If you're in different regions with different time zones, choose a time that is fair to both you and your candidates.
I’m not going into more depth on how to conduct interviews – because there's a lot of free resources on Google which covers this topic.
But basically, you need to ask your candidates questions related to their work experience, references, hourly/monthly rates, etc.
6. Hire The Best Candidate
Assuming that you've completed the interviews, you'll already know the ‘ideal' person for the job.
Thus, you just need to contact them – and sign contracts with them (if possible).
The reason why it's important to have a contract with your VA is that, it helps in times of disagreements i.e. if you have some arguments, you can always go back to your written agreement – and solve the dispute using the contract terms.
Thus, you should always prepare a contract – so as to protect both you & the VA.
Wrapping Up
So these are the 6 steps that you can follow to find a Virtual Assistant for your business.
Once you follow these, you will be able to find the ‘ideal' person for your job.
Now, before l wrap up, let me mention this real quick;
You must provide a clear job description of what you expect from your VA.
If you don't provide a clear job description, your VA might end up focusing on wrong things i.e. he/she'll just work based on his/her opinions.
Thus, it's important to have a clear job description for your VA.
Also, you should keep the contact details of those candidates who failed the final interview – so that when you get into conflict with your VA, you’ll have a backup plan.
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