How To Avoid Mistakes When Hiring A Virtual Assistant

How To Avoid Mistakes When Hiring A Virtual Assistant

It’s a big decision when you take on a virtual assistant for the first time but, if you choose carefully, it’s the first step towards dramatically reducing your work hours and it has a positive knock on effect on the rest of your life.

Working with a Virtual Assistant isn’t as simple as pressing an “easy" key and hanging up the phone. For many people, hiring, delegating, and managing are entirely new set of skills which need to be learned and mastered.

Here are a few pointers to help you to avoid mistakes when hiring a VA:

Do Your Prep

We always suggest to new clients that they keep a notepad next to them for a week so they can document their various daily and weekly activities.  At the end of the week it is then easy to analyse which tasks you feel comfortable delegating and which tasks you would rather keep a handle on yourself. 

Next, we recommend a detailed instruction sheet should be communicated  on how a new VA who is not yet familiar with the specifics of your business, would accomplish those tasks.

Finally a detailed job description should be written to outline your level of expectation.  This is also an opportunity for you to let your personality show and your new VA will not come up against any nasty shocks!

Although  initially unrewarding, this prep-work will pave the way for an honest and open working relationship and will help to avoid any misunderstandings later on.

You Get What You Pay For

When compared to hiring someone full time and in-house—or working extra hours to do the work yourself—most people totally “get it” that hiring a virtual assistant is the most cost-effective option. Whilst the attractive costs of hiring a virtual assistant are very real, it’s easy to get caught up in cost savings and try to penny-pinch.

There is a lot of truth in the saying “pay peanuts, you’ll get monkeys” You absolutely get what you pay for. A low quote from India may look attractive, but do consider that maybe the applicant didn’t really understand the requirements laid out in your Job Description and that they will not necessarily have your professional work ethics – for example, ask yourself whether your clients will be happy liaising with them on a regular basis over the phone?  You may be better off at the end of the day hiring a local Virtual Assistant with several years’ corporate in-house experience who has been working for themselves for longer than a couple of years as they are more likely to be (a) well-versed in how to operate professionally with skills learned at top level and (b) confident that self-employment works for them (and they are not going to throw in the towel when things get tough).

Selecting the cheapest option is often a recipe for disaster, particularly when your VA is going to be liaising with hard-won clients.  This can be short-sighted as will inevitably result in higher costs in the long run.

Dealing With A Human Being

Don’t under-estimate the time it takes to successfully bring a new team member up to speed – a Virtual Assistant will need to be trained in your systems and processes, and will naturally take some time to become fully conversant with every aspect of your business. Even highly skilled in-house staff and consultants need some time before their productivity reaches full capacity – its called being human!

Multi-Tasking VAs

In reality, we wouldn’t expect to hire just one person in-house to be a Web-Developer, Content-Writer Graphic-Designer, Bookkeeper, Appointment-Scheduler, SEO-Master, Customer-Service Professional etc., so why would you expect all these skills from a virtual assistant?

As with any professional, virtual assistants have specific areas of work where they utilise specific skills – decide which of these areas is going to save you the most time and add the most value to your business, and search for the right VA based on those criteria.

Hire people to do what they’re good at, and you’ll see better results.

Trust

The other reason most often cited for hiring virtual assistants is saving time. It is therefore surprising that many people undermine their time gains by micromanaging their virtual assistants.

There is an understandable fear in working with someone far away. For example, how will you know how much time they are really devoting to your business and not someone else's?  Remember that it does take time to build a successful relationship and that trust is important and needs to be earned.  It is very worthwhile spending a little longer at the beginning of the relationship to communicate with your VA by e-mail, phone and in person if you can.  Without this communication, your VA will be “left guessing” which is not a good of time for you or your assistant.

Most VAs worth their salt utilise online time-tracking systems such as myhours.com where tasks can be itemised and reports produced to show clients exactly where the time is being concentrated.  You can review this together at the end of the first month’s work to ensure you are receiving the best possible results for your business.

However, the easiest way to ascertain whether your virtual assistant is working to your advantage is to simply keep an eye on the results.  Ask yourself, "are you getting more web visitors"? "have your clients commented on how helpful your VA has been"? "do you have more time to concentrate on your core business as a result of delegating"?

If you can answer "yes" to these questions, you have found the right person for you.

Do you have any recommendations you can share about working with virtual assistants? If so, we’d love to hear them in the comments section !