8 Tips for How Virtual Assistants Can Work Happily For Your Business

Hiring a virtual assistant could increase your efficiency levels incredibly, but only if you understand how to make it work for you. If you are a first-timer and lack the experience and tools needed to find and hire the perfect candidate, don’t worry, as we have got some key tips you need to keep in mind while hiring virtual assistant services. Also, here is a short briefing about virtual assistants, different types of virtual assistants, their specialties, and the scope of work. This is an extremely helpful post if you want to have a clear idea about hirin a virtual assistant.

This year seems to be the starting of a digital revolution worldwide. Many companies and businesses, big or small, are going digital. There are certain benefits of going digital, the first being your ability to get a wider client base. You can expand your business or company on the web and collaborate with anyone. But one of the best advantages of going digital is the increased ability to digitalize work processes. Digitalization of work processes allows you to source work to professionals located anywhere in the world. Not just online, but many offline businesses and companies are preferring this option over hiring employees in the traditional style.

The best of these are virtual assistants. “A virtual assistant is an independent contractor who provides administrative services to clients while operating outside of the client’s office. A virtual assistant typically operates from a home office but can access the necessary planning documents, such as shared calendars, remotely.” Says Investopedia.

The best parts about having virtual assistance are:

1. 1. You can focus on the core functions without worrying about a lot of tedious but non core work, which takes a lot of your time.
2. 2. You can hire assistance as and when required, sometimes on an hourly basis or contract basis. You need not employ a permanent employee.
3. 3. Cuts down on your budget; it is a pocket-friendly option for many small or middle-staged businesses.

Virtual assistant services are hired in almost all fields such as accounting and finance, law, customer service, SEO and digital marketing, administrative record management, etc. If you wish to employ virtual assistance and have a happy experience working with them, then you are in the correct place. Read on to know more.

Different types of Virtual Assistants

Before diving into the detailed tips about successfully collaborating with a virtual assistant, let us have an overview of what services are provided by virtual assistants, the scope of work, skill set, and required qualification. Virtual assistants are of different types. A wide range of work is today outsourced to virtual assistants. Virtual assistant services can be categorized into these four types.

1. Virtual Administrative Assistants

Virtual administrative assistants help in managing the daily administrative work of an organization or a business in general. These professionals are basically administrative assistants or clerks who manage calendars, schedules, book-keeping, data entry, etc. These are the most common types of virtual assistants.

2. Virtual Personal Assistants

Virtual personal assistants are also called remote personal assistants. This service is generally hired when a top executive, director, head of a division, or senior manager needs an assistant or a hand to maintain his daily schedule, appointments, work-data, etc. These assistants do a range of work, as requested by the employer.

3. Specialized Virtual Assistants

Specialized virtual assistants are individuals providing special services. Some examples of such roles are social media handler, digital marketing assistant, content writers, etc. They freelance in their respective fields and are generally qualified or trained to provide services in their areas of expertise.

4. Industry-focused virtual assistants

Industry-focused virtual assistants are usually professionals from various fields. They provide more complex services, which can be conveniently managed through a remote worker. These are assistants with knowledge of legal work, e-commerce, market intelligence, business intelligence, research, and data analysis, etc. These are qualified individuals with the required knowledge and degrees to back their services.

Tips To Help You Hire Virtual Assistants and Get The Best Services From Them

If you are an employer and wish to employ a virtual assistant, to outsource work, or to hire help online, there are certain factors you need to know beforehand. These are a few tips, especially for employers like you, to have happy virtual assistance.

1. List all work processes across departments that can be outsourced to virtual assistants

Whether you are a big enterprise or a small business or organization, it is essential for you to understand the working of your company. Find the exact areas where work can be sourced to a virtual assistant. Virtual assistant services enable you to concentrate on the main working of the business, freeing you from the hassle of book-keeping, managing schedules, etc. So knowing the exact work structure and work management processes of your company is essential in order to employ a virtual assistant.

2. Verify supervision and monitoring requirements for the tasks involved

Before hiring virtual assistant services, it is mandatory on your part as an employer to know the requirements of your company or business. Get a detailed idea about the needed skillset, software, and hardware tools needed to do the work. Having a clear picture of the working of the job yourself will help you while hiring a virtual assistant. You will be able to identify the skills, certifications, experience, and tools for the job. This reduces the hassle of screening underqualified and unrelated candidates.

3. Identify tasks that need minimal supervision for sourcing to virtual assistants

Virtual assistance is a remote position; hence the job which is outsourced should be one that can be easily done online or from a remote location. Usually, jobs that do not require continual supervision are assigned to virtual assistants. Employers need to thoroughly inspect the working of the organization and find tasks that require minimum to no superior supervision. These are usually the tasks that can be outsourced to virtual assistance. For e.g., The job of a web content writer, a graphic designer, a video editor, etc., can be outsourced. As they are skill-based and hardly need the supervision of the higher authority before completion.

4. Find out the hourly rates for such tasks

Virtual assistant services are hired on an hourly or contract basis. Similarly, the payment of such services differs from that of a regular employee. Today the market offers a large number of such service providers. Each one has a different rate. As an employer, it is smart of you to do a little back research about the scope and payment of Virtual assistants. Identify the work you want to outsource and find the average rate charged for that service. Consider Hourly / Weekly / Monthly or contract-based rates. This depends on your task and budget. Do your homework on this thoroughly to hire the best recruit at a reasonable rate.

5. Create a job description for each type of virtual assistant role

If you are a company or business planning to outsource multiple tasks to virtual assistants of a particular field, make sure you have a proper job description. Having a well-constructed virtual assistant job description will attract the right kind of candidates. Do not forget to mention all the requirements in the advertisement. Add the required experience, skillset, work style (full-time or part-time), etc. This will filter out the unwanted candidates, and only candidates fulfilling all the mentioned criteria will be left for further hiring procedure.

6. Identify the hiring process and tests for screening candidates

There is a process of hiring virtual assistants, and it is a bit different from the normal candidates’ hiring process. Check out how exactly a remote employee is hired. Check out a couple of different processes. Compare a few of them and frame a new one fitting all your requirements. If you want to free yourself from this trouble, you can always hire virtual assistants from virtual assistant services companies. All these companies need are a few details, and they will connect you to the best candidates within days.

7. Conduct virtual interviews

Now that you have formulated a process to hire virtual assistants and screened the candidates accordingly, it is time to have a talk with them face to face. Set virtual meetings with each one and conduct detailed interviews. Have a predefined list of interview questions. Get to know the candidates, try to obtain a character sketch of each candidate. Try to test their knowledge and skills. Find out more about the virtual assistant services they have provided in the past. Note down each and every answer of the candidate. This will further prove to be beneficial while finalizing the list of selected candidates. Try to conduct the interview in a crisp and to the point manner.

8. Hire the best candidates through a trial-basis approach

Sometimes, efficient advertising, scanning resumes, interviewing, and screening candidates is not enough. To hire virtual assistants, many companies assign a list of paid tasks to verify compatibility and ability to perform future tasks that they will be managing on their own. You could also hire virtual assistants for a trial period. You could examine the potential and quality of the virtual assistant services they are providing before offering them a long-term or ongoing contract. This is the easiest and most efficient tip of all. But before starting the trial period, ensure that all the terms and conditions are clearly understood by the candidates.

Conclusion

These were eight essential tips to have a happy virtual assistance service. But the majority of the employers prefer to partner with recruitment agencies who can connect them with the perfect virtual assistants for their organization.

Alliance Recruitment Agency is one such service provider with 10+ years of experience in the recruitment field. We have assisted more than ten thousand clients with various recruitment, staffing, and executive search services. Be it on-site recruitment or recruiting of virtual employees, we have a foolproof solution to all hiring-related requirements.

Our virtual assistant recruiter teams have fulfilled with total satisfaction hundreds of service requests to hire virtual assistants. We also offer all our services online and have a free consultation service. Now that your ideal candidate is within reach, all you have to do is call us!