5 Reasons Why You Should NOT Hire a Virtual Assistant

So you’ve been thinking you need a virtual assistant lately. Affectionately known as VA’s, they can be an absolute game-changer for your business. Our VA in particular has not only saved us hours and hours per week but has also brought in an additional $36k in annual recurring revenue in the first 60 days with us.

Typically, as entrepreneurs, we have a bias towards taking action which means we tend to take on everything all at once, on our own. This can get you far in the early stages of your business, but at some point, it becomes the very thing that holds you back from scaling. What got you to this point is not what will get you to the next level, and if you’re already thinking you need to hire a virtual assistant to get some help, well, you’re light years ahead. Most entrepreneurs struggle with giving up control, but it’s a non-negotiable if you want to take your company to new heights.

However, hiring a virtual assistant before you are ready can be detrimental in many ways, not just in wasted money. Oftentimes, when business owners feel that outsourcing or virtual assistants just don’t work out or aren’t a fit for their business though, it is an issue in their process and their ability (or rather lack thereof) to lead people.

So should you hire a virtual assistant? Here are the top 5 reasons why not to.

You Don’t Know Exactly What You’re Hiring Them For

Are you screaming “I need help, but I don’t know what I need help with”? If so, this is the number one red flag that you should not hire a virtual assistant in your business. First and foremost, if you don’t know exactly what you’re hiring your assistant to do, and you’re just hoping to find a unicorn that can do everything you need all at once, you are not ready to bring on an assistant.

Entrepreneurs make this mistake all the time. They hire someone thinking they possess all the knowledge and skills to be successful and hit the ground running, and so they provide little to no support, guidance, or direction. This is a sure-fire way to fail.

Eventually, without clear expectations, the person you hire is going to feel overwhelmed or unsuccessful at their role, and you’re going to be frustrated because they are not meeting your expectations. You will be back to the drawing board looking for a new VA, or giving up on it altogether. Usually, when a VA doesn’t work out, it’s not because they are bad at their job, it’s that the person doing the hiring is a bad employer and leader!

If you know exactly what tasks, roles, and responsibilities you need your virtual assistant to take on, however, you might be ready to hire. Getting clear on this is the first step.

You Expect a Jack-of-All-Trades

Do not expect to find one person that can run your Facebook ads, design your ad creative, write copy for your social media, and do your laundry. Looking for a one-stop-shop VA is a subset of reason number one, but you might have very different tasks lumped together that you expect your new assistant to take on. You might find a virtual assistant that says they can do all of the things you list, but you’ll soon find yourself back-tracking, having to clean up their messes with tasks that weren’t done properly or weren’t done at all.

If you know exactly what you’re hiring this person for, and can narrow it down to one skill set, you are more likely to find quality talent for that role. Most people are not good at everything, and expecting such creates unfair expectations on your new hire, but also makes it very difficult to find the right person in the hiring process.

Identify the one key skill set, capabilities, or knowledge that this person has to have. If you find that you really do have a need for multiple skillsets in different disciplines, then consider hiring multiple people that fit those descriptions.

You Don’t Know Your Core Values

You should not hire a virtual assistant (or anyone else for that matter) if you don’t know what’s important to you in the people that you work with. In other words, if you haven’t defined your company’s core values yet, and you haven’t gotten intentional on what you want your culture to be, hiring the wrong person can be detrimental to your growth and slow you down tremendously.

More important than technical skills and know-how is whether or not this person aligns with your vision. Most things you can train the right person to do well. But what you can’t change is character and personality.

You’ll get much better results when you hire people and not paper (their resumes). For one, resumes are often an overinflated indication of that person’s experience and achievements. This is not to say that most people are liars, but it is human nature to beef up or over-emphasize parts of their experience. More importantly though, as you grow, this is going to be someone you work closely with and if you don’t agree on the same core values, you’ll be wasting time battling the wrong things.

The most successful companies that have grown extremely fast understand the power that comes from team synergy. They prioritize culture over strategy and know that is the secret, the magic, to exponential growth.

Determine the non-negotiables this person must possess before becoming part of your team. Do they need to have a sense of humor? Do they need to be flexible and think outside of the box, or is it more important that they have superior attention to detail and are analytical? Getting clear on these things first, and then sticking to your guns, will save you lots of headaches down the line, as well as time and money.

You Don’t Have Bullet-Proof SOPs

Every entrepreneur’s favorite acronym, SOPs. If you don’t have clear SOPs, or standard operating procedures, and core processes in place in your business already, then you won’t be able to give clear expectations and training for your new virtual assistant.

This is also where so many businesses fail. If your processes are in your head or are something you just do naturally, there’s no way you can successfully set someone else up to take on these tasks. And again, if people don’t feel successful or like they have clear targets, they aren’t likely to stay, or at the very least won’t perform above expectations.

Instead, you need to get those processes on paper (or preferably, in a digital task management software that’s shareable). They should be so clearly documented to the point that you could give them to anyone off the street and they can get the same outcome as you. Until you have that in place, you should not be hiring anyone.

Not only does it set them up for success, but it removes you entirely from the process. If you have to constantly micromanage your virtual assistant, and check in on if and how things were completed, you’re wasting vital energy and defeating the entire purpose of hiring someone. You’re also likely making them miserable and hindering productivity.

SOPs allow your business to run without you and you can plug any new hire into these systems to get them up and running quickly. If you don’t have these from the very first day of your virtual assistant starting work with you, you’re wasting money as they aren’t producing in your business but you’re paying them.

While your SOPs may change a bit as your new virtual assistant works through them and offers suggestions for improvement, having a foundation that’s clear, concise, and specific from day one will be a much better experience for both you and your VA.

Also, as you do trainings or create new processes, be sure to document everything. If you ever have to replace or hire another VA, it will be easy to plug them into those processes and trainings without having to recreate the wheel.

For this reason, it’s usually best practice to hire someone for things you’ve actually done in the past and that you have first-hand knowledge about. Hiring someone for a task you know nothing about can make communication difficult and creating SOPs difficult. Knowing just enough to be dangerous will allow you to have the best conversations in guiding this person as they take on the role.

You’re Thinking It’s Going to Be Completely Hands-Off

You should not hire a VA if you’re not willing to provide ongoing training, support, and feedback and instead plan to be “hands-off”. While you won’t have to spend an enormous amount of time managing them if you have clear SOPs and have done everything right up to this point, you will need to be available to walk them through the SOPs, set expectations, and communicate how they fit into your vision on the first day or so. The actual training portion can be something you create once and don’t have to do again as long as you have good processes in place. You can use a software like loom.com to record yourself going through the process and give that to your VA as training.

Beyond the initial onboarding process though, providing feedback and guidance will help ensure that your VA is supported, but also that your SOPs are being followed and no shortcuts are taken, which is key as your company scales. If you are serious about building something that can scale then a strong foundation in your people, and genuinely caring about them and their success, will make all the difference. Regular check-ins and even conversations about their goals outside of your company can help foster this loyalty. Providing them with opportunities to grow beyond their current role and outside of work is also key.

There are the top 5 reasons you should not hire a virtual assistant. Are you and your business at a point where you’re ready to hire a VA or do you still have some work to do?

If your business is at a point where you are ready to hire, be sure to check out my free, step-by-step training on how to leverage overseas virtual assistants to increase your profit margins to over 50% at get.upperhandcreative.com/free-training.