Before Hiring a Virtual Assistant, Consider This [Why Pareto Might Be For Your Business]
Hiring a virtual assistant has become commonplace for busy entrepreneurs looking to bypass adding more staff members. Invaluable partners for companies, entrepreneurs, and busy individuals, virtual assistants perform a wide variety of personal and business-related functions.
From answering emails, to scheduling meetings, to drafting agendas,?VAs save clients a lot of time (and money). For example, instead of combing through hundreds of emails yourself, you can hire someone to highlight the ones that need priority attention and immediately connect with potential clients and important stakeholders.
In this article, we’ll explore some of the advantages and possible pitfalls of hiring a virtual assistant, as well as explore how Pareto compares. While Pareto may at times overlap with personal assistant work, Pareto’s extended team primarily carries out?strategic data operations ?geared toward growing businesses. Read along to find out if Pareto’s extended team is the perfect match for you and make the best decision for your business stage and future goals.
What Is a Virtual Assistant?
With the growth of flexible and remote jobs, virtual assistants are becoming more and more prominent. Managers, CEOs, lawyers, and investors are now more likely to have a VA instead of the traditional personal assistant.
At first glance, a virtual assistant’s role may seem similar to that of a personal assistant. They carry out administrative tasks, answer emails for you, manage your schedule and, simply put, take care of all those pesky little tasks that most busy people don’t want to deal with.
Usually operating on a freelance basis, VAs work remotely to provide this extra help without the long and costly process of hiring. VAs usually work in a business setting, but some will also provide personal support. This personal assistance can include buying and sending gifts, making travel plans, or making dinner reservations.
Virtual assistant is indeed a catch-all term that encompasses different roles. While most VAs will offer admin help, some have higher degrees of specialization in technical fields and can be hired to do graphic design, SEO content writing, or email marketing campaigns. To better understand the diversity of this profession, let’s look at the different types of virtual assistants.
What Are the Different Types of Virtual Assistants?
In the past, assistants were jacks of all trades who were required to lend a hand in all kinds of busywork. Nowadays, however, there are more and more VAs who want to detach themselves from the purely repetitive and mundane work and specialize in highly technical niches. We can simplify the different types of virtual assistants into 7 categories:
1. Administrative VAs
These are the most sought-after type of assistant, especially by executives. This is also the VA type with the largest workforce. They are natural multitaskers and ensure that the day-to-day life of their client goes smoothly.
2. Social media VAs
Social media managers are increasingly more common as businesses develop their social media strategies. They’ll engage with the audience through responding to comments and direct messages, track performance, schedule posts, and sometimes even brainstorm social media strategy.
3. E-commerce VAs
Ideal for online businesses, e-commerce VAs take care of inventory, write product descriptions, and provide customer support.
4. SEO content writer VAs
With significant overlap with content writers and SEO specialists, they carry out more creative work, such as writing optimized blog posts, and have highly technical skills.
5. Customer service VAs
Skilled communicators and proficient in thinking on their feet, they deal with customer queries over email, chat, or phone.
6. Graphic design VAs
They support marketing and social media efforts and may design logos, social media posts, and illustrations for the website.
7. Accounting VAs
Overlapping the functions of an accountant, they are dedicated to bookkeeping and are responsible for payroll, verification of expenses, and record-keeping.
The field is as varied as can be. With the recent expansion of the virtual assistance scope, there are some blurred lines between VAs and technical positions, such as SEO specialist, content writer, or accountant. Nevertheless, administrative VAs still make the largest slice of the digital help provided.
What Can Administrative Virtual Assistants Do for You?
Administrative VAs are dedicated to supporting the normal functioning of a workplace setting through daily management of mundane (but often time-consuming) tasks. Experienced VAs know the ins and outs of the businesses they work with and eventually operate with little to no guidance and autonomous decision-making.
Some of the best tasks to consider giving to administrative VAs are:
You get the idea.
As we’ve seen, some VAs are equipped with additional technical expertise and can provide more specialized solutions such as content creation, marketing, SEO, social media management, or even graphic design. The lines are blurry, but technical VAs scope can overlap with editors, content writers, SEO specialists, web marketers, graphic designers, and even web developers.
In any case, more often than not, clients will look to VAs for that?extra support with these mundane tasks that will keep the engines running smoothly.
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What Are the Benefits of Hiring a Virtual Assistant?
In 2020, the number of businesses that hired virtual assistants?increased by 41% ?and this trend is here to stay. And for good reason.
Here are the 5 main benefits of hiring a virtual assistant:
What’s the Hourly Rate for a Virtual Assistant?
Unsurprisingly, virtual assistants come with different levels of experience and expertise, which translates to different hourly rates.
If you want to work with a VA but are unsure whether you have the budget, the good news is that it can vary anywhere from $1 to $100 per hour,?with an average of $16.44 . This will depend on how much experience they have, the type of work they do, and the project complexity. The fact that they can work around the globe is also a factor in determining compensation.
Before defining the budget, here are some important questions to ask:
Looking at the necessary skillsets, desired experience level, and location will be the main factors in determining an expected hourly rate.
What’s the Dark Side of Hiring a Virtual Assistant?
This sounds great so far, doesn’t it?
Who doesn’t want to save time and money?
However, not everyone has great experience in working with virtual assistants. Here are some of the possible downsides of hiring a virtual assistant:
Additionally, it’s argued that?virtual assistants and startups are not a good fit . Founders who had high expectations for what a VA could take on often end up disappointed with the results. One of the reasons this happens is that?most VAs are not specifically trained to operate in the startup ecosystem.
So… Is Pareto a Virtual Assistant Agency?
So… Is Pareto a Virtual Assistant Agency?
Not exactly!
Pareto’s women-led virtual team of data experts works as an?extended team to provide strategic data and carry out repeatable processes?for?growing businesses . Even though there is some overlap with the scope of virtual assistants,?Pareto’s solutions ?are aimed at supporting startup founders in their specific challenges.
More than strictly admin work, our specialized and customizable solutions, such as?competitor research ,?lead generation ,?finding influencers , and?fundraising , are catered to growing businesses’ needs and require industry knowledge, as well as the latest and best tools for web research and data processing. In short, Pareto will not only save you time (and money), but will?support you in reaching your ideal customers, expanding brand awareness, or finding the perfect investors for your fundraising.
Unlike hiring a VA, Pareto customers get to skip the time-consuming screening and vetting by being immediately matched with a project partner. The project partner is the?single point of contact?that allocates each project to the most qualified data experts. Regardless of size, all accounts are closely managed by a project partner.
Instead of working with just one person, there’s a full team to back you up with different skill sets and expertise. Plus, all?Pareto projects ?are quality guaranteed!
What Can Pareto Do for You?
There are?40+ ways ?the Pareto team helps growing businesses. Here’s just a taste of what Pareto can do for you:
If you can’t find what you’re looking for,?sign up ?and let us know how we can help. We’re happy to carry out custom data collection and management projects for your specific needs.
Ready to Focus on What You Do Best?
If you’re still trying to do everything yourself… you’ve probably realized by now that you can’t. No one can make good strategic decisions while spending hours moving data from column A to column B.
Instead of stacking responsibility on top of responsibility to the point of having a jam-packed schedule, be intentional with your time. Whether you decide on a VA or Pareto’s extended team depends on your current needs. Focus on what you do best and direct your energy to where it needs to be.
No more mindless tasks that suck the life out of you!
Do you want to see if Pareto is the right fit for you? Try us out with a?free project pilot .