HOW TO GET THE MOST VALUE OUT OF HIRING A VIRTUAL ASSISTANT.

Achieving the perfect work life balance with your virtual assistant…

After doing tons of research on how to reduce your workload and how best to delegate repetitive administrative tasks, you realized that hiring virtual assistant is the best option for your business or maybe you already hired a virtual assistant and things are not going as smoothly as you expected, and you find yourself doing more work than you used to.

The virtual assistant industry has evolved rapidly especially after covid, there are different types of virtual assistants that specialize in helping a broad range of people with a lot of tasks.

Most people don’t know the type of virtual assistants they need and they end up hiring someone who isn’t suited to the needs they are trying to fulfill for their business.

?Here is what you know when you are trying to hire a virtual assistant:

·??????You know that you are overwhelmed and stressed

·??????You know that a virtual assistant can provide business support

·??????You may or may not know some tasks that you are ready to delegate to a virtual assistant

?Here is what you are supposed to know and prepare:

·??????Clear goals and objectives for a solid working relationship between you and your VA.

·??????A list of tasks you can readily delegate and how to videos.

·??????A clear and defined method of communication.

·??????Solid interview questions

·??????A badass on boarding process

·??????The number of hours you will be needing help per week/day/month.

SETTING CLEAR GOALS AND OBJECTIVES FOR A SOLID RELATIOSHIP BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR VA

This should be done even before posting a job description or reaching out to a virtual assistant you will be working with. Setting these goals would help you decide on the type of virtual assistant you will need and ultimately guide your decision-making process while you are interviewing candidates.

This way you can make sure that all tasks are completed accurately and efficiently, and it builds anticipation for all the significant milestones ahead.

To provide significance to your goals find a mutually rewarding relationship, between the personal goals of your virtual assistant with the vision of your business/organization, this will help them understand their role in your business and the value they are bringing to it.

No matter what role your virtual assistant is playing in your business, they should be able to articulate how their efforts are feeding into the larger business strategy.

Two factors to consider when setting goals include:

·??????Category of the task you plan on delegating e.g., social media, admin, customer service etc.

·??????Make sure your goal and specific and realistic

PREPARING A LIST OF TASKS THAT YOU CAN READILY DELEGATE

Hiring a VA without preparing tasks list a grave mistake. if you don’t know what to do, how do you expect your VA to know?

This would lead to lots of confusion and mistakes and you will only end up with way more work than before you hired a virtual assistant.

First things first, hiring a VA to fix your business is a bad idea, hiring a VA to build your personal brand is an even worse idea.

Hiring the wrong type of VA for your business will make you regret your decision to hire a VA in the first place.

And simply dumping work onto someone else’s plate isn’t delegating. The tasks you hand off should come with proper context and a clear to your business goals.

“You’ve got to have real clarity of objective,” says Harvard Business School Professor Kevin Sharer in the online Management Essentials course. That includes having alignment on “what does good look like” and by what timeline, and “the technique of measuring accomplishment.”

Before anyone starts working on a task, they should know what they need to complete and by when, including the metrics you’ll use to measure the success of their work.

Letting your virtual assistant understand the impact of their work, will motivate them to do better.

ASKING SOLID INTERVIEW QUESTIONS WHEN HIRING A VIRTUAL ASSISTANT

The one thing you don’t want to do is schedule an interview with more than 5 people at a time, it would make it harder for to decide who to hire.

Here are some solid questions you should ask and why:

1. What are your primary skills and expertise?

This is necessary for obvious reasons. If you want someone to do something for you, like design a website, for instance, common sense dictates that you choose the person who knows exactly what he or she is doing. Otherwise, what’s the point of hiring someone who cannot satisfactorily perform the role you want him to fill-in? As such, you should determine if a prospective VA is qualified to assist you and has the specific skill set that matches the job description.

2. Do you have experience with the required software?

It isn’t enough that you know that a prospective VA has the skills to do the tasks you have in mind. It is also essential to get the assurance that he or she is good at doing his job. These days, there are virtual assistants whose qualifications and experience range from zero to mere entry-level. Thus, it will certainly help to determine an applicant’s level of competency and experience before hiring him. This way, you’re confident that the VA you’ll hire is well-equipped to handle the responsibilities his job entails.

3. What are your strengths and weaknesses?

This is not so much about the answers themselves but more about the way a prospective VA answers the question. A capable person, whether they are a virtual assistant or not, should be aware of their strengths and weaknesses and will be able to answer this question without a problem.

But if the applicant believes that he has no weakness, then obviously, you might want to move on to the next candidate. This means that that person is not open to growth and change. He might also have problems with accepting accountability or constructive criticisms in case he makes mistakes.

4. What are your working hours?

Knowing the best times and days you can contact your VA is essential to your business. As such, you should get the VA’s working hours and compare them to your requirements. And if you’re going to hire someone located on the other side of the world, be mindful of the time difference.

5. How quickly do you respond during working hours?

While often overlooked, this question is something you should ask as it lets you know how long it will take your VA to get back to you via calls or emails when you need something. Always remember that communication between you and your assistant is vital. Therefore, anything that concerns it should be established and made clear early on.

6. Have you had a client who had difficulty describing his needs?

Surprisingly, there are many employers who cannot precisely explain what they want from their VAs. By asking an applicant this question, you can gauge his capability to solve problems when faced with a similar situation. You can test his initiative and determine how he would react in case you want something done but can’t provide enough details or don’t have the knowledge on how to accomplish it.

7. What would you do if you have a deadline and your computer suddenly crashed?

According to Murphy’s Law, anything that can go wrong will go wrong. As such, it is vital to gauge the applicant’s preparedness in case of accidents. Your VA should have a contingency plan in place to ensure that deadlines will be met, and important tasks will be completed, no matter what the circumstances are.

8. Do you have any references I can contact?

While there are virtual assistants who have reviews and testimonials you can read on their blogs or website, it is still important to contact the applicant’s previous clients. They can vouch for his professionalism so you can validate his claims. If there is any sign of hesitation on the applicant’s end when you ask this question, you might want to think twice before hiring that person.

9. What are your interests? What do you enjoy the most about your job?

Not only will these questions let you know the things your VA is passionate about, which is something that can be quite handy in the future, they also say a lot of things about you as an employer.

It shows that you are genuinely interested in knowing the person not just on a professional level but on a personal level as well. The mere fact that you took the time to ask questions that aren’t profoundly work-related gives the VA the impression that you’re approachable and easy to get along with.

Interviews are a vital aspect of the hiring process, whether you’re hiring a virtual assistant or a member of your in-house staff. They let you know what an applicant is like, what motivates him, and what makes him tick. So don’t go hiring people without asking them these vital questions to ensure that the virtual assistant you’ll choose will fit your business like a glove.

CREATING A BAD ASS ON BOARDING PROCESS

Your onboarding process largely depends on your processes, you either have a project management system like ClickUp , Trello , or Asana or you don’t.

Either way there is still and organized way to onboard your VA.

You’ll need to explain how to use your stack of tools, and how they can work as efficiently as possible. It’s also a process for you: you need to remember to check in, make sure everything’s set up properly, and review their performance.

It’s likely that you’ve hired a virtual assistant with a general job description, making references to a necessary level of computer literacy, and making sure past experience fits the role.

What you probably haven’t done is tell the new assistant exactly what they’re doing, or how to do it.

The best way to control permissions within an organization is to have a company email address for every employee.

When it comes to the offboarding process, the easiest way to clean the employee’s accounts and access is simply to disable the email address, so protect yourself now by controlling logins with a company email, not a personal one.

Whether you use Slack, Trello, Asana, or Basecamp for communication, the VA needs to have the right access to all of them.

Send them login details of the created accounts and make sure you’ve got the permissions right. There’s nothing worse than a wasted day at work because someone didn’t have access to the place they needed (especially when you work in different time zones and can’t fix the issue straight away).

Whatever it is you hired a VA for, whether it’s for writing comments or finding emails, you need to make sure they can autonomously work on the task and that you can delegate (or do yourself) batch approvals.

First of all, send over a description of the task you need completing. For example, this could be something as simple as “working through this spreadsheet containing names and companies, find me the email addresses of each contact”.

For that to work, you need to fully explain the task. The best way to explain a task is by creating a process in Process Street. That way, you can write the method down once, send it to everyone that needs to do it, and track their progress from one dashboard.

DECIDING ON HOURS AND DAYS

The top reason why people hire freelance assistants is because they can pick as little hours as they want for a task, you can hire a VA for 2 hours per week or even per month, you can also hire based on deliverables.

You get to do what works for you, which why you get pick as little time as you can afford during the trial phase which shouldn’t last more than a week. (Some VAs don’t do trials and you will have to buy one of their packages)

After this trial you will know for sure how many hours you will need, if you hire an expert VA, you will most probably find that you don’t need to pay for as much hours as you thought you did.

After reading this voluminous amount of information and you decide you still don't know where to go from here that's okay, you can book a free 15 mins consultation to discuss your expectations for hiring a VA.

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