The Complete Guide to Hiring a Virtual Assistant
We’re all talking about working from home, remote and virtual working as if it’s a new concept. And yet many businesses have long used virtual assistants to help organise and run their business and office on a day-to-day basis. But if hiring a virtual assistant is a new concept to you, how do you go about hiring one?
Running any business involves a range of tasks, some of which are fairly menial. But menial doesn’t mean that they aren’t essential.
What does happen is that these small but important tasks can cloud your focus, getting in the way of your bigger business goals.
It may also be that you don’t like these tasks. Advertising for new staff, making a long lost, sending out interview invites are just some of the steps involved in hiring staff, for example – they all take time and patience. Outsourcing this to a virtual assistant to complete is one way of freeing your time, meaning you can concentrate on other aspects of your business, the bits you find more interesting.
What this article covers
We’re going to take a look at:
· What is a virtual assistant?
· The services a virtual assistant can offer
· How to hire a virtual assistant
· Why a personal or remote assistant might be the time and stress-saving solution you need as a business owner
What is a virtual assistant?
Most businesses, at some point, will hire an admin assistant to complete a range of tasks. When you hire a virtual assistant, they do these tasks for you but remotely from their own office or, in some cases, from home.
The way we work has changed enormously in recent years. We have the internet to that for that. The tasks that would normally be completed at a desk or on paper are now carried out online.
This includes everything from bookkeeping and accounting tasks to managing diaries online. This means that many of the tasks a VA performs on your behalf can be done away from an office base.
Technology has left no stone unturned. The traditional physical phone line is turning into a thing of the past too, with VOIP or Voice Over Internet Protocol taking over. This means that diverting phone lines to other locations is much easier and low-cost too.
The services virtual assistants offer
Virtual assistants offer a range of services, but these can vary from one assistant to the next, so you’ll need to check.
For example, at Prontus we offer:
· Bookkeeping – with an IAB qualified bookkeeper, your accounts are in safe hands. We use a range of online accounting platforms, although we find most clients prefer to use Xero, QuickBooks or Sage. If you don’t use an online platform, we can help set one up for you, connecting your business bank accounts, putting your business logo on invoices and much, much more. All of this has one aim – to streamline your bookkeeping process, keeping your accounts up to date so you have a real-time overview of your business’s financial position.
· Email management – is your inbox crowded? The problem with an overly cluttered inbox is that amongst all the rubbish emails will be messages from customers. We can manage all that for you, responding to enquiries, setting appointments and more.
· Telephone answering service – your phone constantly ringing is great for business BUT it means that when you need to focus to get something done, such as delivering the service or product that you do. Virtual assistants can answer your phone for you, taking messages, responding to questions and more. They can also contact you with urgent messages and make sure that you have a full report of all the calls they have taken on your behalf. At Prontus, we offer this service as and when you need it. This can be a full-time service, or we can cover lunchtimes or other times when you don’t have staff in your office for whatever reason.
Virtual assistants can also offer event or training organisation too, making sure your delegates have all the information they need when they book onto your event.
Some virtual assistants also offer creative and marketing support. For example, social media management is a popular option. Maintaining an online presence, engaging with followers, and posting consistently is key to a brand’s growing popularity of social media platforms. Finding the time to do it and being inspired to create great posts and captions when you have so much else to do as part of your day is hard. A virtual assistant can sometimes offer these creative services.
A VA will likely offer other services too such as data entry, transcription and research too. They may also hold specialist skills too, such as formatting e-books.
Another creative service that some assistants offer is blog and content writing. Many assistants have writing experience and so populating your blog, and writing guests posts is something that many will offer.
What about personal virtual assistants?
We all lead busy lives. Balancing work, family and social lives seem almost impossible at times. A personal virtual assistant can be the person you rely on to make appointments, remind you of important things coming up as well as do things like order your online shopping. Many professional people also engage a VA to remotely provide them with the professional support services that they need, such as making travel arrangements, making payments on their behalf and anything else they need for work and life to run smoothly.
How to hire a virtual assistant
There is no doubt that buying in the skills of a VA into your business or personal life is a great move if you get the right person. This is an intensely personal relationship and one in which you place a lot of trust. Thus, finding the right assistant is essential.
Step 1 – Decide on the tasks you want help with
The first thing you need to do is to decide what you want the VA to do.
Make a list of the all the admin type jobs that you do to keep your business running smoothly, including the ones that you don’t get chance to do and those that have fallen by the wayside.
In the next column, mark down the time you spend on each of these tasks. This will give you an idea of how many hours a week you would like to hire a VA. This is also important for the second step when looking at the budget.
Tip – Think of your business in terms of finance & accounting, social media and general admin tasks including who answers the phone and deals with the general inbox.
Step 2 – Consider your budget
Rates vary from one VA to the next and you may also find that hourly rates vary depending on the level of services that they offer too.
For example, we offer a bespoke telephone answering service for £15 per hour. For a more comprehensive service, we currently charge £25 an hour.
This means if you’ve worked out from step 1 that you need 10 hours support a week, that will be £250 or if you need 5 hours a month, that will be £125 a month.
By outsourcing admin support, you’ll be saving money on recruitment costs, inductions costs and so on.
VA services are often scalable too. With notice, they can offer you more support at a time when you need it most. And if you need to scale it back, you can do that too.
Tip – be realistic about the support that you need and the budget you have to get the services that you need.
Step 3 – Finding the perfect VA
With your task list drawn up and your budget decided on, you can now take the step of finding a VA. So, where should you look?
· Freelancer websites – many assistants are self-employed and will list their services on various websites. Take a look at People Per Hour and Upwork. On these sites, you can list your project and set the budget you are willing to pay. It works just the same as recruiting an assistant through a job site.
· Advertise on job sites – you can also advertise for a VA on job sites, such as Indeed. Be specific about the skills they must have to reduce the long list to make it easier to manage.
· Referrals – ask other business owners is they use VAs and who they would recommend. You could also look on LinkedIn, a platform for professionals to network remotely.
· Do an internet search – search online for virtual assistants or bookkeeper. You can specify an area if you feel that you want a VA to visit your office from time to time.
Tip – talk to at least two or three potential assistants before hiring someone. This is very much a personal decision and you need to be confident that you can work with the person and that they can offer you the flexibility you need.
Step 4 – Onboarding your virtual assistant
Just like any new member of staff, you’ll need to give your VA direction as to what you want them to do.
At Prontus, we work through this process systematically:
· Terms & conditions – we work through our terms and conditions, making sure that everything is clear about what we are going to do for you, the hours we will be working and so on.
· Confidentiality clause – always make sure that there is a confidentiality clause included as you need to be confident that your commercially-sensitive data and information is in safe, secure hands.
· Tools they need – depending on what they will be doing for you, you’ll need to make sure that the VA has the tools they need. This includes things like passwords for social media platforms or diverting phone lines. They’ll also need information about your business, what you do and the most common queries you get asked.
· Reporting back – you’ll also need to determine the best way of communicating with each other, especially when urgent messages come in.
Step 5 – Build your working relationship
There will be teething problems as you get used to working together. You must understand boundaries and be willing to modify the way that you work. This way, you get the best service and the one that you find saves you time, money and stress.
