Hiring a virtual assistant; it’s one of the smartest moves an entrepreneur can make. Without a skilled admin by your side, you’re stuck managing everything. You’ll spend time handling the finances, tracking calendars, answering every email, and so much more.
While managing those tasks yourself may be practical at first, as your business grows, it stops the pragmatic choice. You’re spending valuable minutes on activities that you should be delegating. That’s why hiring a virtual assistant is so crucial to your success.
How Hiring a Virtual Assistant Saves You Money and Time
While it’s easy to view hiring a virtual assistant as an expense, there’s almost always a positive ROI. You’ll have a skilled professional available who can manage calendars, respond to customer emails, coordinate with clients, handle data-entry tasks, or conduct research. They may also have special technical skills that will benefit your company.
Once you hire a virtual assistant, you have the ability to delegate those responsibilities into capable hands. Instead of focusing on daily tasks that aren’t driving growth or income, you can concentrate on your core operations. This allows you to accelerate the speed of your business.
Understanding Your Needs and Budget
Since virtual assistants can have a range of skill sets, you need to understand your needs before you hire. Usually, you want to begin by determining what kinds of support would benefit you the most.
Reflect on your typical day. Identify tasks that need handling but aren’t the best use of your time or expertise. Focus on necessities that aren’t a core part of your operations.
Once you do, you’ll have an idea of what you’d like a VA to handle.
From there, you should spend a moment examining your budget. In most cases, virtual assistants have hourly rates. Since you know what tasks you’d like them to handle, you can estimate the amount of time a day or week you need them available.
The cost of a virtual assistant can vary. At times, VAs that provide basic clerical support may charge $10 to $15 an hour. Those with specialized skills usually have higher rates, coming in at $30 per hour or more.
Screening Candidates When Hiring a Virtual Assistant
As with any employee, you want to interview every candidate when you want to hire a virtual assistant. This process ensures you select the best VA for the job. If you don’t know what to ask, here are some beneficial questions:
- What are your primary skills or areas of expertise?
- What are your preferred methods of communication?
- How do you prioritize your tasks?
- Can you tell me about your past experience as a VA?
- Are you familiar with my line of work? (industry-specific)
- What hours can you dedicate to my business?
- Do you work mornings, afternoons, or evenings?
- How are you with communicating with clients
- and so much more (need help determining how to create your questions? click here)
Why Technical Skills Matter When Hiring Virtual Assistants
When hiring a virtual assistant, it’s always important to review their technical skills. Since they are working remotely, they need to be able to navigate common technical issues with relative ease. Basic troubleshooting capabilities and familiarity with any software involved should be considered a must.
Nothing beats a failure but a try! To learn more about hiring a virtual assistant, I recommend Michael Hyatt’s book, “The Virtual Assistant Solution: Come up for Air, Offload the Work You Hate, and Focus on What You Do Best,” available on Amazon here. Or schedule a 30-minute discovery session and I’ll help you create an interview process for your Virtual Assistant search.
