Ten Tips for Hiring a Virtual Assistant

I’ve been a reader of Freelance Parent for quite some time and I can’t tell you how pleased I was to start working as a virtual assistant for Tamara and Lorna late last year. I started my virtual assistant business, Halo Secretarial Services, just last year after having my third baby and Freelance Parent has been inspiring to me, especially the video about their first year in business. And now to be asked to write a guest post for a blog I so enjoy is incredibly rewarding! I hope that you will enjoy my tips for hiring a virtual assistant!

Ten Tips for Hiring a Virtual Assistant

1. Understand what a virtual assistant truly is. A virtual assistant is a small business owner who provides administrative services to help other small business owners, entrepreneurs and freelancers grow their businesses. We are independent contractors, not employees, and we use technology to do our work remotely, regardless of the physical location of our clients.
2. Virtual assistants offer a HUGE variety of services to their clients, so think hard about what special skills you might benefit from in a virtual assistant. You may need a generalist virtual assistant or you may appreciate someone with specialized knowledge in your specific industry.
3. To decide what tasks you want to have your virtual assistant help you with try this: make a list of the things you do each week. Now separate that list into three parts, the things you love to do, the things you dislike but that are essential and the things that you need to eliminate. Anything that is essential but that you dislike doing has great potential for being assigned to a virtual assistant.
4. Decide how much you want to spend. Be realistic. You may have heard about $3/hr virtual assistants, but like so many things in life, you get what you pay for. The average rate for a high quality virtual assistant is likely to be from $20 to $50 per hour, and rates can be higher for highly specialized VA’s. You can likely treat your virtual assistant’s pay as an expense for your business, but check with your accountant to be sure.
5. The best way to find a virtual assistant to work with you is by referral, but other good options are by searching on Twitter or posting an rfp on sites like VAnetworking or IVAA.
6. Be aware of the affect of working in different time zones. Do you need a virtual assistant in your time zone or perhaps one who works the opposite of your hours to insure quick turnaround of projects?
7. If you are hesitant to hand over a lot of your administrative work at once, start slowly and build up to utilizing a virtual assistant to optimum benefit. You could start by using a virtual assistant for a couple of hours a week and build up to using them for 10 or 15 hours per week (or more!)
8. Be sure to be clear on billing procedures such as methods of payments and how often you will be invoiced and how long you have to pay.
9. Get a contract. A contract will outline the terms of your arrangement and protect both parties.
10. The MOST important tip!! Communicate often and clearly. Follow up phone calls with emails to confirm details and do regular status checks on projects. Online relationships do have a greater margin of error for miscommunication since tone is so hard to interpret in an email or instant message. And if you feel everything is going really well take a minute to send your VA a note saying how happy you are with the current arrangements. She’ll appreciate knowing that she’s on the right track!

Laurie Mapp is a mother of three boys who runs her virtual assistant business from her home in Alberta, Canada. Check out her business blog for more information about her business or her mom blog for more about being a work at home mom.