When you started your business, you had dreams of this stress-free life and making money hand over fist. But these days, your business is sucking your happiness dry. Well, it’s time to make some changes to alleviate your stress. One way to free up some of your time is to hire a virtual assistant (VA) to take over some of the daily or weekly administrative tasks needed to run your business.
Hiring a VA can undoubtedly be stressful, especially if you have never been through the hiring process before. But no worries, here are a few things to make it easier to find the right VA for your business.
What Tasks Will Your VA Handle?
Before you even start the hiring process, decide the tasks you want a virtual assistant to complete. This list of functions will determine the skillset you need to find, the price point of the VA you need to hire (more experienced = more money).
To create your list of tasks, start with the functions you despise, and always put off. There is a reason you are putting these items off, so they might be the tasks you need to outsource first.
Other functions you should consider are those that are not direct money makers. For example, answering endless emails doesn’t make you money, but meeting with a client does. Another example would be making appointments for free consultations when you could take that time to write an email series to your list with a relevant paid offer for your subscribers to purchase.
Once you know what your VA needs to be able to do, be picky when hiring someone. Is an administrative VA required to handle your email responses and manage your client calendar? Or do you need someone who has solid writing skills to handle your blog and email marketing? These tasks require different skills and will cost different amounts.
It may be obvious, but it bears saying. If you want to outsource billing and bookkeeping functions, hire a certified bookkeeper instead of a general virtual assistant. You should always be picky when hiring someone but primarily when they deal with your money.
Where to Find a Virtual Assistant
Finding a Virtual Assistant can start with a simple Google search. You will get thousands of results, so you will need to refine your search to find the right one to fit your business needs (i.e., administrative VA, local bookkeepers, or freelance writers). If you prefer to hire someone local to work in your office, include your location in the search.
Also, think about reaching out to your business associates. Can they recommend any VAs that they’ve used in the past? Are there any VAs among your social media followers who is looking for work? If not, ask if they can recommend someone else. Just like any industry, VAs often network with each other.
Go with Your Gut
You can ask hundreds of interview questions, and your candidate may give the perfect answers to each one, but if anything in your conversation gives you pause, follow that instinct and move on to the next candidate. DO NOT hire the first person you interview; trust the interview process, and compare each candidate’s answers.
- Who do you feel would best represent your business?
- How dedicated do they sound?
- Is there anything about their experience that makes you question their abilities?
- Don’t ignore that gut instinct.
Finding the right candidate will make your road to business happiness more enjoyable.
