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Looking to hire a Virtual Assistant?
Hiring virtual assistants and managing them can be really difficult to handle if you don’t establish clear guides and steps to follow for making the process run at its best.
Sure, they are cost-effective which is very convenient for your business, but, what is it that makes it tricky to handle?
Well, let’s see a few reasons:
a) You’re hiring people with different works habits
b) You’re hiring people you’ll have to manage from a distance
c) You’re hiring people you haven’t met face to face
See what I mean? But don’t worry, luckily for you, in this guide, we’ll be sharing with you 5 main practices to hire and manage your newly hired virtual assistant or virtual assistants team.
1) Do I need a virtual assistant?
In order for you to answer that question, we give some ideas on what key points to consider:
* Why do you need a virtual assistant?
You have specific tasks that you know someone could help you with, or, you have specific tasks that you know you shouldn’t be doing yourself so you can have more time to focus on your core business functions.
*Do I have the budget?
By analyzing your finances you’ll help yourself to have a clear scenario on how your costs and expenses are and see if you can incorporate hiring a virtual assistant on your annual budget. It’s better to do it that way in order for you to understand your business costs in general rather than just defining a budget every time you hire a virtual assistant.
*Where do I hire my virtual assistant from? Analyze the pros and cons to make the right decision
Here we provide just a few points to consider:
Pros – less expensive, flexible hours, you can hire them for a short amount of time if it’s just for a specific project.
Cons – different timezones, different cultural approaches, no quality of work.
After considering all of these points, you may be starting to realize why a Latino Virtual Assistant is the best option for you and what advantages a Latino Virtual Assistant has compared to other VAs from abroad.
2) What type of virtual assistant do I need?
This will be defined according to the type of tasks you want them to do. Here at Virtual Latinos, we can provide you with virtual assistants who perform many types of services.
* If you need help on tasks related to answering emails, booking trips or meetings, answering phone calls, inventories, placing orders, etc, then you’ll mostly need a General Virtual Assistant (Administrative/Executive Virtual Assistant, Customer Support virtual assistant).
* If you need help on tasks related to Digital Marketing, Video edition, Graphic Design, Sales, Real Estate, Property Management, etc, then you’ll need an Expert Virtual Assistant (Accountants/Bookkeepers, Community Managers, Digital Marketers, Content Creators (Bloggers, Copywriters), Traffickers,etc.)
3) Time to hire!
When you reach this point, this is the main question you have to ask to yourself now: Do I want to hire on my own and do all the work required to hire someone? or do I want someone else to do all the hiring process for me?
Well, that depends on many factors, but luckily for you, here at Virtual Latinos we got you covered and we offer you the two options to hire:
a) You do all the hiring process on your own by selecting and hiring the VAs from our Directory, or,
b) You can hire through our Virtual Latinos Agency and let us do all the process for you, helping you save a LOT of time with the guarantee of knowing you’ll get the best applicants for your business needs and goals.
4) Start working with your virtual assistant.
The following are the most important suggestions that we, as experts, consider are very important when starting to work with your new virtual assistant:
* Define tasks and provide training.
Now you have a new member of your team. You have to make sure they know why you hired them and what they need to do. For that, proper onboarding and training is the key. There you’ll fully explain your new VA about your project requirements, expectations, deadlines, tools you use daily for communication, time tracking, and task management among others.
* Organize / Document your Processes
In order to make things efficient, you must get used to the idea of creating documentation for your corresponding tasks’ procedures. This is done by creating SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures). SOPs gather all the information about the steps on each operation on your company that your new virtual assistant can have as a reference and part of his/her training. SOPs will help you ensure that if you or anyone in your company isn’t able to work, the company can still run as instructions are already built there for people to take over and also avoid miscommunications and failure to comply with determined procedures.
* Set up daily check-ins and a constant schedule for meetings with your virtual assistant.
This is a great tip that will make you keep your VA really in constant communication with you and from there, build, and achieve confidence and a strong work environment.
If you let your new virtual assistants know, from the beginning, that they have to communicate, then you’ll have a huge percentage of achieving a successful work routine. Our suggestion for daily communication is using an Instant Messaging tool such as Telegram or Whatsapp. In that way, you can establish that your VA checks with you when they start and when they finish their working hours and also give a brief summary of their daily progress.
Now, regarding the scheduling of meetings, we highly suggest to do them every two weeks, where you can catch up, talk about goals, strategies and also provide feedback for both of you on how you can improve. By doing this periodically, you’ll get to know your virtual assistant a lot better, both of you will get more comfortable working with each other and understanding the way you work better.
5) Make them feel valued and supported.
Besides letting your new virtual assistant know about your business, it’s time to also build trust, camaraderie, try to include them in your company’s culture just like your regular employees.
Show them that you care about their professional growth too by giving them quality projects, providing all the resources for them to perform at their best. Make payments on time. Be a trustworthy leader. Do constant follow-ups on their work so that they feel you care about how they’re doing and if you are being communicative and clear enough with what you want them to do.
Once you have done all of this, be sure that your virtual assistant will be working happy and will be willing to keep working with you and create a longterm lasting work relationship that will definitely benefit you both.
Conclusion
I know what you might be thinking right now, it might seem like a challenge to hire a virtual assistant in the beginning, right? especially if you haven’t done it before, but don’t worry, by achieving all of what we have suggested here, be sure you are all set and ready to feel confident in doing a good job on hiring and managing a virtual assistant. Just remember, everything starts with you:
- Asking yourself, why do you need a virtual assistant? What are the key points to consider before hiring one?
- After defining your budget for affording a virtual assistant, now you must know what type of virtual assistant you need. Remember to consider the tasks you want them to do for you.
- Ok, you know what type of virtual assistant you’ll need, it’s time to hire!
- You have hired your new VA, good! Now, it’s time to start working with them. Which first steps will help you start in a successful way?
- Finally, now it’s time to know the person behind the desk, understand their needs, make them part of your company’s culture, make them feel included.
I, as the Customer / VA Success Manager here at Virtual Latinos, really see closely how everything that we’ve shared here has actually built successful work bonds while working virtually. Part of my job is to make sure you and your new VA work on this, together, make this a really growing and satisfying experience for you both. So, find out why choosing us is the best decision you can make for hiring a virtual assistant today!
