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How to go About Hiring a Virtual Assistant for the First Time

 

Just hired your first virtual assistant? Or maybe you have a virtual assistant struggling to get to do the tasks you want to do correctly. I will share seven tips on managing and building a great working relationship with your virtual assistant to be more effective and get a higher ROI from your VA.

 

The virtual assistant that you hire should have the expertise you desire to carry out the tasks or projects your hired them for; however, there is some misunderstanding or assumption that virtual assistants should know what to do when they get hired by you. There is a difference between having the skillset to do a job and training your virtual assistant to better understand the processes or workflow at your company. When you hire your virtual assistant, start building a library of playbooks in terms of SOP for new VA?s to be onboarded with and some general understandings of how to build stronger virtual assistant relationships for long-term retention. It took me some time to create a system and to hire a virtual assistant. It has saved me at least 5 hours every week to give me some peace of mind to work on my business and take more coaching clients.



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Let?s dive into the tips to save you time and ease your mind when you are ready to hire your first virtual assistant.

 

1.     When hiring your virtual assistants, you should always tell them the why and the how


I encourage you to get used to recording everything with a screen recorder. This is your first step in created your SOPs and VA training guide for any virtual assistant you onboard. The bottom line is that if you do not show somebody how to do something the way you like it to be done, then you should not expect them to do it for you the way that you like. It is always important for you to clearly explain why this is important to your overall business or whatever process you are having them help you out with. This plays a great part in your leadership in your business. I learned working in corporate America that great leaders help their staff members understand their why and place or role in its overall picture. Your virtual assistants are no different because they become part of the team. Therefore, making it crystal clear as to why the particular task or project is important to you and your company, as well as your overall process.

 

These are some of the recording tools you can use.

 

 

When you are recording, you want to make sure that you do the action that you are asking your virtual assistant to help you out at least three times; this will help them familiarize themselves with the different variations of the tasks that you are asking them to do and make sure that you are covering the all of tasks so that you can limit the number of back and forth questions that both of you go through before they are up and running. The easiest way that I can explain the importance of this active recording is I want you to imagine that you own a clothing store and the position had 5 core jobs, unpacking new merchandise, reconciling to ensure you have all the items on the invoice from the warehouse, applying/scanning the price tags to the appropriate items, folding them & stocking them on shelves and/or hanging them on the racks. If one person was assigned to this position to follow through with all these tasks and wanted everything to run smoothly and efficiently, you would have to train the person in the exact process. So, you would have to have written instructions or have someone who knows the process or simply record videos as to what the best practices are for each step in the process. I encourage doing this for a task or project that you know that someone would need training. If you are particular in a way you like the task done, record it, so your virtual assistant has a visual and auditory method of learning the tasks you are trying to teach them.

 

2. Convert everything you recorded into text instruction

 

Using that store analogy I mentioned earlier, outline what those steps would be for unpacking, reconciling, applying/scanning the price, folding, and stocking shelves or racks. If you ever brought anything from WayFair.com, you have to assemble the items yourself, and they have the steps of instruction for you to assemble your items (e.g., table, cabinets, etc.). To save you time on ascribing your video instruction or planning out from scratch, here are some online transcribing tools that are lifesavers: rev.com or otter.ai have free plans to upload your videos and get them to transcribe. Another alternative is using voice typing in your google docs and playing the video in the background on your computer. Either one you use, it will require a little tweaking and formatting. This is important because it addresses the virtual assistants that may not necessarily be visual learners.

 

3. Build up to your true task. Start with mini-actions for practice, and then scale up

 

Building up your virtual assistant's confidence essentially prepared them for the upcoming task and their success. When assigning your VA for a task, it is encouraged not to give a big task to the VA all at once. For example, using the clothing store example, you would not want to run through A ? Z in day or week and say, alright, go ahead to show me what you learn. You are kind of setting them up for failure. My motto is giving things in bite sizes so that they can benefit both of you. You can see how one process went well a few times and see how your instruction when well. This allows your VA to get immediate feedback from the task or project they were assigned to. It lets them not only try your instructions out but also figure out whether or not you potentially left something off the instructions that could be helpful for their success. It lowers the risk that they mess something up, like doing all the core jobs for the position at the clothing store. Additionally, it keeps an open line of communication.

This is important when building a relationship, a real working relationship with your virtual assistant. If you can give more effective instructions each time, it saves both of you guys some time and makes it so that both can accomplish more.

 

4. Always give a due date when you want something completed

 

For your VA's success, always give a due date for when you would like the tasks or project done. Virtual assistants are not employees; they are business owners just like you and have other clients with tasks and projects. This will help them prioritize your work. This is where you need to give your virtual assistants more work to be clear on the time and date you want that work done. There are VA?s worldwide, and if you do not have any preference on where your VA lives, be specific all the way down to the time zone because many business owners hire people from the Philippines, Jamaica, and Malaysia a few.

 

5. Treat your virtual assistants with respect

 

Make sure that you show them that you care and check in with them from time to time. Although the virtual assistants should be checking on you, it helps build a good relationship. Virtual assistants are people too. It is a business, but they have feelings, and they want to provide a great service as you position them in a way to do that. If you have a 6-month contract, a couple of times in between the contract, let them know how they are helping you tremendously and how you are scaling in your business. This is a good testimonial for their business. Loyalty pays measurably. I have a team member who has been with me for about 3 years. She started out just posting to my social media and now has taken over my social media graphics and content because she knows me so well. Sometimes I can be thinking of something, and all of a sudden, BANG, it is right on my social media. It reflects how in sync we are and how well we communicate with one another. There are a ton of ways that you can show a virtual assistant that you care. You can give unexpected bonuses for outstanding work. Send a cordial holiday message when there are major holidays that come up. Whatever it is, just by taking the extra step in showing that you actually are thinking of them and caring about them can go a long way in the long-term retention of your virtual assistant team. Tell me in the comments of ideas you might have to help show your virtual assistants that you care, or tell me something you have already done in the past positively received.

 

6. Your virtual assistant should provide you with an end-of-day report or weekly report

 

This can be as simple as asking your virtual assistant to create a three-column spreadsheet with a date, hours worked, and a summary of the work. People sometimes mistrust not being able to necessarily see what their VA is doing all the time. And so, what this spreadsheet does is keeps a log of accountability for the virtual assistant to help you understand how they are pacing. For my virtual assistants, because I have an agency, the date, name of the client, work completed, and how many hours they worked on the task or project helps me give our clients peace of mind. It is also for you to have an understanding of how your workflows are working out with them. Virtual Assistants usually provide you with the report; they can easily run a report off of the CRM they are working out for their clients. If you do not receive one, ask for one.

 

7. Have your virtual assistant maintain your SOP every quarter

 

It is a great practice to do some housecleaning in your business and look at how effective your instructions are after some time. The reason is that your SOP will have changed over time, things in your business will improve. Therefore, you want to make sure that everything is up to date. The easiest way to do this is to build a master document that details every single task that has ever been given to a virtual assistant. Ask your virtual assistant to insert a table of contents to match the major headers of tasks. If you need to hire more help as you grow, all your content is refreshed for the new person to be onboarded and given the relevant portion of the Master SOP document. Having an SOP in your business helps run the business effectively. It effectively removes you from all of these processes that you are outlining for your virtual assistant. If your SOP is straightforward and down to the T in terms of accuracy, then you know that you will consistently get the same level of output, regardless of which virtual assistant you task onto that particular task. My project manager consistently keeps track of what goes on at my VA agency and provides feedback to add to the master SOP document. This makes it so that I can take in the VAs and my project manager's feedback and improve our processes together. It is important in terms of instructions for my current VA's and my future VA's. This is how you evolve and grow your virtual assistant team over time. By having clear processes outlined, it becomes way easier to onboard new VAs.


Here are the help desk articles: Describing how specifically to import into any of the project management systems listed below. Some offer up a ?template? for you to fill out, and explain in detail how importing works/task procedures. Feel free to do it this way, or just build it from scratch on your Project Management System.



 Recommendations from the Tools I use are:


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Teekwa Scarborough 

Business Christian Coach 


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