3 Must Have Tips for Hiring a “Rock Star” Virtual Assistant – Everytime

Just as in life, hiring and meshing with the perfect virtual assistant won’t come easily. Personalities can will clash. Timezone differences can complicate schedules. Some VAs will make grandiose claims about their proficiency in “X” or “Y” skill only to flop when “put-up or shut-up” time comes.

There are plenty of variables that will get in your way, not including all the time that naturally needs to be spent in teaching your VA how your business runs, what you expect of them, and getting them accustomed to the task completion schedule you need them to adhere to.

My friend Jeff, who runs several home businesses he built from the ground up, had some of the worst experiences imaginable when he first started sourcing VAs.

Jeff used popular online marketing forums, and other sites where freelancers frequently offer their bargain-priced services to eager buyers, to source his VAs from:

• The first girl he hired messaged him on her first day claiming she was sick. The second day she didn’t come online until two hours past the agreed-upon time. The third day brought more unproductive nonsense. He fired her on day four.

• The second VA he hired was a highly-recommended chap with raving dozens of reviews extolling all the different tasks this “machine of an assistant” could perform. He was so sought after that you had to pay for a month of upfront services to get into this guy’s queue. Jeff never saw his money again, nor heard from the VA.

VA’s are supposed to take over the menial day-to-day administrative duties that take up your time and prevent you from working on those which are most important to your bottom line. Everyone’s experience varies; some get a winner or several winners right away, while others suffer through one disappointment after another.

Luckily, finding the right fit isn’t astrophysics. 24/7 Virtual Assistant, a provider of cost-effective administrative assistants and in-house managers, offers 3 great tips to avoid adding more “Jokers” to your team than the “Kings” and “Queens” you need to get the job done right and make more profits.

3 Tips to get a Rockstar VA Every Time

1. Wait until you’re absolutely ready.

Yes, you need to wait until YOU’RE ready to handle this new employee! Don’t assume they’re going to jump in wherever you put them and immediately start checking off one task after the other on the company to-do list. You need to train them and delegate tasks to them that they’re capable of finishing.

Most important, you need to be willing to delegate, which is a common stumbling block for micro-managers who know they need to push work onto others, but have trouble doing so because they feel only they can do the task properly.

2. Get your systems in place before you hire.

Create an entire system for hiring your VA:

• Start with how you’ll find prospects (ie., using a service, or via freelancer and classified sites).
• Move onto the interview and skill-testing process, make sure you know all the questions you want to ask them and how to be determine their eligibility for the job.
• Next, design a basic training process – this will need to be refined as you hire (and fire) your virtual assistants and learn what works and what doesn’t.
• Finally, design the working system you’ll use for each VA on your payroll: daily schedule, deadline requirements, reporting, followup, method of contact (ie., using Skype, email, virtual office, etc.)
• Make sure you also have a disciplinary process in place (ie., will you fire them at first sign of incompetence, or follow the 3 strikes and you’re out policy?)

3. Realize it’s a number’s game and you may not have the time to be a human resources’ manager.

The fact is that even when using the most popular VA services to source virtual assistants, you’re going to get a few duds here and there. How many duds you get will depend heavily on your interview and skill-testing process.

You can avoid being stuck in nasty predicaments caused by staff that isn’t working out by realizing that even when hiring offline office staff, as few as one in ten hires will actually work out. This is just a law of averages that exists in business. Even the best of the best on paper will end up being tardy, unskilled, unprofessional and downright useless.

Due to this reality, you really need to have a wealth of good team members on your side to make sure you’re not missing deadlines (yours or your clients) or being forced to put your important work on the back-burner to “assist” your assistants and/or do their work when they’re sick, late, fired, etc.

You could hire more individual VAs than you need, but this isn’t ideal if budget is a concern. The smart bet in this case is to find a reputable service, with a large pool of qualified VAs who can all do the type of work you need done. This is just one of the advantages of using a virtual assistant firm.

Services do all the recruiting, hiring, most of the training, and ultimately put themselves at your complete and utter disposal for whatever you need. When a VA becomes sick, gets into a car accident, or is sucked up into a tornado, it’s their job to make sure you’re not left empty-handed. It’s a win-win!

Follow the 3 tips above and you’ll enjoy a lot less hassles from your virtual assistants, and ultimately get a lot more work done with less of your valuable time required! After all, that’s the point, isn’t it!