Hiring virtual assistants can be challenging. From determining where to find great talent to the strange experience of hiring and training fully online, I have seen many people fail at leveraging help from a VA.
Here are a few processes that I have developed over the years to get better employees for longer periods.
No Unicorns 🦄
Stop thinking that you can hire one VA to solve all of your problems. There is no single person who is going to help with your bookkeeping, social media graphics, google ad account, and video editing. DO NOT EXIST.
Break down all of the tasks you need to complete and filter them into categories:
Administrative - calendar and email management, research, contacting customer service at the airline who owes you a credit (yes, this one is personal)
Creative - copywriting, graphics, web design
Strategic - marketing and business planning, event coordination, business development
Finance - bookkeeping, accounting, invoicing (can sometimes be blended with administrative)
Anyone you hire is likely only able to help with one of these categories. Stop thinking you can have one person to do it all.
Yes and No Descriptions
There is an incredibly large pool of talent across the world. Luckily the internet allows us to tap into the best people for the job (for most businesses). But with that large pool comes a lot of people who want to apply for your position. This is especially true if you are hiring overseas.
Be very specific about what you need. I like to include the title, my business category, role breakdown, much haves, nice to haves, not a good fit lists. See my example here for my last hire.
An Application and Test
Sometimes a job post gets a LOT of attention and filtering through 100s of applicants can be a nightmare. You can spend weeks reviewing a ton of people who do not fit the criteria you desire. Not how I want to spend my time.
Use a 10-12 question application that drills down into the specifics of their experience and shows they are willing to put in some work to be noticed. We have a 36% application submission rate which means that a huge number of people are not willing to take a 10-minute step towards a future job opportunity. BYEEEE.
Protip: add some little easter egg in the description to test attention to detail. See my job description above with the little duck emoji. Less than 20% of total applicants follow that simple instruction.
Then, if they seem qualified...
I give them a test. Something that can be completed within 15 minutes but will test their actual skillset.
You can find these tests online to fit your type of job placement or use something that you already have inside your business.
For my recent hire of a media buyer, I asked every candidate to view one of my websites and record a 5-minute video explaining how they would market the business using Google Ads. It was very clear from that 5 minutes who was qualified for the role.
Hope that helps focus your efforts on your next hire. I may put out a video course on this topic eventually. Let me know if you would be interested.
Mike
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