What To Look For When Hiring Virtual Assistants

Looking for a Virtual Assistant or a Virtual Team? Any online search will net a near-endless list of freelancers, independent contractors and Virtual Assistant companies and agencies. They can provide a variety of services at various levels of expertise and scales. So when you’re hiring Virtual Assistants, you have to sift through these choices, parse them and find the one that best suits your needs. This can be a daunting task, but based on our experience as a provider of Virtual Assistant services, we made this list of tips to make hiring Virtual Assistants an easier process.

What Your Business Needs

What products or services does your company offer to its customer base? Got new plans for your enterprise in the near future? How can your prospective Virtual Assistant contribute to these? Are you looking to shape up your company’s finances and accounting as you prepare to scale up your services? In that case, you’ll need a bookkeeper. Planning on improving customer service? Or lead generation? Have your VA handle calls. Do you want someone who can handle secretarial tasks for you? Go for an Executive Assistant VA. Going more technical? For website development, Search Engine Optimization, content from blog posts to images and videos, or social media posts, specialized Virtual Assistants can handle these too. Website Virtual Assistants, social media marketing specialists, content writers, graphics design VAs and more. Need an entire crew for a larger project, including a mix of generalists or specialists? If so, why settle for a single Virtual Assistant when you can hire an entire Virtual Team with an ensemble cast of VAs? Determine what your business needs first, and then you’ll have a better idea of what kind Virtual Assistant you should hire.

Virtual Assistants’ Qualifications

A Virtual Assistant, whether their an individual freelancer or from a company or agency, is someone you’ll work with, a business partner. So are you willing to let your company partner with just any person? No, you have to vet them first to make sure it will be beneficial to your company. After all, your business deserves a partner who will meet their responsibilities satisfactorily so that, in turn, your business will achieve its goals. In short, when hiring Virtual Assistants, check if they have what it takes, how long have they been in the field and what their competencies are. Look for:

Portfolios

Their prior projects, and the services they or the company/agency has provided their clients. Go beyond their company website, check out their clients’ sites and content as well. See how well their clients’ businesses are doing as well.

Reviews and Testimonials

Look for customer reviews on their site. Of course, they’ll select the most glowing ones. Maybe you can reach out to those reviewers and see if they’re actually real people with real businesses, and if they’ll really affirm their statements. You can even ask them specific details about what it was like to work with the Virtual Assistants you are thinking of hiring. Likewise, check for other sources of reviews. Sites like Yelp or Expertise have business owners sharing their experiences, often in a frank way.

At the End of the Day

Hiring Virtual Assistants is no small thing. It’s a big decision, so you have to be sure you’re making the right choice. You can’t afford to squander time, money and effort on service providers who might not measure up, as this will only result in protracted projects that might become money sinks. And you want the Real Deal so that your business’ goals will be met promptly and effectively, and start generating the returns you’re looking for. Your business, whether it’s a lean startup, an SME or a larger company, has so much to gain by hiring Virtual Assistants who can deliver the goods. High caliber VAs have so much to offer in terms of expertise, skills as well as cost-effectiveness – it’s an opportunity you can’t afford to miss. So, thinking of hiring Virtual Assistants? Virtual BizNest’s team of VAs have a proven track record. Just look at our client testimonials, they speak for themselves. Feel free to contact us for more information on how our team can help your business.