Virtual Assistants: What they do & how to hire them in 2022

Being productive doesn’t mean doing more things – it’s about doing the right stuff. Small business owners are more likely to be overwhelmed by their growing workload – it could be scrambling to provide your clients with the best possible experience or it could be just trying to keep up with your administrative checklist. You could tell yourself that you cannot afford a full-time employee or go through the whole recruiting/onboarding process so you burden yourself with these tasks which are stressful and wreck your productivity. Think about these questions before you move on further towards hiring a virtual assistant: –

• What do you enjoy doing/are you good at? What takes up most of your time? Where do you need help?
• What would you like to do if you weren’t buried under routine tasks that don’t require your complete attention? What would you like to do to advance your business if you didn’t feel so overwhelmed?

We believe that it is high time we start accepting that we are human and that the ways we are set in limit our potential for current and future success. With a little help and guidance, a virtual assistant can eliminate your need to get consumed in tasks that are routine and don’t require your entire focus, so you can focus on what you do best.

What can a virtual assistant do for you?

• Administrative Tasks – Screen your emails, manage your calendar, take meeting minutes and schedule your appointments.
• Content Creation and Lead Generation – create content using techniques like search engine optimization (SEO) and generating leads through tools such as email marketing, lead magnets, freebies, etc.
• Social Media Management – creating content to share on social media, scheduling and executing social media campaigns, engaging with your audience and analyzing statistical data to incorporate it into future campaigns.
• Sales and Customer Service – dedicated and trained sales and customer service representatives help you service existing accounts, resolve customer complaints, and establish new accounts.

These are just a few of the tasks a virtual assistant can undertake. With specific instructions and a job description, your VA will be a specialist, helping you realise the full potential of your business.

Why a VA beats a traditional employee?

The problem isn’t the need to collaborate in a physical space, but rather the change in perspective. In today’s world, the need for a person to be physically present in the workplace is diminishing – with growing digitisation around the globe and changes in urban mobility, the advantages of hiring a virtual assistant outweigh those of hiring a traditional employee: –

• Hiring a conventional employee comes with overheads, covering or subsidizing expenses such as healthcare, insurance, professional development, etc – costing you over 35-40% on top of their base pay (Underground Recruiter, 2021).
• You’ll have to provide a traditional employee with a dedicated workspace/office and all the relevant equipment, adding to your already rising costs – compounding a total cost that creates unnecessary financial strain on your growing business.
• When hiring VAs, you have access to a massive talent pool with specialists from all over the world – increasing your possibilities of hiring suitable virtual assistance.
• Most VAs have more than one area of expertise and upgrade their skills and grow their knowledge on their own time to become more competitive – saving you the cost of training employees for more than one specialised task.
• Lastly, in-person employees are highly difficult to replace – you’ll suffer financial losses from the lost productivity during the turnover period and further from recruiting expenses. In addition to this, training and helping your new employee assimilate into their new environment can be time-consuming and will strain your company’s productivity and profitability.

How to hire a virtual assistant?

The key to hiring a reliable virtual assistant is to have a systemised recruitment process in place that can help process, schedule and interview a huge pool of candidates from different parts of the world. At this point, you must be thinking about how you’ll never be able to have some face-to-face interactions with them and as with most remote workers, there’s always an element of risk associated with them.

The first place you could look for a virtual assistant is through freelance marketplaces. What are freelance marketplaces? Think of it as the transfer window before the football season begins – but without all that hype. In this scenario, the most you could do is put up an advertisement and sit back – you’ll have a bunch of prospects and you can select the one that appeals to you.

Considering the lack of controls you have when it comes to working with freelancers, you should consider offshore recruitment companies like Team Virtual – taking the burden off your shoulders and providing you with suitable virtual assistant services. From recruitment to onboarding, support, management and billing, your offshore recruitment firm covers it all – all while staying agile and cost-effective. If you are an agency based in the UK looking to hire your first virtual assistant, click this link to book a short discovery call with a Team Virtual representative – leverage growth on your own terms today.