Tips for Hiring a Virtual Assistant for Business

Virtual personal assistants are the professionals to whom one confides in the services that build and concertizes the name of the business in the world. The concept of remote hiring a virtual assistant is difficult but it is a strategic decision that reduces cost, increases productivity and improves quality and flexibility of business.

Here are a few tips managing the hiring of virtual personal assistants for business.

Identifying tasks for outsourcing:

There is a hike on the need for Virtual Personal Assistant among people with varied skills in the industry. Those days of its confinement only to secretarial work are over. These now take care of every kind of work. That is the reason, the tasks that are to be outsourced should be determined at first. One should be particular about the qualifications and specializations of each and every applicant so that it is easy to find someone who just all the requirements.

For instance, if there is a need for a Virtual Personal Assistant to take care of accounting, one should make a list of the qualities, like this:

• Knows about bookkeeping

• Acquainted worth payroll

• Can prepare financial statements

• Can prepare invoices

• Can prepare disbursement schedules

When one gains confidence over a virtual personal assistant, that person can take the risk to look for a second one.

Creating a list of skills:

After getting hold of the type of an assistant required for the particular business, one can try to make a list of skills that one wishes to see in a personal assistant. The skills can be classified mainly into two categories:

1. Hard skills, that basically relate to the requirements of the job. According to the example mentioned above, the apt skills for a virtual personal assistant handling accounts would be as follows:

• Proficiency in the spreadsheet is a must

• A master in accounting software like QuickBooks

• Knows financial analysis

• Has excellent typing skills

2. Soft skills are those attributes that reflects one’s approach towards works and what kind of attitude one shows towards work. The common soft skills that are sought in an assistant are the quality of leadership, analytical, punctuality, meticulous and organized.

Stages of the selection process:

Improving the opportunity to get the best virtual personal assistants requires one to qualify at every stage if the selection process:

Stage 1: Talent acquisition:

Creating job posts that have specific instructions gave in either the middle or at the very end of the writing. Best are those assistants who read all of the instructions in detail to avoid any mistake and follow them accordingly.

Stage 2: conduct absolute diligence:

• Review all of the shirt listed applicants for due diligence.

• Check their online profiles to identify any irregularities.

• Do a google search about them to pick any unsavory information.

• Take a good notice of the reference links provided.

Stage 3: the primary interview:

Each and every candidate passing both the first and second stages must be scheduled for an interview. The interview must be an audio-visual one containing some questions that pertain to the job, which could be recorded.

Another step indulging a paid test can be set up, which should be not more than 2 hours.

Following 80-20 rule:

Avoid hiring only on the basis of technical qualities. What the 80-20 rule advises, is to hire a candidate on the basis of 80% of personality and 20% of qualifications. This will help to mold the candidate accordingly to achieve maximum.

However, the primary premise of every management is a trustworthy relationship between the client and the service provider. This definitely helps to gain success at every step.