How Do I Hire A Virtual Assistant - Practical Advice

How do I hire a virtual assistant? So one of the most common questions I get is, hey, John, how do I hire a virtual assistant? So here are five steps that you can take when you hire your first virtual assistant. And obviously there's more detail in all of these than I can go through here. I'll give you more information on that in a little bit. Step number one, define the role, who you're going to hire. So often people will be like, oh, I need a virtual assistant. Well, what do you want them to do? Oh, I want them to write some content for me and build me a website and do video editing and do social media and like that. That doesn't work. That's not a role. That's just everything that goes on in your business. So the first thing to do is define a role, a specific role of something that this person's going to do for you. Now, for me, what I recommend people do is find something that you know how to do that you can teach someone else how to do and define the role based on that. You're going to hire someone to do social media marketing for you because that's something that you're currently doing and you know how to do it. You know how to teach someone else to do it and you're going to have them do it for you and you can help them with it. So that's step number one, define the role of who you're going to hire. Step number two, search profiles in OnlineJobs ph. To find salary and skill information. So once you've defined your role social media marketer, you're going to go onto OnlineJobs ph, which is the biggest database of Filipino workers that you can find. So you go on onlinejobs ph, you're going to search social media marketer and you're going to start looking at the profiles of all the workers who have that skill. And as you do this, you're going to pay attention to a couple things. Number one, you're going to pay attention to like, what are the skills that I get in this? What are the skill sets of people who know how to do social media marketing? Do they also know SEO? Do some of them know paid marketing? Do they have the ability to write content? So you're going to look and see like, oh man, I can find someone who can also do some graphic design and who can do social media marketing for me. Great. Like, then you're going to get an idea of like, okay, these are the skills around this. The second thing you're looking for is Salary, you're going to find salary data from like $400 a month for full time work to like $2,000 a month for full time work. So what should you pay? Well, it should probably be somewhere in that range and you're going to get an idea as you do this. Like, oh, for this set of skills and for this level of expertise, I'm going to pay this much. For this set of skills and for this level of expertise, I'm going to pay this much. So as you browse these profiles and you're going to look at like 20 profiles, this will take you like 10 minutes. You're going to search social media marketer, you're going to start looking at them, how much do they want to make, what skills they have? Go back to the search results, look at another one, look at another one, look at another one, and figure out an approximation of salary and skills that you can look for. Step number three, so you know the role that you're going to hire for and you have an approximation of the skills that you can find and the salary you're going to pay. The next is to follow a recruiting process. One of the things that I've noticed as I've interviewed dozens and dozens of successful people hiring virtual assistants in the Philippines is that every one of them has either created a recruiting process or they're following someone else's recruiting process. So regardless of what you do, don't just go and hire the first person you find. It almost never works out that way. And this is why a lot of people say, oh, you have to go through a lot of VA's, a lot of bad ones to find a good one. And that's not true. All you have to do is find and follow a good recruiting process or create your own good recruiting process. My recruiting process is about 80% effective, which is pretty dang high. It's also available for you at 1vaoa.com. There's my 1va away challenge where you are 1va away from getting so much back in your life. So 1vaoa.com I will go through the entire recruiting process that I go through when I recruit a va. So step number three is follow a recruiting process. Step number four is negotiate your terms like you should be negotiating how much you're going to pay them and the hours that they're going to work and how many hours per week they're going to work and paid time off and holidays and all these things that come with a normal employee. You should negotiate those things with your virtual worker also. So that's step number four is negotiate. Once you've found like you've narrowed it down to like the last two or three people, you're going to now negotiate all that stuff. And then step number five for hiring your first virtual assistant is to give them their first task. And in giving their first task, it's important that you do a couple things. Number one, you set an expectation. They're going to daily report to you daily. Number two, you're going to set an expectation that when they get stuck on something, they're going to come to you with their problem so you can help them solve it. Number three, you're going to give them training. So I know that you don't want to train the person you're going to hire, but think about this. The first person I ever hired I hired in 2005. So it's been a lot of years. That person still works for me today. So the training that I gave them in 2005 is still paying off for me so many years later. The first thing you'll do is realize I got to train this person. And that's okay, because as soon as you train this person, and especially if you followed step number one, which is to figure out something that you know how to do that you can teach someone else to do, you're going to give them training and that thing's going to be off of your plate forever. I've never done the first thing that I taught him how to do again because he's done it for the last years. So when you give them their first task, you're going to set an expectation of daily reporting. You're going to set up, set an expectation of they're going to come to you when they have a problem and you're going to set an expectation that you're willing to help them succeed in their job. If you'll do these three things along with the other four steps of this, of how to hire your first va, you're so much more likely to have success with this. My name is John Jonas and I created onlinejobs Ph. I also recently wrote a book about how I've done this over the years. I started doing this, I hired my first person in 2005 and I've had a lot of experience since then. I have 26 full time people in the Philippines that work for me now. And my book titled the Outsourcing Lever is all about how I leverage other people, other people's time, specifically people in the Philippines, so that I can build my business and work less at the same time. I've worked about 17 hours a week since 2008 and I want to teach you how to do the same thing. My book is free. It's available@outroundinglever.com I've already bought a whole bunch of copies of it. I want to send it to you. I just need you to pay the shipping cost. So you'll just pay shipping. It's a small shipping fee and you'll get it for free. Go get it and then hire your first virtual assistant. It is so good. Your life will never be the same.