Johannah Barton walks through hiring virtual assistants, starting with a Google Docs form that tests if people follow instructions. She looks for WordPress skills, trains people on Shopify, and builds team culture through transparency about benefits and size, including staff in the Philippines.
Chapters
Look, we. So one of the things that we found is that you. And it's just like anywhere, you can't possibly expect everything from an employee. So you can upskill, right? So the idea is to find, you know, the core skill that you're wanting and then develop them in other areas. Now with web design and development, it is a little bit easier because we want them to know how to use WordPress, but. But we actually found that we're getting a lot more e commerce clients, so we needed Shopify as well. So what we did do was we actually developed our own interview application form on Google Docs. So when we go to do an application, I kind of leave the description. It's kind of a broad description in the title of the job ad and then I have a link and I'm very clear in bold letters, do not email me. So if people email me, I actually reply back to them and say, I will be deleting this because you've not read the instructions. So one of the things that's really important for me is attention to detail. So if you can't read an instruction, you're not going to be any use to me whatsoever. So that's number one thing, is that make sure that they actually are reading it and following the instruction. We then take them off to a form that has a much more detail about who they are and also really clear about what they get. I have this perception sometimes that people think that you should be respectful of the fact that they want to know what they're getting, they want to know what the timeframes are. So you've got to manage people's expectations just like you would like it if you were going for a job interview. So we're really clear on the application about what benefits they get, why we love using them, how many staff we have in the Philippines. So they also know that they're going to be part of a team. They're not just one person isolated. And all of my team actually communicate with each other and they, you know, they've become friends. And I think that's fantastic, particularly in this environment where they're often working from home and they might feel a bit isolated. My team are so bonded that they sent me birthday flowers this year. Like they got together and used one of our clients to have flowers delivered to me. So I think that goes to show that the process we've created means it's meaningful and we've got a really nice team that we're building.
