How To Hire A Virtual Assistant?

 Hiring a virtual assistant is the best thing that I did for my life and for my business. 

I didn’t even know all of what I was doing until I hired a virtual assistant. But I have to say this was not an easy journey. 

This was not an easy journey because I was so used to doing everything the way that I was doing it.

Not to mention, I was like, “How in the world do I hire? How do I pay for one and all the things” 

So I talked about how hiring a virtual assistant changed my entire life. But the first part of this article is gonna talk about how difficult it was to even get to the process.

When you have always had a job your entire life, all you know how to do is have a job.

You have no idea how to hire a person, how to find people, and then in your mind, you’re thinking about the salary that you’ve always been paid or whatever.

And you’re just like, “How in the world am I ever gonna afford to hire somebody part-time or full-time to help me when I don’t even know what I’m doing or whatever”

And so honestly, it took me a really long time before I ever hired my first virtual assistant. 

I didn’t hire my first person to assist me until the end of 2021. And I’ve been doing this for way too long that I care to admit.

Just being honest. 

But I’m glad that I did. 

And so, here is how, I wanna give you all the steps on how to hire your first virtual assistant. 

So the first thing you have to do is you have to determine, who are you hiring and why are you hiring them?

So are you hiring them to be a generalist virtual assistant, or do you want them to be your executive assistant? 

Your right, left hand. It’s like they’re in everything with you, on all the things, or you just give them tasks to do.

And the reason is because like when you are writing your job description and you’re thinking about the salary and all those things, you have to think about, “What is it I’m really trying to get this person to do?” 

And how much are you gonna be paying them?

Okay. You may be saying to yourself, “Well, I don’t know!”.

So when I talked to a friend of mine a year ago, he had shared with me, he said, “Well, the first thing you have to do is determine what exactly do you want them to do? What do you need them to do?”

And I was like, “Well, I don’t really know”

And he said, “First thing I want you to do is make a list of all the things that you don’t do, do not like to do in your business.”

And I was like, “Isn’t it kind of mean?”

He said, “No, if you make a list of the things you don’t like to do, and then you create a job description around it, once you actually post that job on job boards, people are responding to that position because they like doing that stuff.

They have experience with that stuff, and they don’t feel like it’s you taking advantage of them or whatever, because they responded to the job posting.”

And so I said, “Well, I guess that makes sense.”

So I started making a list of all the things that I do.

First I made it. All that I do. And then I started just doing like checks by all the things that I just do not enjoy doing.

There were a lot of checks.

So as I was doing those checks, I said, Okay, so now it is important for me to go, like, now I’ve gotta write a job description for a virtual assistant.

I have never written a job description before. 

So I went to Dr. Google.

 And I was just, “job description for executive assistant executive virtual assistant.”

And so then I started reading a lot of the different people’s, like job descriptions they had posted on the internet. 

I didn’t copy anything like word to word, but I did use them as a guide.

 And it just really helped me from writing out this terrible, I mean, absolutely terrible job description by just already using what works and then making sense for me and my company.

Then I had to determine, how much would I be willing to pay?

And my honest answer was I did not know because I had never hired an assistant before.

So I just put that off to last.

I am familiar with being able to outsource things overseas because I had had my brand design business where all of my designers were in India and I had hired people in the Philippines, in Pakistan and all that.

And I said, okay, I know. upwork.com works, and I’m also very familiar with onlinejobs.ph.

Now, the thing that I do not like about onlinejobs.ph is you can post a job and you’ll get like 5,000 people to respond to a job posting, and they have not even read the job description.

It’s wild when I think about onlinejobs.ph.

But with upwork.com I know that I can set up my own profile and then I could post a job with all of my specifics that I want with that particular person.

Like social media management, like having to be fluent in English, having an 80% success rate with previous clients, how much money they’ve already made working on Upwork.

And I could ask them specific questions they have to answer before they ever respond to the job posting.

I like Upwork better.

So then I went over to Upwork, created a job posting for an executive virtual assistant

Then I pasted the thing that I wrote out as my job description.

Then when I did that, I went to, what level was I looking for? Looking for someone who was brand new, intermediate, or expert.

And I said, well, I really want someone who’s intermediate. They don’t have to be an expert.

So I did that and then it asked me like, how long do I want them to work for me?

And I was like, well, six months or longer or whatever.

Then it said, what countries? And I said, any country. 

And so once you get to like the next screen, it’s gonna ask you, is this an hourly pay or is this on a project basis?

Now here’s what happens when you click on hourly.

Upwork is gonna give you a range. It’s gonna say, here’s the range between what most people are being paid as an expert for an executive virtual assistant.

And so you’re gonna see a range. It could say $8 to $10, it could say $12 to $25, whatever.

But it still gives you a range.

And then you can choose on a low end this, on the high end this, and it gives you that range.

When we were doing that, I saw a range of like, some people were like $5 an hour all the way up to $12 an hour.

And so then I was like, “Well that sounds good to me.”

Because it’s actually not expensive at all for someone to really be assisting me with all these things that I do every single day in my business.

So then I posted the job and then now you start getting a lot of people responding to the job that are qualified.

From there, what I do is I understand that some people will be right, some people will not be qualified or whatever, or we just won’t gel well.

In an effort to maximize my time and not waste a lot of time with a lot of video call interviews.

Cuz listen, if you get a hundred people to respond, you cannot do interviews with everybody.

And Upward makes it a lot simpler because what you can do is once you see all the people that have responded to your job posting.

You can click on them and it will show you what they said when they responded to your job posting.

If you ask them specific questions, you can read the answer to the questions.

You can then look at all the success they’ve had on the platform.

You can read all their reviews and then you can begin having a conversation with them.

So what I do is I look at everybody that has applied to the job and I just start going through reading what they wrote.

If I like what I’ve seen so far, then I will click on the shortlist and that way it’s saying, “Hey, this person is on my short list to look back at.”

And then what I will do is I’ll have a list of questions that I wanna ask them in addition to what was in the job posting.

I would just say, “Hey, thank you so much for responding to our job posting. We have some additional questions for you.”

And so I send them another list of questions.

And then I just go through the process.

But also if I see people who I am not interested in, I will just hit the downlight button and that removes them from the job posting. 

That way, it’s constantly just updating to just those people I have reviewed and shortlisted or those new people that have responded to the particular job.

I’m literally asking everybody the same questions over and over and over again as they’re responding to the job posts.

I’m just asking them the same questions.

Once I narrow it down to like however many is left that I really enjoy.

Then I will go to schedule video calls because everybody that is great in Upwork writing is not great on video.

Some people are very intimidated, or they’re very introverted and they have a hard time articulating themselves or just being there with you on camera.

Someone as your executive assistant, they’re gonna be in some of your meetings with your team.

Then you wanna make sure that the person speaks fluent English because people may be able to write English but not be able to speak English, and you need to be able to speak to the person that is gonna be your main assistant.

And so we bring them on the video call and now we’re asking them even more questions. 

We’ve asked them a lot, but then we’re giving them even more.

We’re nice and kind about it, but this is gonna be a hire.

Someone who you’re gonna hire to work for you in your businesses. 

So we just kinda walked through that entire process with that person.

Once we narrow it down to the people we loved from that particular interview, those interviews, then we give them an assignment.

And we do a paid assignment.

So I will say, okay, here’s an assignment I have, and I’ll give it to five people and I’ll hire each person for one hour.

And I will say, it’ll be an assignment that I know they can do in an hour.

I won’t stretch their time limit, but it’s like what I know they can do.

And then once they have the assignment, I say, “I will pay you for an hour. When can you get this back to me?”

Then I’ll see whatever they say, they can get it back to me.

Fine.

And so then what happens is the people that actually met the deadline, we go and we review the work.

Once we get the work from them, then that’s when we are moving forward with who it is that we’re gonna offer a position to.

It may sound like a lot, but this is someone who is going to change your life.

They’re gonna change your business.

They’re gonna give you some of your time back.

Instead of you having to do a hundred thousand things now you get to do 50,000, they’re gonna do 50,000 and you’re gonna do 50,000.

So you’re still working and running your business, but you’re not doing a hundred thousand things, you’re only doing 50,000 things.

It’s definitely worth kind of going through this process of being able to hire someone.

But before you actually set a higher date for this person, it is so important that you have all the details laid out of what this person’s gonna do on day one. Okay?

Because when I first hired someone, I’ve tried to hire so many people and people have quit and all that.

 

And a lot of it has been because we weren’t ready

I didn’t have my stuff together.

I needed somebody, but I wasn’t ready for somebody.

And so it’s just really, really, really important that you know, you have it together of what it is this person is going to be doing.

And not only that, how you’re going to train them because your executive assistant or virtual assistant can do all the things you need them to do.

But if you don’t set them up for success by having a training plan without having a way, you’re gonna teach them about you, about your company, about all these different things.

You’re really setting them up for failure and you’re setting your business up for failure.

Which I have done too many times than I care to admit.

I’m ashamed to admit how many times I did this to really, really good people because I wasn’t ready.

But you know, you can get ready while you post the job and you’re waiting for people to respond.

Now I will say people are gonna start responding to that.

Almost instantly.

As long as it’s a good job and a good rate of pay, they’re gonna respond immediately.

So you don’t have to hire them immediately, but they are going to respond immediately.

So if you have not taken the lead, the chance to go and get yourself an executive assistant or a virtual assistant,

Then I would encourage you to start that process.

Because one of the things that I realized is that my business was gonna be limited to me if I’m the only person that was doing these in my business.

The business was going to be limited, but the moment I introduced other people to do other things was the moment that now I had more space.

More opportunity to do the things that actually make the company run smoother and bring in more revenue to the company.

I hope you learn something from this.

And I hope that you will hire an assistant.

Get yourself on upwork.com.

This is not an ad. This is me just saying I love Upwork.

I hired my entire team from upwork.com and it will change your life.

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