So you’ve made the decision to work with a Virtual Assistant – congratulations! I hope you’re journey to this point wasn’t too painful, and I have great news for you; your life is about to get much more organised!
Now all you need to do is find the right VA for you. There are a lot of us out there, all varying in skills, experience and attitude. So where do you start?
Sector Experience
Depending on what business you’re in, you may prefer support from someone who specialises in your field of work. This will help ease your VA’s transition into the role as they will already have an understanding of what’s required of them, meaning a more seamless induction into your business. The benefits of having someone with experience are obvious, however let me reassure you that us VAs as a species are all super-flexible and ready to learn, and we find quite often that some of the tasks we do for one client, can easily be adapted to the requirements of another.
Overall Experience
Virtual Assistants come in all shapes and sizes. Some are fresh from Uni, setting their biz up from the get-go, ready to apply all the fresh ideas they’ve learned. Others have been in varying administration roles for a number of years, picking up their knowledge as they go and honing their techniques before taking their experience freelance. You need to decide what is important to you. Some questions to ask; How long has your VA been a VA? What did they do before? What industry have they come from? What did they do previously?
Do you vibe?
It might not be possible to meet your Virtual Assistant face to face to begin with but I don’t believe this has to be an issue. You may be the type of person who can get the feel for someone after a phone call or two. Or you may prefer the face to face approach. Either way most VAs will offer a free 1-hour consultation, either face to face or over Skype, so you can get to know other.
Your takeaway from that meeting needs to be a positive vibe about your future VA. You need to be able to trust them implicitly with your businesses, and so you need to go with your gut feeling on this. If there’s any doubt in your mind, aside from the initial worry about how things are going to work, then this VA probably isn’t the one for you, and it would be unfair on both of you to continue.
However if your gut is saying yes, then this is about to be the start of a beautiful friendship!
Helen x