As the head of your company, your job is valuable. You make all the creative decisions and take care of the day-to-day operations. But sometimes, you get a bit busy. Not only are you in charge of all the high-value stuff that keeps the wheels rolling, but there’s also administrative tasks that often get you behind.
If you find yourself too busy to take on all that tasks required, that can be a good thing. You’re growing. But it also means you need to hire someone to take on the extra burden so you can continue to head up doing what you love to do.
The only issue is, hiring a virtual assistant is like hiring any other employee. There are good ones and bad ones. When it’s good, a virtual assistant can be an incredible member of your team. When they’re bad, they can set you back in both time and money. So if you want to find a rock star virtual assistant, here are several tips that can lead to a successful hire.
1) Make sure you’re ready to hire someone.
A lot of virtual assistant disasters happen because the business owner wasn’t truly ready. They wanted some help, but had a lot of expectations for their new assistant to come in right away and know the job. If you can’t afford to take the time to properly train them, what exactly can they do? You’re handcuffing them to a few menial tasks. Have a good idea of what you want them to do. Take notes on your daily activities so you can easily decide what should be outsourced and what shouldn’t.
2) Have a training system in place.
It’s been proven that having a system in place makes businesses run more smoothly. Yes, you’ll have to take more time up front to develop that system, but once it’s in place, you’ll save time and money in the long run by having it. You create it once and hand it off to others to train in your stead.
3) Hire like you mean it.
The truth is, a virtual assistant might be one of the most important positions in your company. The sad thing is, you might run into a lot of bad ones. So don’t set aside ten minutes for a Skype call before hiring someone. If you were going to hire a big time web developer, do you give them a little attention before bringing them on board?
No. You’ll take the time, review their qualifications, see past work, among other things, to make sure you’re not wasting your money on a hack. And as I said, there are plenty of bad workers out there who will set you back and lose you money if you don’t take the hiring process seriously.
Hiring a virtual assistant can potentially be the most important position in your company. If you have someone else to take on the administrative jobs, it can potentially change everything, especially if you have more time to create and do what you do best. Take your time, do your research, develop a system, and hire the best virtual assistant you can find.
