GB Ep 10: How to Hire a Virtual Assistant

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Welcome to another edition of Growth Bites. Today we’re talking about how to hire a virtual assistant. I’ve used virtual assistants both locally and overseas with success. Here are some resources to help find one, and how to find a highly qualified candidate.

• In my opinion, not enough startups take advantage of hiring virtual assistants. [00:18]
• I’ve used virtual employees in the Philippines and Honduras including my executive assistant. [00:35]
• Both of my assistants speak English fluently and one you can’t even tell she’s from Honduras. [1:13]
• $600 a month is a pretty decent middle-class wage for that area and affordable for me. [01:35]
• Keep it fun, give bonuses at the holidays and get to know your virtual assistants. [1:55]
• I use a virtual assistant to help with transcription and generate lead lists for prospecting purposes. [02:08]
• Use VirtualStaffFinder.com to find a quality virtual assistant. Plug in your criteria, and they’ll find three qualified candidates for you. [02:42]
• If you don’t like them, you can send back your assistants and find new candidates. [03:06]
• Elance and Odesk have proven hit or miss with quality of candidates. To make it work, you need to nail down your hiring process, set-up some tests and filter out bad candidates. [03:33]
• TaskUs is great for large-scale customer service and work with companies like Tinder and Whisper. [04:03]
• I run my virtual assistants through a typing test to find out how accurate and fast they are. Companies like VirtualStaffFinder.com will do the same, and even give them a personality test. It’s $325, but has been worth it for me. [04:40]
• I run a Google Doc test and have them set-up a spreadsheet and ask them to do some simple tasks or separate data. [05:15]
• Remember to do reference checks on your virtual assistants, and anyone you hire. [05:45]
• Test people on their writing skills so they can type emails and respond to people with proper English. [05:57]
• I tell them we’ll work on a one or two week trial with no hard feelings if it doesn’t work out. [06:11]
• Stay tuned, I’m developing a course on how to hire and manage. [06:36]

Selected Links from this Episode:

• VirtualStaffFinder.com
• TaskUs
• Elance
• oDesk
• When You Should Fire Employees

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