Key Takeaways
From admin tasks like email management to digital marketing, bookkeeping and e-commerce support, virtual assistants can handle your business tasks like a pro.
To determine the total cost of your virtual assistant, consider factors like their home country, experience, service model, the scope of work and urgency of the project.
Thoroughly review the pool of candidates you interview, measure their scores and be conscious of any hiring biases so you recruit the best candidate.
You’ve done it all. You’ve overcome the initial struggles of starting a business, managed to get by during stagnancy and are making your way up the market.
But you still find yourself doing everything.
You’re still answering calls, creating sales reports, handling social media and replying to customers. You’re still taking work home every day.
But you’ve done enough on your own. You deserve to take things off your plate. You deserve rest.
Entrepreneurs often fall into the vicious trap of multitasking. While it may look virtuous, it’s an unhealthy practice that bites businesses in the long run.
A virtual assistant can transform your daily operations.
They provide administrative support to business owners and assist with everyday tasks. You can hand over all time-suckers and focus on high-value tasks instead.
Hiring a virtual assistant requires conscious effort on your part, but it’s a rewarding experience. Learn about the best hiring strategies to find the right candidate.
What Is a Virtual Assistant?
Virtual assistants (VA) are remote workers who handle administrative tasks for organizations. They provide backend assistance to their clients over the Internet.
By outsourcing routine tasks, businesses can free up time for revenue strategizing. Delegating tasks to VAs also helps executives take back control of their schedules and recharge their batteries.
Plus, VAs are extremely affordable. They cost around one-third of an in-house employee’s salary.
Their cost-efficiency helps businesses cut expenses and reinvest this capital into business expansion.
Benefits of Hiring Virtual Assistants
Hiring a virtual assistant has many benefits as opposed to in-house employees.
Because VAs work remotely, there’s no need to expand your office space to accommodate them. This cuts down overhead significantly.
You’re also free from covering their health insurance and other employee benefits since virtual assistants are legally employed by VA staffing agencies.
Plus, outsourcing virtual assistants allows you to look beyond local candidates and access the global talent pool.
You shouldn’t have to hire someone simply because they can come work in your office. When you prioritize location over specific skillsets in hiring, you risk onboarding incompetent workers.
Outsourcing virtual assistants works here because you get top candidates with niche skills and diverse perspectives from around the world.
The advantages don’t end there! Unlike in-house employees, virtual assistants can work on a flexible schedule that accommodates your changing requirements.
You can adjust their hours and workload at any time based on your current needs, allowing you to scale services as needed.
In-House Employees vs Virtual Assistants
| Factor | In-House Employee | Virtual Assistant |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Expensive | Highly affordable |
| Benefits | Health insurance, taxes, holidays, paid leave | No employee benefits |
| Overhead expenses | Office space, utilities, equipment, tea/coffee | No overhead expenses |
| Talent | Limited to local candidates | Access to global talent |
| Recruitment | Time-consuming process with multiple rounds | Quick hiring and replacement |
| Working hours | Fixed | Flexible |
| Contract flexibility | Rigid, long-term commitments | Flexible, short-term arrangements |
When Should You Hire a Virtual Assistant?
There’s a myth that only big corporations hire virtual assistants.
That’s far from the truth! Startups, small businesses and businesses of all sizes could benefit from more support.
When business owners try to do everything by themselves, high-value tasks get ignored and growth remains stunted.
If you’re one such entrepreneur, here are some signs that might show up at work and at home.
Professional Signs
- You don’t have time for knowledge work.
- You have a never-ending to-do list.
- You’re unable to focus on growth and strategy.
- Your clients complain about project delays.
- You feel unmotivated and drained at work.
- You have no time to find exciting growth prospects.
- You’re turning clients away as your team is at full capacity.
- You need skilled talent for specialized projects.
- Your quality of work has reduced despite your best efforts.
- You’re stuck doing work that can be done by someone else.
- You need more support, but don’t have any more office space.
- You want to expand your team, but lack the budget for in-house employees.
- You have a new opening, but can’t find a suitable candidate locally.
Personal Signs
- You work overtime and never truly get off work.
- Your family complains about not seeing you enough.
- You miss key milestones of your children’s lives.
- You feel stressed and exhausted all the time.
- You miss birthdays and anniversaries for work.
- Your list of personal errands is unending.
- Your work-life balance has hit a new low.
- You haven’t taken a vacation in months.
- You can feel your health deteriorating because you’re overworked.
Do any of these signs resonate with you? Then you must mindfully assess the quality of your professional and personal life.
If you’re only punishing yourself and your business because hiring workers feels expensive, think again.
Virtual assistants offering affordable back-office support can help you get back time, refocus on your core tasks and live a fuller personal and professional life!
What Can a Virtual Assistant Do?
Does your to-do list have tasks that can be assigned to others? Which tasks bore you to no end? Are there tasks that suck up your time without providing any value? Which tasks stimulate your creativity and which don’t?
Segregating knowledge work from routine tasks will give you a clear idea of what you should delegate. Updating spreadsheets or scheduling meetings are some delegable tasks.
There are many types of virtual assistants with their pros and cons. Depending on your business needs, you can hire VAs to do multiple tasks for you.
General Admin Tasks
Here’s everything a general admin virtual assistant can help with:
- Managing inboxes, labeling important emails, deleting spam and creating email templates.
- Collecting customer data and updating the database.
- Centralizing calendars, scheduling meetings, sending out meeting memos and taking minutes.
- Researching online for vendors, relevant topics and competitor products.
- Looking up the cheapest flights, hotels and car rentals for executive travel.
HR Tasks
HR virtual assistants can lighten the admin load of your HR team by:
- Writing job posts, screening resumes and onboarding new hires.
- Collecting feedback from employees and conveying grievances.
- Maintaining employee records and assisting with payroll.
- Approving leave requests, tracking attendance and recording check-in/check-out timings.
- Planning team-building and ice-breaking activities.
- Setting reminders for birthdays or anniversaries.
Marketing
From lead generation to social media, marketing virtual assistants can help by:
- Sending cold emails.
- Managing the CRM and following up on leads.
- Researching market trends, compiling findings and creating reports.
- Handling social media accounts, maintaining a content calendar and responding to comments or DM inquiries.
- Writing promotional emails, managing marketing campaigns and tracking campaign performance.
- Researching SEO keywords and incorporating them.
Bookkeeping Tasks
- Managing bills payable and bills receivable.
- Preparing general ledgers and balance sheets.
- Creating expense reports and presentations for budgets or forecasts.
- Assisting accounts executives during tax filing season.
- Reconciling bank statements and compiling departmental invoices.
- Processing payroll, benefits, bonuses and appraisals.
Personal Assistance
- Managing personal calendars, booking medical appointments and setting reminders for birthdays or anniversaries.
- Booking home maintenance for house cleaning, landscaping, pest control and more.
- Making online purchases for gifts or flowers, paying recurring bills and maintaining expense records.
- Helping plan travel, finding flights, booking hotels and creating itineraries.
- Making dinner reservations and buying movie or concert tickets.
Specialized Services
- E-commerce support in managing online stores, tracking inventory, listing products, compiling invoices and issuing returns/refunds.
- Paralegal support in proofreading legal documents, preparing memos, writing discoveries and researching corporate, family or immigration law.
- Healthcare assistance in sending vaccination reminders, managing patient records, booking virtual consultations, verifying insurance and processing claims.
- Real estate support in uploading listings, hunting properties, promoting open houses online, placing bids and looking for investors.
- Creative assistance in transcribing podcasts, writing scripts, editing photos/videos, creating stunning promotional graphics and tracking online ads and affiliate links.
How Much Does a Virtual Assistant Cost?
When you hire virtual assistants from staffing agencies, you only need to pay them for the job done. That means you don’t have to worry about spending on office space, equipment and employee benefits.
To determine the total cost of your next virtual assistant, you must look at factors like their home country, experience, service model, the scope of work and urgency of the project.
Location
The rates of virtual assistants differ drastically based on their location. VAs from offshore countries are more cost-efficient for businesses than onshore or nearshore ones.
The rate of US-based VAs can range from $16 to $45 per hour. But overseas virtual assistants start from $5+.
This difference arises because of the low cost of labor and minimum wage requirements in developing countries.
Scope of Work
Similar to location, the type and amount of work also determine how much your VA will cost. When you assign a wide variety of tasks requiring deeper knowledge, you will naturally pay a higher rate.
For instance, if you hire a US-based VA for email management, they might charge you somewhere between $10 and $20 per hour.
However, the cost will increase if you need them for specialized tasks like marketing, customer support, social media management or website maintenance.
Thus, it’s important to know what tasks you want help with to determine the cost of your virtual assistant.
Experience
Experienced virtual assistants are seasoned professionals who do their work flawlessly. As such, the depth of your VA’s knowledge can also influence their rates.
When a VA has been in the industry for a long time, they naturally gain contacts and more opportunities for work. Experience also gives them a strong footing in their role. Their skills have been polished by years of hands-on experience.
These professionals are better at solving complex problems as they’ve worked through many cases.
In the US, virtual assistants cost around $27 per hour on average. Entry-level virtual assistants with 0-1 years of experience will charge less ($15–$25 per hour) for their services.
Experienced VAs who have been in the field for quite some time can ask for more ($45–$75+).
Urgency
If you’re hiring urgently and have tasks with tight deadlines, this becomes high-pressure work.
Rush jobs mean the virtual assistant will have to drop other important projects and prioritize your tasks. They might even need to work overtime to complete your project. As such, they may charge a higher rush fee.
But this mainly happens with freelance VAs. As independent contractors, they’re working on multiple projects with many clients. So, to put your work above someone else’s, they will demand a higher fee.
But worry not! Agency virtual assistants who solely work with you can handle all kinds of time-sensitive tasks. You don’t have to break the bank and pay them a surcharge in this situation.
Service Model
Outsourcing agencies provide skilled virtual assistants at lower rates. Agency VAs are also experts at time management and deliver quality work on time.
On the other hand, freelancers are known to charge unreasonable, sky-high rates from clients. This is because they’re not agency employees, so their rates are not regulated.
They also have shaky time commitments and can take longer than normal to finish projects, costing you valuable time.
Steps To Hire a Virtual Assistant
Many executives find VA hiring confusing. They don’t know where to look, what tests to conduct or how to choose the best match.
Thankfully, outsourcing agencies have simplified this process.
This is what the hiring pipeline looks like when you pair up with an outsourcing agency.
1. Choose What To Delegate
You have to start by outlining what you want to delegate. List the tasks that don’t need your involvement. While these tasks are necessary, they can easily be done by someone else.
By offloading non-essential duties, you can create space in your day for high-priority work.
Here’s a list of tasks you can delegate and what you could do instead.
Admin Tasks vs Core Tasks
| Admin Tasks | Core Tasks |
|---|---|
| Filing documents | Developing employee policies |
| Updating customer database | Ideating new products and offers |
| Taking minutes in meetings | Engaging meaningfully in meetings |
| Identifying bugs in code | Programming software |
| Creating presentations | Conducting quality-control checks |
| Writing cold emails | Closing deals |
| Creating sales invoices | Building relationships with customers |
| Following up with clients for payments | Performing risk analysis |
| Booking a conference room | Discussing strategies and planning future expansion |
Virtual assistants can handle almost all admin tasks and declutter your schedule, enabling you to focus on strategy and revenue generation. The money you save by hiring a VA can also go back into the company’s internal funds and increase cash flow.
2. Define Your Expectations
Once you know what you want to delegate, start crafting a list of expectations.
Having a clear set of requirements will be useful throughout the process. Both you and your VA can refer to this job description while working together. It can serve as a guide for performance standards.
Being unclear here will create confusion and conflict later on, so don’t be vague. Keep your requirements concise so that they can be easily understood.
Here are some questions you should ask yourself while listing the VA’s responsibilities:
- How many hours a week should the VA work?
- What technical skills should they possess?
- What soft skills should they possess?
- What will be the scope of work and service level for this role?
- Are you willing to train them for your unique needs?
- What will success look like for this role?
3. Determine Your Budget
Do you have an estimated budget for your virtual assistant? What factors should you consider?
Virtual assistant rates will fluctuate depending on their skills, experience and location. They can also vary as per your business needs.
Check out the pricing plans of agencies you’re interested in to find the best option for your business.
Make sure to plan for tool subscription costs as well. Since you and your VA will be working remotely, you will need subscriptions to communication tools, task management platforms or other software.
Remember that you’re investing this capital towards business growth. So while budgeting, don’t forget the high return on investment from hiring VAs.
When you place VA costs against their long-term value, you’ll realize it’s all worth it.
4. Contact a VA Agency
You can now start researching virtual assistant staffing agencies.
Most of these agencies handle day-to-day management of VAs such as payroll, attendance and time tracking, so you don’t have to.
Once you’ve selected an agency, get in touch with them through their website.
Some companies may have clauses such as a registration fee or lock-in periods. To avoid paying extra for such hassles, go for a flexible client-first agency like Zenius.
5. Share Your Requirements
Once you contact your shortlisted agency, the account manager will ask questions about your business requirements. Answer these questions at length and share your list of requirements.
After understanding all the details, they will start hunting for candidates. These agencies will screen candidates, take interviews, conduct background checks, verify previous work experience and schedule multiple skill-based assessments.
Next, the agency will recommend a set of candidates best suited to your needs.
6. Evaluate the Candidates
The candidates will sit for qualifying assessments at this stage. This step is important to check whether the candidate’s skills match your job expectations.
At Zenius, we get experts to review the assessments. However, if you want, you can review them yourself.
You’re also welcome to interview candidates if you’d like! We recommend you ask thoughtful questions to assess their strengths and weaknesses.
Interview questions should be designed to analyze the personal and professional character of candidates.
Write down numerical grades for each question during the interview. You can refer to this sheet later and make decisions easily.
7. Shortlist the Best
Thoroughly scrutinize the candidates you interviewed and measure the scores you gave to their responses. Be conscious of any hiring biases and try to choose impartially.
Having two separate clusters of essential and desirable skills can also help narrow down your search.
The first group of chosen candidates should possess all essential skills and qualities. From this lot, you can choose the candidate with the highest number of desirable skills.
Zenius guarantees matching you with a virtual assistant with the ideal qualities. Our screening process values personality matches as much as technical proficiency.
Once you’ve chosen a candidate with the required level of experience, skillsets and technical proficiency, let the agency know your decision.
8. Review and Sign the Contract
Choose your preferred pricing plan and finalize a payment platform such as Remitly, Venmo or PayPal for secure international transactions.
Review the contract terms to ensure that every detail aligns with your requirements. If there’s something you wish to add or remove from the contract, share such concerns at this stage. This will prevent future discrepancies from arising.
If you hire from Zenius, your contract is always adjustable! If you need to increase the VA’s hours down the line or even hire a dedicated team, you can always let us know.
Thanks to our flexible contracts, we can set you up with more support in no time.
Plus, in case you’re not satisfied with your VA’s work, you can also request replacements.
9. Onboard Your New VA
Once the formalities are out of the way, it’s time to welcome your virtual assistant!
Introduce them to your organization and give detailed information about:
- Your company goals
- Business ethics
- Daily workflows
- Chain of command
You must clearly specify deadlines, expected deliverables and quality standards for the job.
It’s also advised to mention rules and guidelines to be followed while working.
For instance, do you need them to install any performance monitoring software? What is the reporting time? How often should they update you on their progress?
Next, give details on the tools you use. Emails or direct messages over Slack are good for everyday updates, while Zoom video calls are ideal for detailed discussions and all-hands meetings.
Provide VAs access to your task management tools as well. Software like Asana and Trello can help organize, track and manage projects.
Most importantly, encourage your VA to ask questions or express doubts and clarify these at length.
Onboarding is a good opportunity to connect with your VA as they integrate into your workflow. With open communication, you can establish a strong working relationship with them.
Assign your VA training material, courses and resources specific to the job role. In-depth training will help them understand the nuances of their job and excel.
10. Delegate and Enjoy
Once your VA is successfully onboarded, it’s time to assign their first task!
Start delegating tasks and let the agency handle everyday management. They will ensure quality control and timely delivery of projects.
Don’t forget to provide detailed guidelines for every task you assign!
A standardized approach to projects will ensure consistent quality. Having a set of SOPs ready will also enable the VA to start productive work as soon as possible.
Go into as much detail as possible while designing the SOP. Specify process inputs, outputs and a rough estimate of time taken. Along with written instructions, you can even include audio, images and how-to videos to illustrate the process.
Once your VA has completed their first assignment, provide clear feedback. Offering suggestions for improvement and constructive criticism helps VAs perform better in the long run.
As trust builds steadily, you can even let them fill in for you whenever suitable.
Your time wizard is now at work. Let the VA take over your admin tasks.
The Do’s and Don’ts of Delegation
Good delegation makes everything else easy. So it’s important to ensure you delegate the right way.
Have you started using digital task management tools? Is your communication style consistent and efficient? What kind of issues have you previously faced with employees? How do you plan to mitigate them in the future?
Assessing your leadership style before starting work also helps figure out the best way to work with your virtual assistant.
While assigning tasks, remember to:
- Start small and build up from there.
- Share relevant passwords to grant access.
- Use digital task management tools.
- Track progress and record KPIs.
- Offer constructive feedback.
- Seek feedback from VAs on your processes.
- Reward achievements and celebrate milestones.
- Allow independent decision-making for small tasks.
Avoid unhealthy delegation practices such as:
- Neglecting proper documentation of your processes.
- Having unrealistic expectations from your VA.
- Rushing the onboarding process and not giving proper guidance.
- Communicating irregularly and refusing to clarify doubts.
- Ghosting your VA and then expecting them to complete projects.
- Micromanaging VAs and not showing trust in their abilities.
- Delegating very little and wasting away the VA’s potential.
- Assigning tasks outside the VA’s scope of work.
Read more: 5 Virtual Employee Appreciation Ideas That Show You Care
Why Hire From Zenius
When you hire from Zenius, you get loyal collaborators who commit to your goals from day one.
We match you with suitable candidates who create space for you to strategize, innovate and expand your business.
Because the VAs are our legal employees, we handle their payroll, benefits and statutory compliance—zero hassles on your end.
We also take care of everyday HR tasks like leave management, attendance monitoring and time tracking to ensure high productivity.
With us, recruiting is easy. Our in-house experts vet every candidate before you meet them. But your opinion is valuable to us, so you can be involved as much or as little as you’d like!
Wrapping Up
Before hiring a virtual assistant, consider factors like cost, location, skills and level of experience.
Prepare for the process by having a comprehensive list of tasks and expectations for the role.
For a breezy recruitment process, reach out to reliable companies like Zenius. With the right agency, finding a suitable virtual assistant for your team becomes a piece of cake.
