Key Takeaways:
English is the language of the global economy. You can use sample online tests or CEFR standards to analyze your virtual assistant’s business English skills.
92% of companies say that soft skills matter just as much or more than hard skills in today’s workplace. To test a VA’s soft skills, you can ask situational questions during the interview.
Remember to add a role-specific test or question to assess if the candidate can handle specialized tasks that come with the job.
Every executive dreams of the perfect workday. No distractions, no interruptions, no admin. No emails to go through first thing in the morning and no schedules to coordinate for meetings.
The right virtual assistant can make this your daily reality. But the keyword here is ‘right.’
While perfect virtual assistants do exist, finding the one that aligns with your specific needs is challenging. It often involves weeks of preparation, piles of resumes and endless interviews.
But with the right set of assessments, you can make the most of the time you spend hunting for your perfect VA. This article elaborates on 5 skill tests you can use to refine your virtual assistant assessment strategy and find the right candidate for the job.
Who Are Virtual Assistants and Why Do You Need Them?
Spending too much time on daily tasks instead of focusing on growing your business? Exhausted performing the background tasks on top of core business processes? Hard time managing extra work on a budget?
If all of these sound like problems on your to-do list, you need a virtual assistant.
Virtual assistants (VA) are remote workers you can hire to tackle routine administrative tasks virtually. They can manage your email, update your calendars, record customer data and more.
They can also perform specialized tasks like managing social media accounts, writing content or marketing your products/services.
Delegating day-to-day tasks to virtual assistants can help you save valuable time and reduce the workload of your in-house teams. With the right VA, you can put your existing resources to better use and finally begin growing your business.
From time savings to cost-effectiveness, hiring virtual assistants has many benefits to the business once you find the right person for the job.
Here’s What To Look For in a Virtual Assistant
Virtual assistants are a versatile force that can transform how you work on your business. But finding the right match is crucial to getting the best out of your VA strategy.
To help you spot your future assistant, here’s a list of some general skills and qualities every good virtual assistant should have.
Communication Skills
Your virtual assistant will communicate with you, your team and your clients for different tasks.
Irregular updates can cause delays, miscommunication with your team members will create confusion and an inappropriate tone can cost you your client!
To prevent these errors, you need a VA with good communication skills. Some of these skills include:
- Sending regular updates to you.
- Listening actively to your clients and team members.
- Using a clear and polite tone while communicating.
- Writing professional-quality emails with correct spelling and grammar.
- Handling arguments or complaints with patience.
Good communication skills will ensure your day-to-day operations run smoothly and problems are solved quickly, creating an open workplace culture.
Time Management Skills
You delegate routine tasks to a virtual assistant to save your time and energy. There’s no point in hiring a VA with poor time management skills, who, instead of saving time, ends up delaying your projects.
To keep the daily business running efficiently, VAs need to be good at managing their time by:
- Setting daily goals.
- Prioritizing high-value tasks.
- Meeting deadlines consistently.
- Minimizing distractions.
Flexibility and Adaptability
A growing business has many needs. When you’re exploring new avenues of business expansion, your staff might need to take on additional responsibilities.
Virtual assistants are versatile individuals capable of performing a range of tasks around the office. So they should be flexible and quickly adapt to new workflows to deliver maximum support to your business.
This includes taking on more work during crunch times, adjusting to changes in tools and processes and updating their skills.
Problem-Solving Skills
Problems in general activities pop up every day, but they can be even more troublesome if every worker relies only on your judgment.
That’s why every virtual assistant should have basic problem-solving skills so they can work independently.
Your VA must look at the problem from all angles, prioritize both cause and effect and find solutions that stay effective in the long run.
Resourcefulness in Work
Resourcefulness is a key quality for any VA. It shows their ability to add value to your business.
Resourceful VAs can creatively contribute to work and suggest ways to improve productivity. They can use their knowledge and industry experience to better different business processes, suggest changes and find unique solutions to challenges.
Knowledge of Technology
72% of digital leaders are recording improvements in employee productivity and 71% say they have enhanced customer engagement from digital transformation.
In this age of technology, you simply can’t do without a tech-savvy virtual assistant. Every VA should know how to use basic office suite software and be up-to-date with new systems.
Tips To Prepare for Conducting the Assessment
Every good assessment begins with good preparation.
You don’t want to begin your hiring process on a whim, when you’re unclear about who you want to hire or the skills you’re looking for. This can cause unnecessary confusion that costs you time and money just to fix it.
So here are some tips to help you prepare better.
Creating SOPs
Before you start looking for a virtual assistant, ask yourself, “What tasks do I actually want to delegate?”
Creating standard operating procedures (SOPs) can help you figure out which parts of your routine processes you can delegate. An SOP is a document that details your work process in a step-by-step manner.
SOPs can help you identify problem areas in your processes that need additional support. They can also give you clarity about which skills you should be looking for during the hiring process.
SOPs help you get organized for the hiring as well. Take this time to create a list of skills and qualities you would like in your VA and write down each step of the hiring process. For example, now is the time to decide if there should be practical tests or multiple rounds of interviews.
Preparing a Questionnaire
Once you have created the necessary SOPs, you need to prepare a standard assessment.
Going through piles of online applicants is a difficult and time-consuming task. Interviewing and vetting each one is nearly impossible.
Creating a questionnaire can help you cut through all the options and find the talent you want for your business.
This questionnaire or assessment test should include questions that test your VA’s industry knowledge, niche aptitude, language proficiency, technical skills, interpersonal skills and overall personality. Including a mix of subjective and objective questions will work best.
You can either send written questions using online test platforms, create your own Google Form or conduct virtual interviews.
Adopting a Recruiting Strategy
Your work doesn’t end once you’ve figured out the tasks you want to delegate, the skills you’re looking for and the questionnaire you’ll give to applicants. You also need a good recruiting strategy.
Create a detailed job description and shortlist places where you can post it.
If you want to outsource to virtual assistants outside of your country of operations, you also need to research different tax withholdings, data privacy regulations, legal requirements and other documentation for hiring an overseas virtual assistant.
Between deciding to hire a virtual assistant and going through the tedious task of searching for and onboarding a VA, the process can seem never-ending. If all of this sounds exhausting, you can cut your work in half by getting help from a virtual assistant agency like Zenius. We can search, screen and match you with the right VAs quickly.
We also take care of the overhead costs, statutory regulations and basic training, which means you get a comprehensive and hassle-free hiring experience.
Top 5 Tests Every Virtual Assistant Assessment Should Have
First time hiring a VA?
Then remember, before onboarding them, you must test their skills and ask important questions to ensure they are the right fit.
Here are the top 5 tests that every virtual assistant assessment should have so that you cover all bases.
English Language Test
English is the language of the global economy. All your business documents, from contracts to invoices, are recorded in English.
Since a VA’s job requires communication between different departments, clients and customers, they must be fluent in the language. While an overseas virtual assistant gives you access to talent and expertise from around the world, you must test their English skills.
Generally, an English test includes reading comprehension, grammar, speaking and writing tests. This can help you evaluate the candidate’s reading and writing ability.
You can also use sample online tests to analyze your VA’s business English skills. Or you can use the CEFR standards, which measure the language proficiency from beginner (A1) to advanced (C2), for a more professional judgment.
You’ll learn if your VAs are competent enough to manage day-to-day messages, documents and other aspects of business communication.
Technology Test
Businesses today can’t work without technology. To run a successful business, you need to constantly adapt and integrate new technology into your everyday business activities.
This means you need virtual assistants who are knowledgeable about the basics of office suite tech like Microsoft Office and Google Workspace.
If you want to delegate tasks like data management, spreadsheet organization and record-keeping, you need to add a basic technology test to your assessment process.
You can begin the assessment by asking the candidates about their previous experiences with these programs. You can also ask more specific and detailed questions, like:
- “How would you duplicate values in an Excel spreadsheet?”
- “What would you do if the program you’re working on freezes?”
- “How do you stay updated with new tools and technologies?”
You can also ask them to perform a quick test task online to see what steps they use to complete the task in real time. A tech-savvy VA knows shortcuts and functions to make their work easier, which helps them—and you—save time.
Another super tip is to try introducing a new tool to the test. This can reveal how easily they can learn and adapt to new technology. Adaptability is one of the most important qualities to look for in a VA.
To find out more about your VA’s suitability for administrative tasks, you can add a typing test. This can help you gauge their work speed and accuracy in typing.
Soft Skill Test
Companies understand the importance of teamwork and smooth workplace communication. In fact, 92% of companies in a Deloitte survey reported that soft skills matter just as much or more than hard skills in today’s workplace.
Hard skills are important, but they’re not the only skills a good VA has. Your VA also needs to have meaningful soft skills like problem-solving, teamwork, communication, empathy, etc.
Soft skills can be harder to test practically since they relate more to the candidate’s behavior. To test the soft skills of the participants, you can ask situational questions during the interview.
These can look like:
- “How would you explain to your 95-year-old grandma what you do for a living?”
- “Explain what constructive criticism means to you.”
- “What are your techniques for handling stress?”
- “What if there’s a sudden change in the daily routine that requires you to quickly change your to-do list? How will you manage that?”
- “How do you decide which task needs to be prioritized?”
Asking questions like these can help you identify if the VA has robust problem-solving skills, how they deal with setbacks and if they’re flexible enough to adapt to the changing demands of the work.
Remember, the whole point of hiring a VA is to minimize your work. Nobody wants a VA that relies completely on management.
Adding a soft skills assessment can help you identify an independent VA who can support your daily routine instead of hindering it.
Personality Analysis
VAs may be remote workers, but they are still a part of your team. So you need to choose someone whose point of view and work ethic align with your company’s values.
Good connections can help both you and the new hire. A positive workplace culture can help the VA feel connected to their work and can lead to increased initiative and better performance.
At the same time, adding like-minded and enthusiastic VAs can also help create a diverse cultural and creative environment for the company.
This can increase the morale of your existing in-house employees, reduce turnover rates and encourage new talent to join your company.
To find out if a candidate fits in with your company’s views and ideas, you can add self-assessment questions during the interview.
- “What do you consider your greatest work accomplishment?
- “How do you work under pressure?”
- “How would you respond to an angry customer?”
- “Describe your perfect job environment.”
- “If you could change one thing about your personality, what would it be?”
Questions like these can help you assess if the candidate brings the right energy and work ethic to your workforce.
Role-Specific Evaluation
Finally, you need to add at least one role-specific test to your assessment process.
While most VAs can handle general administrative tasks without issues, sometimes your business needs specific support. For example, if you’re running an online e-commerce business with sites like Amazon or Shopify, you will probably need an e-commerce virtual assistant who has the knowledge to carry out e-commerce tasks.
A role-specific evaluation can help you assess if the candidate can handle specialized tasks that come with the job.
You can add a few questions during the interview to test their expertise in niche areas.
- “How can you improve the current social media strategy that we have?”
- “Are you familiar with SEO best practices?”
- “What do you know about the sales funnel? Share an experience where this knowledge helped you in your daily work.”
- “How would you go about researching this topic?”
These questions can help give you insight into their work process.
During this evaluation, focus on how they manage their task. See if they work efficiently or if their approach is chaotic and time-consuming. Remember, specific and detailed answers show how confident the candidates are in this area.
Aside from helping with your assessment, role-specific tasks give the candidates an opportunity to showcase their knowledge and make an impression. This can help them visualize the role they will be playing in your company and how they will be able to contribute.
Why You Need To Conduct Virtual Assistant Skill Tests
Jim Collins, an American author, says,
Great vision without great people is irrelevant.
Skill tests are a concrete way of finding out if the candidate you are reviewing is perfect for the job you have.
Taking your time to test the candidate in every area can help you save time and reduce your burden. It can help you set realistic expectations about hiring the candidate and decide if it’s worth onboarding and training them.
By evaluating the candidate’s talents, you can verify if their resume matches their existing skills. You can also rest assured that you’re getting the skills and proficiencies you are paying for.
Lastly, skill evaluations are a great way to get to know your potential VA better. You can assess their strengths, weaknesses and special talents. This can help you figure out what your working relationship would look like.
Final Thoughts
Conducting skill tests is an essential part of the hiring process. It gives you an opportunity to assess the candidate’s aptitude for the job and gives you a brief look into how they can fit into your company.
But the hiring process is a lot of work. Imagine being stuck reading resumes and taking interviews over and over again. It is time-consuming and expensive.
Luckily, virtual assistant agencies like Zenius can help you streamline the hiring process. With us, you don’t need to worry about searching and shortlisting candidates. You can get matched quickly and interview pre-vetted candidates for your role.