When hiring a virtual assistant, one characteristic that many of our clients look for is someone proactive.
It's sometimes hard to spot when you don't know what you're looking for—it seems to be just a character trait you know you're looking for. But there are a lot of different hints that you can look up for as they're getting hired to see if there's someone who can be proactive or if they are already proactive and how to train further and nurture that proactiveness so that they can show up for work in the best way now.
If you need to know what a proactive person is, it's someone who jumps the gun or does preemptive ways to avoid trouble or fires. They can help prepare you like, “Hey, I think this is gonna happen,” or “I suggest we do this to improve our numbers.” There are many ways that a proactive virtual assistant can show up, and I'm gonna teach you how to spot them—and again, how to train them!
SPOT PROACTIVE ASSISTANT
TIMELINESS OF REPLIES
If you're hiring a virtual assistant, it's essential to know how they respond to emails and if they'll be a good fit for your business.
How do they respond? Does it take a day? Does it take them a few hours? If they're in a different time zone, do they respond right off the bat first thing in the morning?
With this, you can see how active they are in their emails and communications. We've had it before where we would hire virtual assistants who responded later, and it turns out they could be a better fit because it will take more work for us to reach them.
So especially for you where you will be working with your assistant remotely, and you won't be able to chase after them. Of course, you don't want someone you have to chase after seeing their response rate or how fast they respond to your emails is going to be vital to you as you start working with them.
TIMELINESS IN MEETINGS
In watching out for timeliness in meetings. How long do they typically arrive before the session begins? Are they on time right on time, or are they there like 10 minutes before? I've hired people because they were there. Precisely 15 minutes before and were able to let me know, “hey, I'm having this problem” or “hey, I'm here, and I'm waiting,” so that shows being proactive. They're giving you information before you even need it—before you know a fire will start, and that's a perfect trait to watch out for.
Another thing you can look at is how prepared they are for this meeting. Are they waiting until the last minute to join the zoom room? Are they there before you are? You can look at these things and what you prefer when working with them.
QUESTIONS ASKED
So, when it comes to hiring, you must watch out for the questions they ask during the interview. Those will likely be the questions they'll ask you during the interview.
Knowing specific things about your company and industry is a great way to see how their brains work and whether they will help you solve any problems.
RESEARCH DONE
What you want to look out for during the hiring process is how much research they have done. Asking them outright about what they've learned is a pretty obvious way to go, but you can also ask them what they thought of your company—the different things they liked. What are things that the company could improve?
Asking these questions will help you filter out those who are just mass applying and don't even know who you are versus someone who has looked into your business and done their homework.
Try to see how much they've learned about the company in this early stage because that will be the trait they will bring with them as they work with you moving forward.
SUGGESTIONS GIVEN
Another thing to look out for during the application process is suggestions. You should ask your applicants if they can give you guidance on how to have better social media, how to show up better online, and how you can add a few things to your business. If they can do this, they'll be brave enough to give suggestions for your business.
One way we do this is through a test that we send out to our applicants. One of the questions is, “Look at this social media page; what are things you would suggest they do more?” Those who answer this question with sense and give good suggestions will likely be good hires.
TRAIN PROACTIVE ASSISTANTS
Let's say that your person is already hired. They're already in your company. What are different ways that you can train them to be more proactive?
OPPORTUNITIES FOR SUGGESTION
The first thing you can do is give them opportunities to provide suggestions. What should we do if it's asking them for their thoughts on this or if we're running this new project? Or even asking them for their opinions will help have their brain relaxed to know that you're open to these suggestions, and they can bring things up if they see anything that can be done better or can be added.
GIVE THEM TRAINING
If you're looking for your assistant to be more effective, one of the best things you can do is give them more training in your industry. Whether it's giving them the courses or the books that you studied yourself or reading up on how other people do it in your industry, this will help them see and capture patterns of how they can help you get things better and up and running faster. This part ensures that your assistant has context on where different things should be working with you in your industry, so again, they can bring up those suggestions or be proactive in taking action or giving ideas on things.
STALK COMPETITORS
Consider having your virtual assistant do some research on them.
If they're stalking your competitors, they can see how other people are doing it better than you or how you're doing it better than other people. They can compare and contrast what different things you guys should stop doing or what you should do less or should be stopped overall. And what are things to keep improving or pushing more on when it comes to seeing like, ” Oh yeah, other people are successful in this, and this is how I can help my boss be more successful in this again”? It will give them a chance to relax, trust that you guys are on the way, that you guys are doing the right things, and also, again, to see if there's anything that you can slow down and something that you can push more.
OUTPUT BASED PROJECTS
One thing they can do to train more is to give them output-based projects.
I mean by giving them projects with just an output, like “Hey, I'd love to see this!” or “Watch how they can get that step by step and watch how they would create that asset.” This way, you're helping them be more output based rather than task-based. It will help them not worry about the details as long as a result matches your request. Of course, there will be going into specific upgrade procedures and processes for certain things, but when it's something new that you're having them dive into, it will help exercise their brains where they can better just work with you and just relax and give suggestions.
GIVE THEM KPIs
One of the most significant ways you can train your assistant to become more proactive is by giving them the KPIs you care about, so KPIs are key performance indicators, and these are just the numbers you care about.
So, for example, when I started with my assistant, it was YouTube and Tiktok—those were the two main things that, as I was growing my brand, I wanted to be known for. And those are the two platforms I picked. So then, all of our content was focused on those platforms. And then all of the suggestions she gave me were okay. This is how we could try this kind of content, or how would we try to connect with these people on the range? So then it was all about that because she knew what I cared about.
If you give your assistant more context on one of the things you care about—the numbers you care about in your business—they can watch those numbers closer and give suggestions on how to do them better.
If you're considering hiring your first virtual assistant and want to ensure they are the right fit, take the 2xYou Scale You Scorecard now: 2xyou.com/scorecard.