Within the last three years since I’ve had my virtual assistant agency 2xyou, as well as, the last seven years of hiring for virtual assistant companies, I’ve learned a lot of different things that you can do to be able to find out how you can hire the best person for your business.

Pre-Hiring Stage

When it comes to your pre-hiring stage, there are a couple of things that you need to keep in mind or be able to do, to be able to prepare yourself for a virtual assistant. The same thing goes with the hiring stage of making sure how you filter and how you find the right person and the post-hiring stage where all the work actually really starts once you have your person.

If you have no idea what a Virtual Assistant is, it is essentially someone who works with you virtually or remotely. They could be working from the Philippines or from other countries and you are just working from home – both of you are working from home and you're both working together on the different goals and the different tasks that need to be done in your company and you can think of them as your Executive Assistant.

Imagine that you are in an office and you got a secretary right there except they're going to be a million miles from you.

Tasks Clarity

This is the first process that I run through all of our potential clients. It’s knowing what the tasks are that only you can do as a client and tasks that are perfect to delegate to an assistant. There's also a caveat to that, there are tasks that you should probably automate and one that you should probably delegate so it's a whole grid that I walk our clients through on what those tasks would look like in their business.

Things that only you can do are usually what are called ‘Vital Tasks’ – vital tasks are things that move the needle in your business, whether it’s getting a new client or creating a new product or process in your business – whatever it is that moves it forward are vital tasks.

Functional Tasks

You think of them more as operations tasks as things that will be needed to get done to run the business. This could be client delivery – these are mostly tasks that are more repetitive and easier to follow as a process which usually means that they can be delegated to an assistant. You have to find the vital tasks in your business that are least functional meaning that they're not repeatable, that these are the things that only you could do. This is a specialty that you bring into your business and the things you can delegate to an assistant that could also be a little bit high on the vital and high on the functional. What are those tasks that an assistant can easily step into just because it doesn't have to be involving – something that's custom every time. They know the process – they know the step-by-step process of what to do next.

Automated Tasks

When it comes to tasks that can be automated, these are usually the high functional tasks but the least vital tasks like email newsletters and social media management. These are things that you can automate or make it a template where it's easy to follow through. You don't really have to think about it, it’s something that's just a process in your business.

For any tasks that are low in vital and low in functional, you either will outsource that to someone else or even just delete it from the to-do list.

Having that clarity right off the bat is going to help you make sure that you don't lose money. A mistake that I've seen a lot of people make when it comes to hiring a virtual assistant is that they delegate the tasks that are really vital in their business like doing sales calls or doing client delivery.

These are things that they can't really do because they're not YOU, so you have to keep that in mind as you go through this process.

Create Tutorials

Now that you have the clarity of what tasks to delegate to an assistant, you can start by creating videos of yourself. There are tools like Loom or Vidyard, or you can even record yourself on Zoom doing a walk-through.

Tools

Look at the different tools that you're using in the business. I always say that there are four main tools that an assistant would need to know for their client's business:

Productivity Tool

or a Project Management Tool where you can track the tasks.

Time tracking Tool

To see the hours that they're working and what they're working on, so tools like Hubstaff or Toggl

There's also going to be a Data Collection Tool like Google Drive or Dropbox or basically a way for you to share files seamlessly, and;

Communication Tool

The main mode of communication that you guys are going to be using back and forth. Establishing that early is going to be really important.

Job Ad that Filters

You’re going to go ahead and create a job ad that filters. When it comes to the job ad, it's not really a super complicated thing. You can literally just have lists of responsibilities, lists of tasks, how to contact you and the goal for the position if you want to add that in, and then a little bit of an About You in your business. It can be as simple as that.

The main thing that you need to add is that they need to be self-filtering, what I mean by that is adding an Easter egg to your job ad so then people who don't read the job ad get automatically kicked out.

As an example, it could be that in one of the places in your job ad you said, ‘hey make sure in the subject line you include this word’ or ‘in your application letter, you include this word’ or, ‘hey, please customize your resume to say my company's name so I can easily find you.’ Things like that where people have to do some extra work and not just send in their application straight.

It's going to filter a lot of people who are just doing a little bit of mass application or are just pushing without really reading if they're going to fit the role.

Skills Test

Depending on the kind of virtual assistant that you need – and I have a whole lot of videos on my channel about different types of assistance, you want to make sure that you're able to filter their skills to see if they're actually good at it beyond just their portfolio. You can just look at the portfolio and see what they've done before as a basis but having an extra step of, ‘Hey, if you need someone with graphic skills’, or ‘Hey, can you create this one Facebook post for me?’ Just to see if they could be a match for your brand because someone who may be amazing in one industry doesn't necessarily mean that they'll do really well in yours.

You want to see if they're going to be a match in that way. It could be through a Writing Test, it could be an Email Responding Test where they write up how they would respond to an email, things like that where you filter for yourself if that person can actually do what you need them to do.

Hiring Stage

The first thing you're probably wondering is, ‘Where can I hire an assistant?’ There are a lot of different places and I only really focus on the main three.

Referrals

You can never go wrong when it comes to referrals. There are probably other people who have had virtual assistants and either that virtual assistant is not just part-time or they open their own agency like I did, it's a quick way to filter people out already because you have a referral — you have this person saying, ‘hey, I've worked with this person’ or ‘I've heard of this person and I think they would be a really good fit working with you.’

Onlinejobs.ph

This is where I usually really recommend a lot of people hire from, especially if you're hiring for the Philippines. It’s originally where I got hired a lot as a freelancer when I was still doing that and still a place where even as we are a Philippine Corporation for my company, we still hire out of there because a lot of people are going there. It's kind of a usual place for people who are working from home to go into and it's just one of the ways they can also easily filter other people because you can see the resume, you can see their information, they have to verify to a certain point to be able to be there and you can see that level of verification. I usually honestly don't recommend Upwork just because it does take a lot of fees for the freelancer or the person that you're hiring, so I'd rather that's kind of a direct hiring through onlinejobs.ph.

Work with an agency

There are a lot of really really good ones depending on the range of your budget, the kind of scope that you need, if you just really need a marketing assistant or if you need a sales assistant, depending on the variety of needs that you might have for a VA, there are a lot of really good agencies out there, and if you want to try to see if 2xYou could be a fit for you, you can go ahead and take our scorecard at 2xyou.com/scorecard to be able to see and be able to book a call if you're a match at the very end.

Interviews

As you're receiving all of these resumes, these application letters, you've probably sent out a few tests and you found maybe two, three or five candidates who seem to be a really good fit, the next part of that process is just going through interviews. It's seeing if they could be a match not just skill-wise but also back and forth vibe-wise.

• Are they someone who's personable?
• Are they likable?

You see that through the interview. You can choose to do a chat interview which most shy Filipinos would prefer or you can just go ahead and jump on a Zoom call.

Usually, the top three questions that I would ask during an interview:

What is your home situation like?

Are you at a home office?

Are you able to have quiet time?

Are you able to have a place where you can create a routine and actually get work done?

Goal – I would usually ask them about their goal — what is the thing that they're working towards? because for you as their boss, as their manager, you can then guide them like, ‘hey wasn't your goal to have your own house?’ So we'll work on getting you bonuses, getting you a raise through X Y and Z process so then you're able to know how to inspire them and motivate them as you're working with them.

Find out their problem-solving skills – this is going to be very essential. You can walk them through a scenario like:

What would you do if you had to do X Y and Z?’ or you can ask them questions like,

What has been the most difficult thing that you've ever had to come across or ever had to do and how did you solve it?’

You're trying to see if they're the kind of person who can take initiative, who can problem solve, who can give suggestions and someone who can speak up if there's something that's not doing well.

Once you've done that and you have the one person who seems like a perfect fit, if you're hiring direct, you can try to do a trial period.

Trial Period – This usually can be just a 30-day trial period, it could be 90 depending on how well they do in those 30- 90 days but I really recommend you just test them out like putting them into probationary and showing them processes that you will be going through to see if they’re going to be a good fit.

Once you've hired someone and this is where the real work starts, the first thing that you want to do is to make sure that you onboard them for the next 90 days.

90-day Onboarding – you might be wondering why it takes that long or why 90 days – in 2xYou, it’s what we have found over and over again to be the best time to be able to get someone onboarded, give them context and see if they’ll actually shape up.

In those 90 days, you want to focus on three things:

• Making sure that they can catch up on those tasks and actually do the task that needs to be done.
• If they can then follow the processes that you've created (documenting, making sure that's part of your systems) and making sure that they're able to use the tools that you're using.
• If they're a good fit for you and your business and who it is that you need.

Sometimes, someone could be highly skilled in what it is that they can do – they're able to catch things up but they're just not someone that you can really see working in your business long-term.

There are times when it is like that, which is why it's really important to have that 90-day onboarding.  Once you have that is you also want to set up daily syncs.

Daily Syncs – you might already be feeling tired of the thought of doing daily syncs but basically, you want to make sure that there is a time when you and your assistant can catch up despite the time zones. You could be in the US or in the Philippines, you want to make sure that you align in some way to make sure that you guys are on the same page on what their three main priorities are throughout their day and throughout the week.

This is also a good opportunity to be training them to be giving them context on a lot of different things that are going on in your business.

Set-Up Training – you want to make sure that you set up ongoing training what I mean by this is you want to make sure that any time that they have to learn a new skill for your business that you're able to provide them that training because as much as amazing it would be to have just an assistant who just self-studies there's always going to be things that you prefer for your industry for your business that needs to be coming from you.

For me, when it comes to training my assistant, I want to make sure that I'm looking at the things that they're going through not just the self-study because there's so much information out there that's easier if you just filter it out and be able to give it to them so you know what questions to ask them, you also know if they actually got it or understood the training that they're supposed to be going through.

The two main things you have to always keep in mind when it comes to hiring and managing people and I got this from my friend, Dan McPherson who talked about the two things that people look for when they're working – they have a career is movement and growth. You want to make sure that you're providing both to your assistant moving forward as you hire them.

If you want more guidance on which area of your life your assistant can help you with, you can go to www.2xyouva.scoreapp.com to see how ready you are for an assistant when it comes to your tasks, your systems and where you are at, to help stairstep you to scale.