How to hire a personal assistant online is one question or challenge that the perpetually busy business owner or entrepreneur will eventually ask himself. He or she reaches that turning point upon the realization that a lot of his time is being consumed to paperwork, menial tasks, and small but time-eating chores that could have been delegated to a junior member of the staff. He or she keeps on missing out on important meetings with customers or cannot focus on strategy formation and other executive decisions. At the same time, the company may not have the kind of budget that will allow them to hire a department or several staff members who can assume this workload for them.

The option to hire a personal assistant online then becomes attractive to him. First, the costs compared to hiring full-time employees are smaller by comparison. Second, an remote employee can work under a more flexible arrangement that is more suitable to the business owner’s objectives. For example, his work hours and pay rates can be increased or lessened according to the needs of his boss or supervisor. Third, he or she may have generalist skills — such as communication, documentation, travel arrangements, and project management — but can also contribute other extra and vital works that the business owner may not have to shell out a lot of money for. These extra skills can include but are not limited to marketing, IT, sales, and event organization.

Steps to follow to hire a personal assistant online?

First, he must have a clear idea of what he wants from the virtual assistant. A list of the tasks that he wants to offload or add must be completed. It would be better to start with the one that he really wants to delegate. Another way to make this list easier is to categorize the tasks. For example, under administration, he can put in tasks like coordinating meetings or filing online documents. Under finances, he can list down tasks like budget computation or financial statements.

Second, the business owner must be able to estimate how many hours he wants a VA needs to spend on each task. He can also schedule same. For example, all of Monday, for an entire eight hours a day, would be spent on administration. Finances can be done at the end of each week, taking only five to six hours. If there are guests flying into the company, then travel arrangements can be inputted in for one hour each day.

Next, once he has a firm image of the tasks he wants to be done, the business owner can then set reasonable expectations for the deliverables he anticipates. He would have to determine the competencies and capabilities of this virtual assistant. A virtual assistant must be a professional, they should be someone who can not just communicate verbally and online, but one who is organized, quick on the job, mentally alert, adept in computer software, and trustworthy. They might want to add a few more skills that the VA needs help in, such as research and marketing studies.

Third, once the expectations have been set, it is the time to ask help from the experts who can find him one. Asking recommendations from friends or browsing platforms peopled by freelancers are the more popular options, but they too can be time-consuming. The business owner would end up adding more hours to his to-do list just posting job ads online, downloading resumes of potential candidates, sifting through them, selecting the suitable ones, and then calling or emailing them up for interviews. Without realizing it, he is continuing the problem he wants to solve. He must remember that he needs to hire a virtual assistant, and not fill it unintentionally that very same vacancy.

A more cost-efficient and productive way is to ask the help of companies that do managed outsourcing and have a talent pool of capable, reliable, and skilled staff who work remotely. One advantage in this approach is that the talent pool is already packed with proven talent who have the necessary experience and skills. Second, the managed outsourcing company will do the actual screening and selection of the professional based on its meetings with the business owner. Third, it will continually monitor the remote worker’s performance while keeping the business owner updated about his progress. Aligning with a managed outsourcing company is the best way to hire any professional online.

HOPLA is one such company who can help free you up from your heavy burdens by finding the right talent who can help you. Call us now.