Denise Work Diary – My First Week At Work as a Virtual Assistant

On February 3, when I received the email from Sir Francis telling me that I was the one he had chosen as a virtual assistant, I was really thrilled! During the interview, I truly thought that he was very nice, and even though I was pretty nervous at that time, I didn’t have a hard time talking to him. So I was happy to get that email. And since it has been a while since I had a job and I was raring to work, I was glad that I was the one he picked from the many applicants and I was simply excited to prove that he wasn’t wrong about selecting me for the position.

So on my first day, Sir Francis gave me an overview about himself and what his work entails. Also, he introduced me to his main assistant who is working with him for a long time. And considering that I was still starting out and my major tasks were still being organized, he just asked me to go through his Ideal Helper website and proofread it. I have already checked the website on the day he first contacted me but I went over it again.

I didn’t mind doing this because checking out the website isn’t really tedious at all for the following reasons:

1. The website was laid out simply and avoided too much confusion; 
    
2. The posts that were written were very straightforward and the articles that were shared were quite honest; and
    
3. everything in there was very informative for those who are looking to outsource and for those who want to become virtual assistants. 

I just wish I knew about this site when I was a virtual assistant for a past employer — it would’ve been very useful to me and my boss. But being a part of this very helpful website right now is great!

Well anyway, what I did was first read a few main pages. Proofreading is always easier when you understand what you’re going to edit. It wasn’t quick work, though, since there were a lot of subtopics. However, the work was still quite enjoyable since I learned a lot along the way which I could really use for my new job. It was like hitting two birds with one stone!

I went on doing that until Francis’ main assistant sent me an invitation to Dropbox. I already had it and had previous experience with is so not a lot of time was wasted there.  Also, I received an audio file from Sir Francis about a few basics. It was quite long but still, it was better than getting a call through Skype because I can simply repeat a portion if there is something I couldn’t understand or I can stop it if I need a quick break.

Then soon enough, I got a sitemap of Ideal Helper and some Ebooks from Francis main assistant that he sent through Dropbox. The sitemap really helped and enabled me to through the site in an organized manner. Also, it was in Excel form so I can jot down the status of the sites I’ve finished.

Regarding the Ebooks, I was advised to read the one about writing content before the others. so I did just that. Both documents were really great. I started thinking that these guys really knew what they were doing because everything they were sending me really ‘hit the spot’ so to speak. I couldn’t be any happier with the files. I even uploaded the Ebooks to my tab so I can check it out wherever I am.

After so, I received another invitation to TimeProof and a set of initial tasks. Also I received another file in Dropbox which took some time to sync because It was huge. I decided to just come back to it after I was done with the other tasks. So I did what I could from the list: I installed TimeProof, subscribed to the Party Games and Ideal Helper blogs through Feedburner, informed Francis’ main virtual assistant about my payment modes. I didn’t understand about the rest so I just went on reading Ideal Helper.

Then I got an email from Sir Francis asking me if I can Skype with him the next day. So we talked and I learned that the file was a video about the next set of instructions so that was why I couldn’t understand what the other stuff in the initial list was. 🙂

Good thing though that because of TimeProof, Francis main virtual assistant was able to see that I was still pouring over the Ideal Helper website when I was supposed to be doing something else and that is why he asked to Skype so that I can be corrected. So I just made a note to check out the video after the call and start out the new week with it. During the call, he also reminded me about the importance of daily updates and he gave me a side task to write about my experience at work so far.

So that is basically how my first week went. Things are still a little overwhelming but after I’ll see the video, I bet things will be clearer. I made a list of things to check out too, in order to make my work easier — like the Gmail extension the Quickrr to-do service I read about in the site. Hopefully, by the end of this week, I’ll have a clearer vision of what I should be working on every day.