hiring a virtual assistant
Reader Interactions
Hiring Guide: Qualities A Professional Administrative Assistant Must Have
Hiring a professional Administrative assistant is part-6 of an interview from Stefan from Germany, who lives the Four Hour Work Week lifestyle in Thailand.
Click here to read part 5 – How to write a job description for an ebook illustrator
Summary:
- Look for a professional administrative assistant, who is willing to get himself trained.
- “I will find a way. Let me research that. I will find a way.” These are the words every employer wants to listen from a virtual assistant.
- Often virtual assistants from the Philippines are very sensitive and you have to treat them really well in order to work with them for a long time.
Start of the Interview:
Francis:
Okay. So that is actually a very good plan. I cannot add anything to that. You find first how to do it perfectly for one picture including you making notes so that you can sort of make a manual of how the perfect solution can be.
And if you choose to, you can always find either more assistants to support your workload or have another professional administrative assistant if the existing assistant leaves you for some reason so that you have a backup solution.
So if you have perfect picture result, keep the process of where you went there – ready on paper.
Stefan:
Yes. Yes. Definitely, that would be. But right now as I’ve said, this is something that I didn’t have a lot of expertise in the editing process.
I know I have basic knowledge about Photoshop and editing but I have no detailed knowledge about that stuff. The whole design creativity, I like that and I don’t have that so I need somebody who has that.
And since I couldn’t do that, I was stuck on the layout, and on the picture problem and so I had to go that way with hiring a professional administrative assistant having this specific skill.
Francis:
Yeah. It’s daunting to not just the wrong idea. By the way, can you tell me a little bit about your assistant? You do not need to share any personal information with me; although, I probably could research this within oDesk since you sent me the invitation.
Since it is your assistant, I would only like to know which country is he from and if you are comfortable with it which amount of money roughly are you investing in to him.
Stefan:
Okay. Right now, I hired him for $60. That is more than the $50. He applied to the job for $60.
That is actually a good thing because I liked that he applied for the amount of money that he wanted instead of the amount of money that I was willing to pay. I did like that.
Francis:
So in other words, he didn’t try to undersell himself.
Stefan:
No. He knew how much he wants for this job. He had a rough idea how much he wants. So I think that was a fair price.
Francis:
Okay.
Stefan:
So he’s from the Philippines and he is studying Media Design.
Francis:
Very good.
Stefan:
So he’s a student, obviously. He seems like a young guy and he didn’t know about the backdoor design.
Francis:
Okay.
Stefan:
Backdoor graphics. He took a whole day after we discussed that possibility to get familiar with backdoor graphics. To teach himself backdoor graphics which was a huge surprise for me that he…
Francis:
Very good. That’s very good.
Stefan:
…was willing to put himself out there and learn what is necessary for the job. The other thing is that, what really surprised me and that was the point where I hired him was after like 2 or 3 days when we worked together.
He told me the magic words that I think, at least I as an employer would always want to hear the words from a professional administrative assistant;
“I will find a way. Let me research that. I will find a way.”
And that I never hear that from somebody so I thought that’s a good work ethic.
Francis:
I think it is an excellent work ethic and I think you had a very good catch with him. Try to hold on to this person.
Try to see if he’s ready to take up more work in other areas of your expertise. Try to see if he’s willing to be taught by you.
Stefan:
Oh, definitely. Definitely.
Francis:
And if you do that, try to see if you would be ready to propose him an hourly job. Assistants on oDesk love hourly jobs because hourly jobs have a payment guarantee.
Stefan:
Yes.
Francis:
If you have a fixed price job, you could say at any point in time, “Oh, you didn’t work well. I don’t give you any money.”
Stefan:
Yeah.
Francis:
He might be able to protest. You might be banned from oDesk but you won’t see any penny.
Stefan:
Ah yeah. That is true. We talked about how we want to handle it and I proposed that we just do it like fixed price right now…
Francis:
Okay.
Stefan:
We’ll see how it works and we can later adjust the payment or something like that. Right now, the situation was like this.
We talked about this project yesterday and right now the idea is that he is redrawing the pictures by hand. Then scanning them and then edit, finalizing them in Photoshop.
Francis:
Okay.
Stefan:
He contacted me today that he tried it and it didn’t work out like he wanted it to be. And that he will propose a new solution to me tomorrow. Maybe, again, redrawing by hand a new picture something like that.
He will contact me tomorrow with one or two new solutions for the situation. And I told him that is no problem because for my side I have to do some work on the E-book still. So, we are in no rush.
Francis:
Okay. My proposition, perhaps, he is not happy with his work. You have to know something about assistants from the Philippines. I have had a few and I’ve also read a lot of resources from experts that teach about hiring from the Philippines.
So, it might be stereotypical and it’s not always the case but often Philippines feel very insecure about themselves. That is why I was really surprised when you told me about your assistant. He was confident and proactive which is rare. A very rare and very precious quality…
Stefan:
Absolutely.
Francis:
Such a professional administrative assistant is like gold. If you have someone who’s intelligent, can speak English and is proactive; you have gold in your hands.
Stefan:
I had, in the past, outsourcers from the Philippines. I had a full time professional administrative assistant from the Philippines who helped me on a project that I wanted to try out that was…
Can I talk about it really fast because it’s about outsourcing into the Philippines?
Continue reading part 7 – Experiences about Outsourcing to the Philippines
Hiring A Virtual Assistant Effectively
I am going to show you how I normally go about hiring a virtual assistant on oDesk.
First of all, you need to be logged in. Then, go to the recruiting table (top left) and you’ll see several options:
- Find a contractor
- Post a job
- Different job postings already opened by you.
Since you’ll not have posted any job until now, there will be no open job posting.
The best way to go about it, before you click to post a job and write the work descriptions, is to click on the dropdown menu and find a job that is similar to yours.
There might be other employers on Odesk which have explained exactly the same task in a job opening to another person – way better than you might able to do. Use this existing knowledge for your advantage. Just type in some keywords which relate to your job.
Example:
- Simply hiring a virtual assistant for regular transcription jobs.
These transcriptions could be used for blog writing. So, I’ll want a person who knows about transcription and possibly blog writing. This is what I will put into my search field and will search for it.
Then, choose 5-10 good job descriptions and study them closely. This will make the task of writing your job description much more easy. Also, you will get a feeling of how much money people are willing to pay for a certain service. You will be able to orient yourself with this information.
Hiring a Virtual Assistant with an Eye-Catching Job Description
This one, for example, looks very sharp at the first glimpse.
It shows an interesting job description. It is clear to read and it has bullet points. There are clear responsibilities and everything is greatly described:
- It’s an hourly job,
- How long it will be required,
- The feedback score which is expected
- and everything clearly laid out in advance.
You can see how much money people want to be paid who apply for this sort of job and at which rate this employer is interviewing the candidates.
You can also see the old work history of the employer. If he has a lot of good feedback you’ll know he is a “good” boss from whose job descriptions you can learn something.
This other job description below also catches the eye, because of the SHOUTING with the capitals. Let’s examine both of them.
The 2nd job description is also pretty well suited to hire virtual assistants. It is very clear and has high expectations of the providers.
Write a little about you and your business
Also, it is good to talk a little bit about yourself, so people who want to work for you will have a clear vision of what you are about.
- Are you a blogger or are you an owner of a big enterprise?
- Are you a private person or a college student?
- For which reason and tasks are you hiring a virtual assistant?
All this makes a huge difference on which is your perfect match as an ideal virtual helper.
A good work description has specific tasks numerated with explanations, one after the other.
If I was a virtual assistant, I would want to apply for this job after reading the job description.
But let’s ask my VA for his advice…
From the point of view of my virtual assistant:
Perhaps I have a different perspective on this process of hiring a virtual assistant.
Providers do not like such long job descriptions. I think job opening descriptions should be
- – short,
- – specific
- – and precise.
Of course you can ask all your concerns in detail at the time of the interview.
Because time is money I would not prefer to spend a lot of time on reading the job descriptions in detail.
Most of the providers also think similar to me and you can see that this job posting is 14 days old and only 11 providers have applied for it.
Thanks for your opinion!
What I also like is this person explains up front that he is happy to receive calls and emails but he cannot always respond immediately and that he is open to feedback and suggestions. Many providers are afraid to give feedback and directions.
But still this work description seems a little bit long for the amount of money people are applying for.
Therefore, I’ll look for other information which will make it possible to me to get a low-cost but optimal transcription expert on my team.
Your job is to first read different job postings. Then, you’ll be ready to post a job yourself.
Looking for the right people when hiring a virtual assistant
Choose the right category for your provider. If you need a writer, post a job to the writer’s category.
Many providers will only apply to the jobs in the right category. So check for the first category which you think is right and then in the sub-category if you can find the right stuff. (Be sure to look at the screenshot!)
Here, it is “Administrative Support” and then “Transcription” which is the right category for your job posting. Then you’ll see a preview just under the Subcategory about how many possible applicants you might have on Odesk.
Do you see a big number? Don’t panic!
You will not interview hundred of thousand applicants.
Make a catchy job title and make a great job description. You can also read some good tips on the right side of your description right on the odesk page for best practices of hiring a virtual assistant.
You can also put a link to an explaining video or a website within the job description.
Do not promote any services there, as it might be against Odesk’s terms of services. You can however use a link to a screenshot recorded by a screen recording software which further explains what you are looking for.
Under the “Skills Required” box write whatever skills you want. As you write your desired skills you will get propositions of what might be the right choice. Choose from those suggestions. You can also enter more than one desired skill.
Choose if you want to have an hourly or a fixed price job.
- A fixed price job is well suited for an assignement of transcribing one hour of audio for a given price.
- An hourly work might be more suitable for transcription if you want to hire a virtual assistant that is reliable and works regularly for you.
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