how to hire full-time virtual assistants

Francis

And since my assistant has worked with me for a long period of time, he knows me. And also, can give her feedbacks. So he said okay, he really wrote that. They were chatting and since I can see the screen captures from my main assistant work diary, I saw what they were talking about sometimes.

And you are saying, okay, so first of all Francis is a nice guy and he’s really patient and he will give you great instructions via video. So, that’s what my assistant told the full time candidate.

And then he was explaining the system. How SBI! works, what my sites were all about, and where my goals are at. I didn’t have to do that anymore. So, this saved me a lot of time explaining.

And I knew about this because I am reviewing regularly the screen captures from oDesk. So, that’s I guess a pro for the project based assistants.

Eric

You’re right. And I think that when you’re first hiring your first assistant, I think that you have to kind of hire that person as a General VA, you know.

You don’t want to think that they can do everything. You kind of hire them as okay, check emails, check I don’t know whatever things, doing research, different things like that.

And you hire a person to basically just do general tasks for you. And then as you start to evolve and your business starts to grow then you can kind of be like okay, well now I’m ready to add people to my team.

Then you can promote that person and then they can start like you said doing the hiring and kind of be the middle person between you and the other assistants. And they’re kind of like the team leader and, you know what I’m saying?

Francis

Yes, I believe — I agree and that’s what I’m actually doing.

Eric

Because, I think as business owners when we first start getting into the whole concept of virtual assistants, I don’t think that we understand the idea of building the team. We look at it as, “Oh we’re just hiring individuals and they’re just going to work for me and do specific tasks.”

But, I think if we really want to live the dream of having a virtual assistant or being able to sit on the beach and not do anything, you know what I’m saying?

You have to build a team. You have to create certain rules that you want for that certain project. And then hire people to fill that role rather than just having a bunch of random stuff going on in your business. Does that make sense?

Francis

Yeah, it totally does make sense. And also if the team is synergetic, so working with each other to complement each other. That’s much more efficient than if everyone has sort of the same set of tasks and are not talking to each other. Then a lot of potential stuff can be lost.