How to Hire an Assistant (without adding an employee)
by admin ~ June 8th, 2009. Filed under: practice management.How to Have More Time Each Day: How to Find, Screen and Hire Assistants and Virtual Assistants
Sure, it’s nice to have an assistant to do all of the administrative and clerical work. In fact, it’s essential as in most parts of the country, you can hire such a person for $30,000 to $50,000 annually and the time they will free up for you can easily earn you an additional $150,000. Why? because they will do the work values at $15 to $25 an hour while you are generating more business where you earn $100 to $1000 an hour.
The latest trend however is not to take on additional employees but to outsource this work to a virtual assistant. These are trained professionals who are already familiar with your industry (e.g. securities or insurance) and may already work for other professionals just like you. So they don’t need to be taught form scratch. They work from their location using their PC, their phone and you contract for as much time as you need form them–either on a regular basis (e.g. 50 hours per month) or by the project.
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How to Have More Time Each Day: How to Find, Screen and Hire Assistants and Virtual Assistants
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June 22nd, 2009 at 12:11 am
Upon first reading this article I saw the term “virtual assistant” and immediately thought of some kind of android assistant. However on reading more into it, I notice that this term simple applies to a freelancer, such as myself. And I can tell you that the results are a lot better from certain freelancers than what you would get from other “professionals” in the area.
July 26th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
The hard part is to find a reliable virtual assistant. More third party sites will do what Ebay and Amazon marketplace have done to allow people to hire and review… and for virtual assistants to bid and advertise. Lots of moving services sites already use this model.
August 11th, 2009 at 11:09 am
Depending on the skill level of the required tasks, consider offshoring your virtual assistant needs as well. Whether it’s ordering your wife flowers, complaining about a bad invoice, organizing spreadsheets/data, etc. all of these tasks can be handled quite capably overseas for less than $6.00 per hour.
We happily deliver competent, capable VA’s to busy executives and management and are continuously amazed at how excited they are within a few weeks/months at the additional time saved. Most people are concerned about hiring a VA initially because they don’t think they’ll have enough for them to do, but a few weeks in you start to realize the capabilities of your virtual assistant and you can then pile the work on!
August 15th, 2009 at 11:02 am
Finding a virtual assistant is a tough jobs. Even though if you get one, you need to certainly get his trained from scratch.
August 17th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
Depending on the skill level of the required tasks, consider offshoring your virtual assistant needs as well. Whether it’s ordering your wife flowers. Thanks for sharing.
September 2nd, 2009 at 6:50 am
Real Estate is also a great example of a business where a VA is used quite often. Your points are spot on about how to save money with a virtual assistant and not taking on another employee.
September 28th, 2009 at 3:42 am
I certainly like the though of someone taking the jobs that I am not so keen on! I worry about whether they will get done properly I suppose and lower our standards, which just means I have to spend time on training. I know it is the right thing to do… just got to convince myself
November 24th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
Really it is a tough job to find a reliable virtual assistant.Skill,personality, education,experience and knowledge is the key factor that every assistant need to possess.Without all these factor they can’t performed their task smoothly.Thanks for your awesome blog.
December 5th, 2009 at 7:23 am
Love the article. Were thinking about adding an employee to the payroll, but can’t deem the financial side of things.
December 7th, 2009 at 7:09 pm
I agree, outsourcing is indeed the best way to go these days that you want to earn more and focus on your core business. Why waste your valuable time, effort and money when you can leverage by hiring a VA? We did that and we’re reaping the benefits.
December 26th, 2009 at 7:04 pm
My “friendly competitor” has been outsourcing to a “virtual assistant” in india, who answers his emails and calls for 10 cents each.
I’ve been tempted to do the same, but never made that decision because I never looked at it the way you do. This clears things up a little.
January 24th, 2010 at 12:27 am
i agree ! Finding a virtual assistant is a tough jobs. Even though if you get one, you need to certainly get his trained from scratch
January 30th, 2010 at 8:31 pm
it cut off costs if the job’s not to crucial. outsourcing, these day’s been booming.
February 12th, 2010 at 8:58 pm
I’ve tried a few virtual assistants and you definitely get what you pay for. It’s also worth spending the time to train up an assistant. It is frustrating at first – I’ve found in a few cases I’ve ended up thinking that I could just do it quicker myself and in fact I’m not using a VA at the moment for that reason.
I did have a really good one (google Virtusec) a few years ago.
February 13th, 2010 at 7:04 am
Nice info. Thasnks for the report.
But. It’s hard to find a good virtual assistant.
March 2nd, 2010 at 8:16 pm
I am an artist and I have just started a fine art and gifts business. Ohh..I can say it is so difficult to manage everything by myself! I wear many hats during the day…I am artist/painter, manufacturer, secretary / administrator , marketing director……I work from home so space is a problem. A Virtual Assistant would be a very good solution for me.
I think this article gives some very good insights
March 3rd, 2010 at 2:33 am
I started hearing about this technique a few years ago where you could outsource a lot of your back office work to companies out of India. At first I was skeptical of this practice, but I assume if it is general clerical work like you stated above there would only be upside to having that extra help.
March 9th, 2010 at 7:12 am
Its so easy to be caught up in the little stuff that can be done by anyone especially when you run your own business. Learning to let go and let someone else do the “busy work” will help benefit your business in the long run.
Hiring a virtual assistant may be more helpful than looking to hire someone at your physical location. If you list in a small town or a town with lacking talent pool, heading for the virtual assistant route may help ease finding the perfect person for the job.
March 18th, 2010 at 12:57 pm
i think i’m going to disagree with this, i would feel much more comfortable having a live, human assistant. I feel that many things can be lost in translation, expecially over the internet. and i would just be much more comfortable with someone i can see and interact with.
April 17th, 2010 at 6:46 am
This is awesome I was doing research on virtual assistants such as programs to be my secretary. But are you serious? You can contract an assistant. this is awesome news man thank you. I will post another reply telling you how it went.
April 29th, 2010 at 11:11 pm
According to me it is important to have human assistant. I am as a businessman who act on internet business, especially in retail business, I need human assistant to serve my customers. In here i get the tips about how to hire assistant. Hopely i will find many topics here about how to make our business as efficient as possible especially in managing the workers of our company. Thank you for your support.
April 30th, 2010 at 12:22 am
I absolutely agree, we need assistant to get effectiveness of our business. Without assistance, we will have a problem in out focus of management in our company.
April 30th, 2010 at 12:25 am
Yes, we really need our assistant to upgrade our performance of work in our office. We have to hire expert assistance in order we effectively get our aim by spending our money to hire the assistance.
April 30th, 2010 at 12:29 am
I have ever tried to hire an assistant by paying her salary $60.000 ayear to do my task in my office to run my business. It was a very helpful for me. But she is only helping me in the administration tasks, whereas, I really need a person who is able to generate a good idea for my busniess efficiency and effectiveness.
May 13th, 2010 at 3:19 pm
If you want a reliable Virtual Assistant, check out those outsourcing sites such as Odesk or Elance. You can check out their previous experiences and feedback from their former buyers so you’ll know if they are capable and reliable.
May 20th, 2010 at 5:53 pm
Sure wished I could afford to hire a assistant.
May 22nd, 2010 at 5:22 am
Ya but how much do these assistants charge? And also you cant talk to them face to face if a problem arises. Idn its like calling a company now a days. you don’t talk to a real person until you go through 15 different automated menus. or just press 0.
May 24th, 2010 at 1:02 pm
I would defintely agree having an assitant is essential if your bogged down with admin work. I think if your building a business and it’s working and if your busy then its defintely essential so you can focus on growing your company, it also takes a massive amount fo stress off
May 24th, 2010 at 9:56 pm
Very insightfull and true. We should do what we do best and hire others to do the rest
June 2nd, 2010 at 9:33 pm
Interesting point. I’m not convinced but outsourcing but if it’s worked for you lot well done ….
June 4th, 2010 at 5:03 pm
I’ve tried to hire an assistant for my business, however, I had trouble with working round payroll services as I was trying to do it online. Can anyone help?
June 9th, 2010 at 10:01 am
The hard part is to find a reliable virtual assistant.
June 11th, 2010 at 5:15 pm
It’s really good to hire virtual assistant and get more free time to search new ideas and make money on them. And then you can hire additional assistants, then more time. It’s like a spiral. And I think that it’s not a very big problem to find reliable assistant. We have a lot of opportunities to find them.
June 14th, 2010 at 2:40 am
Outsourcing has worked very very well for me. My best advice? Define your job properly and don’t just choose th cheapest!
June 29th, 2010 at 9:09 pm
Good point but a warning here from some one who looked to reduce costs further and outsourced to inexperienced virtual employees. It eventually sorted itself out and I still have a good relationship with the people but it took a hell of a time to get to this point.
By the way, tried to d/l the free report but looks like the link is dead.
regards
Heather
June 30th, 2010 at 12:26 am
I often outsource using craigslist in the US. There’s lots of unemployment so people are eager to work and you can hire for small gigs really easy.
June 30th, 2010 at 10:48 am
It’s so easy to get caught up in tedious and menial tasks that wastes so much valuable time. The important thing about hiring a virtual assistant is to make sure you get someone reliable, and someone youc an trust. I’ve been thinking about getting a VA for a while, so this post has been very valuable to me. Thanks for the info!
July 7th, 2010 at 10:50 pm
This is a great way to get new and experienced employers. There are websites like oDesk where you can find compatible people by posting a job description and from there you can read the employee’s resume, see their past experiences with other oDesk users and can even see their timelogs.
July 8th, 2010 at 9:56 pm
I think these days if you set up an employee/assistant and put them on a pay for performance agreement, everyone wins. You have a hard worker and a booming business.
July 9th, 2010 at 2:27 am
The potential downside to this is, if the virtual assistant you hire has been also hired by others, how can you control how much time, energy and effort they’ll be putting into my needs.
July 9th, 2010 at 5:09 pm
I am getting familiar with outsourcing employment. For my line of work it is important to get any edge I can to stay in front of my competition. Outsourcing means reducing your costs, and you may be providing an employee on the other side of the world with a significantly higher salary than they could get otherwise.
July 12th, 2010 at 1:24 pm
Good point！I like virtual assistants!
July 16th, 2010 at 4:19 pm
I work in the adult market, and I’m working since years with virtual assistant. They’re usually professionals that are potential competitors, but they have the knowledge to help you very quickly. Very interresting to work like this, and a lot more cheaper too. Good article, thanks !
July 20th, 2010 at 10:47 pm
This is a fantastic idea. The concept of virtual assistance is brilliant.
July 22nd, 2010 at 12:40 pm
Virtual assistants are popular nowadays. Thanks to the internet. But choosing the right you for you takes due diligence because they can make or break your business.
July 22nd, 2010 at 12:46 pm
If you want a reliable Virtual Assistant, check out those outsourcing sites such as Odesk or Elance. You can check out their previous experiences and feedback from their former buyers so you’ll know if they are capable and reliable.
July 22nd, 2010 at 11:29 pm
Hiring virtual assistants is great, though I would want to make sure that their credentials are valid. I know with websites like oDesk you can create test projects for the person you’re planning to hire to insure they’re capable of what they say they are.
August 4th, 2010 at 1:21 am
Well I belive hiring a normal assistant it’s hard, because it has to be a reliable and a well trained person.But I belive that hiring a virtual assistant is even harder, because you don’t get the opportunity to know that person and check their knowledges.
August 4th, 2010 at 3:36 am
I love virtual assistant, they save time and money. Timesvr, oDesk and Freelancer are great places to find them.
August 6th, 2010 at 1:27 am
Out sourcing is the wprk is best option. There are many Virtual Assistance services available just make a google search for virtual assitant or VA you will get thousand of sites which offers you this service. Infact for myself i you http://www.taskseveryday.com which is cheapest and best.
August 9th, 2010 at 4:18 am
It’s worth the time and money to go through a few assistants to find one who is loyal. A great assistant is worth his or her weight in gold.
August 9th, 2010 at 9:14 am
I had to save this one over to my space. I am embarresed I never even thought about it. But I outsource everythig else. Great article.
August 19th, 2010 at 1:44 am
As much as I like the idea of delegating work to other coworkers, would it be worth it if you have to take the time to train and mediate that person’s abilities if they don’t have the predetermined credentials to do the task?
August 20th, 2010 at 2:08 am
I think a virtual assistant is a great idea, so long as you’re able to get a decent resume from the person beforehand.
August 20th, 2010 at 3:43 am
Hiring a virtual assistant might work for me since my home business goes up and down and this sounds very affordable.
August 23rd, 2010 at 7:14 pm
i agree with you, we must thingking about adding an employee to the payroll, but can’t deem the financial side of things..
August 23rd, 2010 at 10:45 pm
I think it’s a great idea to outsource clerical and administrative work to assistants. However, how do you know when you’ve found a qualified assistant?
August 24th, 2010 at 12:15 am
I second that Briar. Odesk has proven to be a good outsourcing channel for businesses and companies. Whether you’re looking for a top freelancer to hire for a major part of your project, or a telemarketer to handle the minor aspects like calling and confirming orders, the test project helps us avoid incapable workers early on.
August 28th, 2010 at 8:28 pm
You can hire another person in some outsourcing sites that you can pay them per hour or per task completed. But if you want, you can add the task of your current team that are willing to go another task and pay them.
August 29th, 2010 at 12:34 pm
You should assure a good quality work when you hire a virtual assistant. There are lots of ways to have a virtual assistant and you can hire them for a low payment per month.
August 31st, 2010 at 3:14 am
I has a some work on online so now dis blog gave a brilliant idea which is virtual assistant.I will keep on that work.
Thanks,
Rachel
pearl bracelet
August 31st, 2010 at 11:59 pm
I have just added an Assistent in the Phillippins to my company. Sure, it is like hiring an employee, but for 200 $ a month it is worth trying. An she is actually quite good. See is responable for research and CPA instruments and does a good job with it!
Take care!
September 2nd, 2010 at 1:49 pm
If you want a reliable Virtual Assistant, you choice a good one who are knows how what they do. And you may be providing an employee on the other side of the world with a significantly higher salary than they could get otherwise.
September 14th, 2010 at 2:44 am
Without any doubt virtual assistant is great and as experience shows me the job they do very good, nowadays salary you pay virtual assistant is not as high as ordinary assistant so i will probably continue hire virt. assistants.
Best Regards, thanks for the post
September 21st, 2010 at 5:19 pm
I have some good experiances with hiring virtual assistant. I hired assistend from PH and it only cost me 350$ monthly for full time work (160h).
September 24th, 2010 at 6:50 am
I think virtual assistant is pretty solid and has always delivered as expected. The main issue for most people is money, in which case it pays off to use virtual assistants. However, I have heard of lots of people who have tried it once and are now totally opposed to it. I guess it depends on your experience.
September 24th, 2010 at 8:17 pm
Finding the right virtual assistant is a trial and error. You’re lucky if you’ll immediately find one that works in sync with you. Most often it takes a few tries to find the perfect one.
September 27th, 2010 at 12:51 pm
Assistant may be virtual, but real meetings several times a week are needed. Between the manager and assistant necessarily need a visual contact. But everything depends on the type of business.
September 28th, 2010 at 9:04 am
Outsourcing your work to overseas is really a brilliant idea. You can’t image how cheap it is, and how high the return! Just give them a try, you will see . I myself hire two virtual assistant. Really rewarding!
October 8th, 2010 at 4:08 am
Assistants are great. I know my life wouldnt nearly be the same without one!
October 23rd, 2010 at 9:23 pm
Finding and being virtual assistant is not easy..! but it’s worthy to try
October 26th, 2010 at 4:01 pm
Great article about hire an assignment.
Thanks
November 11th, 2010 at 3:14 am
The hardest part about the virtual assistant for me have been finding someone you can trust with your work.
November 19th, 2010 at 5:38 pm
Be grateful to read this blog because i came to know that never hire someone until you have a clear job description so be prepared to provide one.
November 20th, 2010 at 3:36 am
I have been thinking about trying getting a virtual assistant for a while. Funny seeing this article, I think I might have to further investigate.
November 21st, 2010 at 7:23 am
With overheads on employing a person increasing day by day, a virtual assistant will be a good idea. Thanks for throwing some light on it. It will be worth trying.
December 13th, 2010 at 8:50 am
what ! this is great when we can hire assistant without add more employee. Good job, it’s open my eyes
December 15th, 2010 at 3:31 am
Your proposal makes sense. I’ve seen a lot of ads on the internet for virtual assistants so this idea could be becoming more popular. It seems like a good way to make your business budget go further.
December 21st, 2010 at 1:09 pm
Hiring a virtual assistance (freelancer) is a better option as you said, we need not spend time in training about the business process and also they can be hired for our budget level, but how far we can trust them in getting the work done on time?
February 28th, 2011 at 4:24 pm
Really it is a tough job to find a reliable virtual assistant.Skill,personality, education,experience and knowledge is the key factor that every assistant need to possess.Without all these factor they can’t performed their task smoothly.Thanks for your awesome blog.
March 21st, 2011 at 9:28 pm
I agree, outsourcing is indeed the best way to go these days that you want to earn more and focus on your core business. The main issue for most people is money, in which case it pays off to use virtual assistants. However, I have heard of lots of people who have tried it once and are now totally opposed to it.
March 29th, 2011 at 7:58 am
I agree, outsourcing is indeed the best way to go these days that you want to earn more and focus on your core business. Why waste your valuable time, effort and money when you can leverage by hiring a VA. Thank you.
April 6th, 2011 at 3:30 pm
The issue really is how to find a good quality virtual assistant at the right price. I have successfully outsourced to the Philippines and found a graduate who is now doing an excellent job at a relatively low cost. They speak excellent English. It took me a considerable effort to find this person though.
April 26th, 2011 at 1:01 pm
outsourcing is the future, is less costly and time consuming
July 15th, 2011 at 7:00 am
Outsourcing virtual assistants is a fad now. The only con to this is that you are not protected (nor they are) under law, in case some issues may arise, moreso if it comes to financial concerns that boils down to betrayal of trust. But this shouldn’t be an issue if you are in the first place, smart enough to hand down only the matters that are not that critical to the point of giving them access to your financial accounts. I know someone who has hired a VA for his online marketing endevours and it’s already been 3 years, and he really found a trustworthy assistant that takes care of the business for him. And he pays her not close to 1 % of his net monthly income, so it’s truly worthy (and money-saving) outsourcing VAs that are really worth the trust.
July 26th, 2011 at 7:27 pm
This is A brilliant idea, taking full advantage of the technology available. The only problem I would assume would be to find an assistant you can trust and that you know will do the job well, however this can only be discovered through personal experience over time or via other peoples experience and advice. Great idea though
August 19th, 2011 at 10:54 pm
You said: “The latest trend however is not to take on additional employees but to outsource this work to a virtual assistant.”
This is the trend going forward. Many people will end up being freelancers of some sort in the future. It keeps the person accountable because actual scope of work is exchanged for payment on a as-needed basis. Keeps costs low for the business as well. Heck, I use this myself to a degree during the peak season in my business as I don’t need so many on payroll about 8 months of the year in WA.
August 21st, 2011 at 4:53 am
I agree with that. Outsourcing is the future and sounds very useful for me.
Great Article.
Thank you
September 7th, 2011 at 2:33 pm
The good thing about them is that you don’t need to spend time to teach them since they already know what is to be done. Again you don’t need to rent space as they will be working from where they are.
September 13th, 2011 at 2:26 pm
It is indeed very helpful to my business to find a virtual assistant. I even have virtual assistant this time working for all my clerical jobs. Its just simply amazing that I found a very hardworking and honest VA so the tasks are carried all the way.
October 22nd, 2011 at 1:51 am
I’ve hired VAs before and they’re terrific … if you find the right person. It’s not so easy to find the right person, but once you do, it can be an outstanding arrangement. Be patient in the beginning, and provide clear instructions. I’ve sent over videos showing how to have things done. Once you get the “system” going, then you can fully leverage the VA and free up your time. You need to view it as a system because eventually you want to step out of the process and let the system build your business.
October 26th, 2011 at 6:17 am
I agree that it takes considerable effort to find a good VA. I’ve actually gone through a few, only to be left disappointed and ended up hiring in-person assistants instead.
It really depends on what you are going to have them do (i.e. are you in a specialized area? Will the assistant need special training? Is a high level of language fluency required? etc.).
I think the idea can really work for some, but for others, the results can be a very negative experience.
Anyways, I’ve done both and both have pros and cons — really depends on the context.
December 28th, 2011 at 5:37 pm
Hiii…I’m just new here so I’ve no idea about it at all. Keep going on this way in future also.