If you are a CEO, you’re probably familiar or have been in a situation where you have too much to do with too little time. You are so caught up with mundane administrative tasks that often the more productive tasks take a backseat. That’s where a Virtual Personal Assistant fills in.
Virtual Personal Assistants are pretty much like your regular employees or your regular PA only virtually. They can help you with a variety of tasks like scheduling appointments, managing emails, taking calls on your behalf, travel bookings and a host of other administrative tasks that a CEO may not have time for.
A lot of CEOs and entrepreneurs I know understand and feel the need to hire a Virtual PA but very few are ready to take the leap.
Thoughts like “it’s difficult to find the right person’’, ‘’how can you trust a third person with your business working remotely” etc cloud their mind.
Well…the fact is that hiring a Virtual Personal Assistant to help you with your daily tasks can actually turn out to be one of the best decisions of your life provided you do your homework well and hire from a reputed source.
Let’s take a look at some of the places where you can get a Virtual Personal Assistant:-
1. Freelance Sites – There are a number of websites where you can find Virtual assistants on a freelance basis. They generally charge by the hour depending on the nature of the task. Some of the popular freelancing sites include:-
i) Upwork –
The most popular and the biggest freelance website out there. It’s like a virtual platform where employers and employees come together. Freelancers create a profile and bid for tasks as per their interest. Clients, on the other hand, register with certain jobs. Freelancers then bid for the mentioned task. You can check out profiles and then contact the shortlisted person for further questions.
ii) Freelancer.com –
Similar to Upwork, you post your requirement where freelancers can send their bids. You can also browse profiles of available freelancers and make a direct offer instead. Pretty simple and effective!
iii) PeoplePerHour –
Another virtual platform to connect clients with expert freelancers. You can easily find a resource to work for you on hourly or on a per-project basis.
iv) VirtualStaffFinder –
This website is a number one provider of dedicated staff including Virtual Assistants, Developers, Designers, SEO, Content writer, etc. Simply create an account and put a job description and that’s it. Virtual Staff Finder will optimize your job description with just the right words so as to attract the right candidates. They filter profiles and you get to interview the top three shortlisted ones. Couldn’t get simpler than that!
v) Get Friday -
A leading online virtual assistance service provider offering virtual assistance and business support services to entrepreneurs and small businesses.
2. Outsourcing Companies – Another way to hire Virtual Personal Assistants is to go through one of the outsourcing companies or KPO (Knowledge Process Outsourcing) as they are commonly known. They basically act as agencies or middlemen who provide you with a best-suited resource as per your needs.
These companies have a team of people for each task and simply assign the resource to the project. You as a client will not have many roles in the selection process but if you want you can insist on interviewing the candidates. The arrangement and mode of operation here is slightly different as you don’t hire people for a task but rather outsourcing the entire task to another company who is then responsible for getting the task done as per your satisfaction. Of course, the good thing is that you always have somebody to complain to, if you are not happy with your resource and can even demand your money back. It’s a much more formal arrangement with the proper agreement, payment terms, and non-disclosure agreements, etc in place so as to safeguard the interest of both parties.
There are two ways of hiring a Virtual Personal Assistant and again there is the right or wrong way. It all depends on your requirement, nature of the task, your personal situation like would you rather prefer outsourcing the entire project or prefer working with a freelancer.
Costs might vary. Freelancers may fall cheaper but would require a much higher level of supervision and monitoring. Companies, on the other hand, promise a better quality of resources, more professionalism and can, therefore, work independently with minimal supervision. They may be slightly more expensive compared to freelancers as they are middlemen and there are costs involved but the average quality would definitely be better.