SS57: How to Successfully Hire and Train Virtual Assistants

Welcome to Strategy Saturday; I’m Charles Carillo and today we’re going to be discussing How to Successfully Hire and Train Virtual Assistants.

Every entrepreneur should be outsourcing tasks to a virtual assistant, but where do you find one, how do you vet them and how do you hire them? In this episode, Charles discusses what the process is to find, vet and train virtual assistants.

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Talking Points:

I started really using virtual assistants after reading Tim Ferriss’ Book, “The 4 Hour Work Week” – the book describes how outsourcing daily tasks and activities to virtual assistants within one’s business can free them from the workaholic lifestyle; which was exactly what Tim has done and the book explains his journey from 14-hour days to 4-hour weeks. I highly recommend this book to any entrepreneur.
The main question really before using virtual assistants or VAs is what can I outsource to them? There are seriously thousands of activities that can be outsourced to VAs. With a few internet searches, you can discover a list of activities that are outsourceable.
We utilize a number of VAs in our business. We have VAs to; edit our podcasts and YouTube episodes and images, handle our marketing and social media, for performing online research, for our web design, handle incoming emails and messages, perform recurring tasks, property underwriting, update our email newsletter, update our CRM, writing content, posting content, bookkeeping and more. I actually had one of my VAs research Chicago Steakhouses when I was meeting some of our investors there a couple of years back. You will be amazed at how much you can outsource.
We mainly use UpWork.com for our virtual assistants and it is fairly easy to create a job post using their website.
- I also make sure to have a unique phrase in job postings toward the end of them so I am sure they have read it when they apply. About half of the job applicants, I have found, do not read the full post. This phrase will be like “Make sure to reply with I have experience with HubSpot in the first line of your response when applying.” You can add this phrase in the second to last paragraph to weed out people who are applying and not reading.
- Next, I will confirm the job particulars when they apply. I have had it before when people have no idea what they applied for or that they want to renegotiate the rate. You can delete these as soon as this happens.
- I will always state that we will start off with a couple or a few hours a week before increasing. If you have 10 hours of work; tell them you will start with 2-4 hours per week and then grow from there.
- The biggest mistake I see people make with VAs is that they hire them and think they are trained. It takes dozens of hours to train people fully, for every hour you are outsourcing. For example; if you are outsourcing 5 hours of work per week; prepare to spend 50-60 hours training them over the first couple of months.
- When hiring, read reviews and job success rates; take this into consideration when choosing a VA.
- Compensation depends on the skills of the person and where they are located. You set the price you want to pay when you create the job post.
- Make sure your budget matches the job; I have some highly paid VAs and I am not going to pay them to do online research; I hire someone separately to perform research and save their findings into a Google Sheet that I have set up for them. There is no limit to the VAs you can hire. I am always trying to recognize new things I can outsource.
- Spend a week and keep track of what you do consistently; weekly, daily, etc. Identity activities that you can outsource and start with a couple of easy tasks and then build off of that. Sometimes hire more than one and see which one does a better job or connects better with you. We get all of our VAs onto our Slack channel in order to communicate with them easily.

Transcript:

Charles:
Welcome to Strategy Saturday; I’m Charles Carillo and today we’re going to be discussing how to successfully hire and train virtual assistant. I started really using virtual systems after reading Tim Ferris’s book the for hour work week. Now, the book describes how outsourcing daily tasks and activities to virtual assistance within one’s business can free them, him from the workaholic lifestyle, which was exactly what Tim had done. And the book explains his journey from 14 hour days to a four hour work week. Now I highly recommend this book to any entrepreneur because it’ll help you take things off your plate and really focus on income generating activities. Now, the main question shouldn’t really before using virtual assistance or VAs is what can I outsource to them? There are seriously thousands of activities that can be outsourced to a VA with a few internet searches. You can discover a list of activities that are outsourceable.

Charles:
Now we utilize a number of VAs in our business. We have a VAs to edit our podcasts and you YouTube episodes and images handle our marketing and social media helping us with performing online research for our web design handling incoming emails and messages, performing reoccurring tasks property underwriting, updating our email newsletter, updating our CRM, writing content, posting content bookkeeping, and more. And I actually had one of my VAs actually research Chicago steakhouse. Once when I was meeting some of our investors there a couple years back, you’ll be amazed at how much you can outsource. So we mainly use upwork.com for our virtual assistants, and it’s fairly easy to create a job using their website. I also make sure to have a unique phrase in job postings toward the end of them. So I am sure they have read it when they apply about half of job applicants.

Charles:
I have found do not read the full post. This phrase will be something like, make sure you reply that with, I have experience with HubSpot in the a first line of a response when applying, and you can add this phrase in the second to last paragraph, to weed out people who are applying in that reading next, I will confirm the job particulars when they apply. I have had it before when people have no idea what they applied for, or they wanna renegotiate the rate, the price that you set on there that they applied for for you can also, you can just like delete these people as soon as this happens. I will always state that we will start off with a couple hours or a few hours a week before increasing their hours. Now, if you have 10 hours of work, tell ’em, you’ll start with two to four hours per week and then grow from there.

Charles:
Now the biggest mistake I see people make with VAs is that they have hire them and think they’re already trained. It’s completely not true. It takes dozens of hours to train people fully for every hour. You are outsourcing. For example, if you’re outsourcing five hours of work per week, prepare to spend 50 to 60 hours, training them over the first couple of months when hiring read reviews and job success rates, and take this into consideration when you’re choosing a virtual system. Now compensation depends on the skills of the person and where they’re located and you set the price you want to pay. When you create the job post, make sure your budget matches a job. I have some highly paid VAs and I’m not going to pay them to do online research. I hire someone separately to perform research and save their findings into a Google sheet that I’ve set up for them.

Charles:
There is no limit of the VAs you can hire. I am always trying to recognize new things I can outsource and then trying to find a new VA or a VA that we already use to take this off my plate, spend a week and keep track of what you do consistently weekly, daily, et cetera, and identify activities that you can outsource and start with a couple easy task and then build off of that. Sometimes hiring more than one and see how one does a better job or than the other, or connects with you. You can get all of your VAs onto a slack channel. That’s what we do in order to communicate with them easily. And we found that works the best. So I hope you enjoyed. Please remember to rate, review, subscribe, submit comments, and potential show topics at global investors, podcast.com. Look forward to two more episodes next week. See you then

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