How To Hire A Virtual Assistant?

And the reason is because like when you are writing your job description and you’re thinking about the salary and all those things, you have to think about, “What is it I’m really trying to get this person to do?” 

And how much are you gonna be paying them?

Okay. You may be saying to yourself, “Well, I don’t know!”.

So when I talked to a friend of mine a year ago, he had shared with me, he said, “Well, the first thing you have to do is determine what exactly do you want them to do? What do you need them to do?”

And I was like, “Well, I don’t really know”. 

And he said, “First thing I want you to do is make a list of all the things that you don’t do, do not like to do in your business.”

And I was like, “Isn’t it kind of mean?”

He said, “No, if you make a list of the things you don’t like to do, and then you create a job description around it, once you actually post that job on job boards, people are responding to that position because they like doing that stuff.

They have experience with that stuff, and they don’t feel like it’s you taking advantage of them or whatever, because they responded to the job posting.”

And so I said, “Well, I guess that makes sense.”

So I started making a list of all the things that I do.

First I made it. All that I do. And then I started just doing like checks by all the things that I just do not enjoy doing.

There were a lot of checks.

So as I was doing those checks, I said, Okay, so now it is important for me to go, like, now I’ve gotta write a job description for a virtual assistant.

I have never written a job description before. 

So I went to Dr. Google.

 And I was just, “job description for executive assistant executive virtual assistant.”

And so then I started reading a lot of the different people’s, like job descriptions they had posted on the internet. 

I didn’t copy anything like word to word, but I did use them as a guide.

 And it just really helped me from writing out this terrible, I mean, absolutely terrible job description by just already using what works and then making sense for me and my company.

Then I had to determine, how much would I be willing to pay?

And my honest answer was I did not know because I had never hired an assistant before.

So I just put that off to last.

I am familiar with being able to outsource things overseas because I had had my brand design business where all of my designers were in India and I had hired people in the Philippines, in Pakistan and all that.

And I said, okay, I know. upwork.com works, and I’m also very familiar with onlinejobs.ph.

Now, the thing that I do not like about onlinejobs.ph is you can post a job and you’ll get like 5,000 people to respond to a job posting, and they have not even read the job description.

It’s wild when I think about onlinejobs.ph.

But with upwork.com I know that I can set up my own profile and then I could post a job with all of my specifics that I want with that particular person.

Like social media management, like having to be fluent in English, having an 80% success rate with previous clients, how much money they’ve already made working on Upwork.

And I could ask them specific questions they have to answer before they ever respond to the job posting.

I like Upwork better.

So then I went over to Upwork, created a job posting for an executive virtual assistant

Then I pasted the thing that I wrote out as my job description.

Then when I did that, I went to, what level was I looking for? Looking for someone who was brand new, intermediate, or expert.

And I said, well, I really want someone who’s intermediate. They don’t have to be an expert.

So I did that and then it asked me like, how long do I want them to work for me?

And I was like, well, six months or longer or whatever.

Then it said, what countries? And I said, any country. 

And so once you get to like the next screen, it’s gonna ask you, is this an hourly pay or is this on a project basis?

Now here’s what happens when you click on hourly.

Upwork is gonna give you a range. It’s gonna say, here’s the range between what most people are being paid as an expert for an executive virtual assistant.

And so you’re gonna see a range. It could say $8 to $10, it could say $12 to $25, whatever.

But it still gives you a range.

And then you can choose on a low end this, on the high end this, and it gives you that range.

When we were doing that, I saw a range of like, some people were like $5 an hour all the way up to $12 an hour.

And so then I was like, “Well that sounds good to me.”, 

Because it’s actually not expensive at all for someone to really be assisting me with all these things that I do every single day in my business.

So then I posted the job and then now you start getting a lot of people responding to the job that are qualified.

From there, what I do is I understand that some people will be right, some people will not be qualified or whatever, or we just won’t gel well.

In an effort to maximize my time and not waste a lot of time with a lot of video call interviews.

Cuz listen, if you get a hundred people to respond, you cannot do interviews with everybody.

And Upward makes it a lot simpler because what you can do is once you see all the people that have responded to your job posting.

You can click on them and it will show you what they said when they responded to your job posting.

If you ask them specific questions, you can read the answer to the questions.

You can then look at all the success they’ve had on the platform.

You can read all their reviews and then you can begin having a conversation with them.

So what I do is I look at everybody that has applied to the job and I just start going through reading what they wrote.

If I like what I’ve seen so far, then I will click on the shortlist and that way it’s saying, “Hey, this person is on my short list to look back at.”

And then what I will do is I’ll have a list of questions that I wanna ask them in addition to what was in the job posting.

I would just say, “Hey, thank you so much for responding to our job posting. We have some additional questions for you.”

And so I send them another list of questions.

And then I just go through the process.

But also if I see people who I am not interested in, I will just hit the downlight button and that removes them from the job posting. 

That way, it’s constantly just updating to just those people I have reviewed and shortlisted or those new people that have responded to the particular job.

I’m literally asking everybody the same questions over and over and over again as they’re responding to the job posts.

I’m just asking them the same questions.

Once I narrow it down to like however many is left that I really enjoy.

Then I will go to schedule video calls because everybody that is great in Upwork writing is not great on video.