An assistant, or virtual assistant (who works remotely), is someone you can delegate tasks to that you’re wasting your valuable time and energy on.
An assistant, or virtual assistant, maybe one of the first roles you hire in your business.
There are distinct benefits to hiring a remote worker. These include:
- Not needing to provide the worker with a place to do their work.
- Not needing to worry about licences and insurance to have workers on premises.
- Not being limited to the staff available in your area.
Some of the biggest benefits of hiring a VA are:
- Delegate tasks which take up a high degree of your time and energy but do not require your expertise.
- When you delegate you can prevent burning out.
- The ability to spend more time in income-generating areas of your business and high-value activities.
- You can stop doing the things that drive you crazy in your business (like updating your website).
Assistants can do almost anything you ask them to, provided they have the right training, tools, and skills. So it’s important to be very precise with listing out the type of tasks you’ll want your assistant to do for you before you hire them. That way you’ll be able to delegate tasks immediately and not have to waste time and energy training them.
Types of Assistants:
Personal Assistant
This is an assistant that will often be physically present and provide you with any personal assistance you need in order to more successfully run your business. This might include picking up supplies, driving clients to the airport, or answering phone calls while you’re on the run. A personal assistant can be considered a “gopher” or someone who will go and run any errand or task you need them to.
General Assistant
Whether in person or virtual, a general assistant can help with all kinds of tasks. The tasks you’d give to a general assistant are generally repetitive or technical in nature. They might include customer service emails, scheduling appointments, answering calls, scheduling social media posts, data entry, updating basic web pages, or basic research.
Specialized Assistant
A specialized virtual assistant will help you oversee specific areas in your business and tend to be more expensive than either general or personal assistants. Specialized assistants usually require minimal training or supervision in their duties. These duties might include bookkeeping, project management, website and tech support, video editing, managing stock, or account management.
The best method for hiring an assistant is:
- Hire a personal assistant when the tasks in your personal life threaten to overwhelm your ability to manage your business successfully.
- Hire a general assistant, usually virtual, to offload specific tasks and processes in your business that you provide specific training on how to do. These tasks are generally not the best use of your time, even if you enjoy doing them.
- Hire a specialized assistant, usually virtual, to give specific projects to or when you have a specific outcome or need. A specialized assistant is actually more skilled than you are at the tasks involved in their role. These are tasks that you generally are not very good at or don’t know how to do.
How to Hire an Assistant:
Hiring a virtual assistant is a very simple process these days. It generally involves hiring the assistant as a contractor (see the legal obligations of contractor vs employee).
If you hire an assistant full time in person (like a personal assistant) you may end up hiring them as an employee. Be sure to explore all of the legal obligations and possibilities before you decide.
- There are many online websites where you can hire assistants such as elance.com or guru.com.
- Ask other business owners for recommendations of who they use.
- Be very clear on what you need your assistant to do and what type of assistant you need.
- Write a job description that details every aspect of the work you intend to have them do.
- If you desire an in-person assistant rather than a virtual assistant you will need to post this job description on a website for your local area like Craigslist or your local newspaper classified ads.