I got 12 months of work done in 3 months by Using Vir­tual Assis­tants. Below I share the A to Zs on how You Can Too!

Let’s get started…

1st — Where to hire Vir­tual Assis­tants

First, you must use a rep­utable com­pany. One of the com­pa­nies we use is oDesk. It’s located in Cal­i­for­nia, and has VAs from around the globe, start­ing at $1 — $3/per hour. The cost sav­ings due to cur­rency exchange rates is unbeatable.

Other great com­pa­nies you can also use are Free­lancer, Elance and Fiverr.

One side note — you can find a VA by doing a google search for “vir­tual assis­tant”. You will get thou­sands of search results. I per­son­ally wanted to be able to hire vir­tual assis­tants from a large selec­tion of can­di­dates, be able to make secure pay­ments and not have to deal with billing — at all. oDesk is one of the many com­pa­nies listed above that did this and more. Because of all the built in tools odesk has, it stream­lined the process of hir­ing a vir­tual assis­tant.  Hence, in this arti­cle,  I will share my expe­ri­ence in deal­ing with oDesk. See this site for reviews of other rep­utable sites as well.

Now there are 2 ways you can find a VA on oDesk:

1. Post a Job and wait for appli­cants; or
2. Post a Job and invite appli­cants to inter­view for your job.

Post­ing a job is easy and free. You pay when you hire a VA. The cost is 10%. So, if you hire a vir­tual admin­is­tra­tive assis­tant for $1 / hour, your real cost is $1.10/ per hour — no hid­den costs.

Before you can hire a VA, you must reg­is­ter a credit card with oDesk. They will call to ver­ify it’s your cc. It takes a day or two to ver­ify you. They also make 2 small charges (less than $10 ‚which they credit to you) on your card. They do this for secu­rity pur­poses. So, no worries.

Within min­utes of post­ing your job, you will begin to receive responses. I received over 100 appli­cants to a job I posted within 24 hours. Because of this, I rec­om­mend that you post a job, make it pri­vate, and then invite appli­cants to inter­view for the posi­tion. This requires that you search for vir­tual assis­tants you want to hire and then invite them to inter­view for the posi­tion you have posted.

Watch the fol­low­ing video — a short clip with the CEO of oDesk from a webi­nar we did for the real estate indus­try — it guides you on 1) How to Post a Job on oDesk, and 2) How to find a VA on oDesk. Take a look. Click here to jump over to oDesk.

1ST VIDEO: 2 Ways to find a Vir­tual Assis­tant on oDesk.

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2nd — Tips — Best prac­tices to use when Inter­view­ing a VA

.Phone Inter­view Highly rec­om­mended that you inter­view your VA over the phone. Par­tic­u­larly if you hire a VA over­seas. Many will want to just use email or instant mes­sag­ing to con­duct the inter­view. Don’t! You want to gage how much Eng­lish they under­stand. Even if they are only doing excel data entry, they will need to clearly under­stand your intruc­tions to com­plete the assignment.

Microsoft Appli­ca­tions If your assign­ment calls for the VA to use excel, for exam­ple, ask the VA what ver­sion of excel they have. It needs to be com­pat­i­ble with yours. Also, you should not have to buy soft­ware or hard­ware for your VA to com­plete your assign­ment. If you ask them to make a lot of tele­phone calls, you may want/ need to pick up the costs associated.

• Sam­ples of Work, Ref­er­ences Ask a VA for a sam­ple of their work and ref­er­ences. If they don’t have a sam­ple, ask them to cre­ate one, and offer to pay them for it. If they pro­vide a ref­er­ence, call the ref­er­ence. Ask them about the work the VA did and ask them about how well the VA com­mu­ni­cated with them dur­ing the assign­ment. If a VA is rel­a­tively new, they may not have a ref­er­ence, if their hourly rate is low enough, con­sider test­ing them, if they work out, you have found a jewel, if not, at least you gave them a shot.

Watch video #2. It reviews best prac­tices for Inter­vew­ing VAs. Get­ting the inter­view right will go a long way.

2nd VIDEO: Tips — Best Prac­tices to Use when Inter­view­ing a VA.

3rd– Tasks You Can Assign to a VA

VAs can accom­plish a mul­ti­tude of tasks. One way to think about tasks you can assign to a VA is to make a list of “repet­i­tive tasks” you per­form reg­u­larly. Or, just list goals you want to accom­plish in your busi­ness and deter­mine whether some­one must be “present” in your office, in order to achieve that goal. If the answer is “NO”, they do not need to be present, it’s likely it’s a task for a VA.

Here are sug­gested tasks to outsource:

• Admin­is­tra­tive tasks: Answer­ing phones, sched­ul­ing appoint­ments, inter­net research
• Mar­ket­ing : mail­ing cam­paigns, research, newsletters
• Build­ing a Web Pres­ence: build­ing a web­site, social net­work­ing, writ­ing / post­ing articles

Watch video #3. It sug­gests tasks to assign to a VA.

3rd VIDEO: Tasks You Can Assign To a VA

4th– Best Prac­tices to incor­po­rate when Cre­at­ing the Assign­ment you give to a VA

Write down the steps a VA needs to take to accom­plish your assign­ment. Remem­ber, a VA won’t have the lux­ury of walk­ing into your office every time they have a ques­tion. Antic­i­pate ques­tions they will have and address them before you give the VA the assign­ment. It helps if you have done the assign­ment your­self before you assign it. Of course, this is not applic­a­ble to web­site design, unless you are a pro­gram­mer. But, in gen­eral, these are wise steps to take. Here are some best prac­tices to incor­po­rate when cre­at­ing the assignment.

• Be Spe­cific: write detailed steps the VA needs to take to com­plete the task, include an esti­mate of time it will take to com­plete indi­vid­ual steps or the entire assignment.
• Cre­ate an FAQ (fre­quently asked ques­tions booklet)
• Cre­ate a Man­ual / Video with Instruc­tions: use word / pow­er­point to record instruc­tions, include visu­als. You can cre­ate a short video using free soft­ware like jingproject.com

Watch video #4. It lists best prac­tices to incor­po­rate when cre­at­ing the assign­ment you give to a VA.

4thVIDEO: How to Cre­ate the Assign­ment you give to a VA