5 Common Mistakes to Avoid When Looking To Hire Virtual Assistant Services
When looking to offload the mundane administrative tasks, hiring the virtual assistant services comes across as the most viable solution. It frees up your time for core business activities while a talented administrative professional remotely handles some trivial yet important tasks.
However, hiring and onboarding VAs can be daunting. It may go awry at times. Mostly, companies presume it to be a quick fix for many business issues. It isn’t that. VA can help you streamline the business operations. However, you need to avoid some common pitfalls mentioned here.
1. Failing to Understand the True Reason for Hiring VAs:
It is absolutely imperative to hire a virtual assistant only when you are ready for the same. If your business model lacks a strong use case for hiring VAs, you might not derive the desired results from this process. Here, it is important to understand tasks that you can outsource to the VA companies. Make a list and then, begin the quest for the most professional virtual assistants. A rampant hiring without any solid reason can prove to be wastage of your money. So, be careful.
2. Over Anticipating from VAs:
When looking for a virtual assistant, you might be searching for a multi-tasking person. For instance, you will be looking for a person who can manage bookkeeping, handle your travel bookings, manage your daily appointments, and your social media profiles. All these are different areas of expertise. Hence, over expecting from a VA won’t help. Here, you need a proactive approach of making brilliant job descriptions that clearly explain the main skills that you need in your VA. This will help in preventing bad hires. Also, you must maintain clarity in communications. Explain your expectations clearly.
3. Failing to Review the work of VAs:
Hiring the virtual assistant doesn’t mean that you can forget a task after delegating it to a VA. This isn’t how it works. It is important to build a task calendar and review their work accordingly. It will help in tracking the issues as and when they arise. With this knowledge, you can offer timely suggestions and amendments. You must regularly monitor the progress made by VAs and resolve their misapprehensions at the right time. At the same time, this approach also helps in avoiding repetitions of some tasks over and again.
4. Failing to Consider the Language Barriers:
In the recent times, there has been a surge in outsourcing of VA jobs to the overseas companies. It brings several financial benefits and ensures higher efficiency in work. If you are looking forward to hiring the overseas virtual assistants, you must understand the language barriers and cultural differences. This can be avoided by pre-defining the work scope. Be precise in giving them instructions. These VA services are highly cost-efficient. Hence, avoid this pitfall to leverage their cost benefits.
5. Failing To Define A System Of Work And Explaining The Tasks To Be Done:
In this regard, you can begin by creating a VA manual where you can state all the tasks in step-by-step procedures to be completed by VAs. Mostly, virtual assistant services are handled by administrative professionals skilled in this field. Yet, they need to be briefed regarding the work to be done. You must give them proper training and define a streamlined communication process. You can create an online resource that can be shared as a reference tool and ensure seamless interactions over any topic.
You can increase the productivity of your business potentially by hiring virtual assistants. Simply, avoid these pitfalls and entrust your business tasks to Infognana. We offer customizable VA solutions to suffice your requirements and reduce the redundancies in your business management.
