Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Hiring a Virtual Assistant

By Marta Costa

Somewhere along the way you found the term Virtual Assistant. It sounded interesting so you decided you wanted to learn more. Once you studied the subject, you decided that this would be the perfect solution for you. You knew it was time to hire a Virtual Assistant. But then, you didn't know how to go about doing it.

How do you find one? What kind of VA do you need? How much is this gonna cost? How do we communicate? How does this all work?

Before you start Googling 'Hire a Virtual Assistant', there are some things you need to work out beforehand. For example:

1. What kinds of tasks do you want them to take on? Write it out with as much detail and structure as you possible can. 2. Are you comfortable with working with someone virtually? Can you handle not being able to see someone fact to face? 3. How many hours do you think youll need them for each week/month? 4. How much can you afford to budget for this? Take into account how much more productive you will be during those hours that your Virtual Assistant will be freeing you up. For example, if your hourly rate is $200, at $50 per hour for a Virtual Assistant, for that same $200 you can free up 4 hours, opening your availability to make an additional $800.

Now that that's all sorted out, you're ready to get started. All though Googling Virtual Assistant can be the most obvious way to start, there is a much simpler way to attract the perfect Virtual Assistant candidates for you.

An RFP allows you to take all of your answers from the questions above and put them out there on these sites so that the Virtual Assistants with the proper qualifications can contact you and take some of the legwork out of the process.

Some of the most popular sites are:

* IVAA or International Virtual Assistants Association * VANetworking.com * Virtual Assistant Forums * A Claytons Secretary * Find Virtual * Home Secretarial Services * Virtual Assistance Chamber of Commerce

Once you've placed your RFP you can sit back and wait. It won't be long before the most qualified and compatible Virtual Assistants are contacting you. From then it's just a matter of determining which one you feel most comfortable with.

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