How To Hire a Virtual Assistant — Part 3

How to Hire a Virtual Assistant — Part 3

Hiring a Virtual Assistant can help your small business significantly. We use a Virtual Assistant to help us with important tasks that will create more time for me to focus on high-priority tasks.

In our previous article, we discussed how to hire a Virtual Assistant utilizing “tests” to screen the right VA for you and your business.

If you want to view a sample test that I provided, then you can view it here:

Part 2 — How To Hire a Virtual Assistant to Help Grow Your Business

In this article, I’m going to share the on-boarding process that we use to help VA’s transition smoothly on our team.

Access Information for Virtual Assistants (VA)

When I was in the corporate world, (Yes, I use to work for one of the largest telecommunications companies in the U.S) I was always given access information to applications that I was using. Since, I was a consultant in my organization, getting access to applications what a long process.

To eliminate that long process for hiring a Virtual Assistant, I created a spreadsheet that list all the applications (web / desktop) that I used on a daily basis for my business. Next, I narrowed the applications that the VA would use to complete a specific task and created temporary access to those applications.

For example, we use Google Documents for all our processing and spreadsheet information. We created a Gmail account specifically for a VA (e.g. Brian.Virtual.Assitant.01@gmail.com). This Gmail account would give them access to our Google Docs and other apps that we invite them to.

If a VA decides to look for new opportunities and move on from our business, we would simply delete their account to prevent further access to our applications.

So, create a list of all your applications that you use on a daily basis and narrow that list of what you want your VA to use. Create a new email account ahead of time to grant them access.

Standard Operating Procedures — (SOP)

Now, that the VA has access to your applications. The next step is to provide them a Standard Operating Procedure document or better known as SOP.

A SOP is a process of steps that is documented for a specific task or outcome. Why is a SOP highly important? It’s highly important, because once you outlined the steps of your specific task, you do not have to explain it over and over to future VA’s. Such as, “how to you complete this task?, Where to find this link?, How to process this task?” The question list goes on and on. You can view a SOP as a How-To article.

Remember, you want to create time for yourself to focus on more important tasks such as sales.

Where should you store this SOP and where can I find an example?

Great question! Like I mentioned, we use Google Docs for our word processing which is stored over the cloud /internet. Once you setup your VA’s Gmail account, you can grant them access to your Google Docs. All you have to do is share a link with them.

If you would like to see an example of a SOP, you can read more about it here:

How To: Create a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to help YOU Organize Your Tasks

Video Training

In addition, to providing access information and standard operating procedures, a picture is worth a thousand words. So, I guess to follow that process, a video is worth a hundred thousand words.

Recording a video of the exact steps of your Standard Operating Procedure will help alleviate confusion for your VA to complete the task.

Videos can be created on YouTube for free. Please ensure that the videos are private unless you want your videos of your SOP’s to be public information.

A link to your video should be included in your SOP document.

Summary

The on-boarding process can be very time-consuming and repetitive. However, if you plan and prepare your on-boarding process ahead of time with Access Information, Standard Operating Procedures, and Video training, then you can help alleviate a lot of questions from your Virtual Assistant.

If you hired VA’s in the past, how was your on-boarding process? Which point would you use in your on-boarding experience?

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