Hiring a Virtual Administrative Assistant

Unfamiliar with how it works? We’ve put everything you’ll need to know about hiring a virtual assistant of your own will work:

In this article:

The Types of Tasks You Can Handle with a Virtual Administrative Assistant

Where a Virtual Administrative Assistant Helps You Get Work Done

How to Tell When You Need a Virtual Assistant

How to Get Started with Your Own Virtual Assistant

FAQ for Virtual Administrative Assistants

The Types of Tasks You Can Handle with a Virtual Administrative Assistant

Here’s a good rule of thumb: a virtual administrative assistant can handle just about anything that an administrative assistant can handle if they were working from home—on the other side of the country. In other words, they can’t pick up your dry-cleaning, but they can do just about anything that requires remote access.

Want specifics? Let’s talk specifics:

• Daily office tasks. Your calendar, your files, your email inbox, your phone management system—these are all elements of running your daily life that you can outsource to a dedicated virtual assistant. As long as you don’t need to do the office tasks on-site, a virtual assistant can help.
• Scheduling and travel arrangements. Need to book a conference in a few months? Outsource it to your virtual assistant. Need to follow up on that meeting that a client missed? A virtual assistant can be on top of your calendar. If you spend too much time digging through your own calendars, a virtual administrative assistant can be an immediate boost to your productivity.
• Remote office management. Although your virtual administrative assistant can’t be there to set up the conference room table, there’s still plenty in the office that can be managed remotely, including handling bookkeeping, invoices, managing expenses, and handling payroll. ‍
• Phone calls. From handling incoming phone calls to placing phone calls on your behalf, a virtual assistant handling administrative duties can be your ears and voice when you’d rather be working on productive and distraction-free work.

Where a Virtual Administrative Assistant Helps You Get Work Done

It’s one thing to list some of the things a virtual administrative assistant can do to help you. But it’s even more important to illustrate how this might work. Here are a few scenarios that might help you imagine life after hiring a virtual assistant:

• Distraction-free work. Imagine that you want to work on a project for three clear, distraction-free hours in the morning. If you run an office, you’re going to also have to field calls, handle problems that come up, deal with social media, or handle other administrative tasks. Want to avoid all that? Outsource the administrative tasks to your administrative assistant and you’re free to focus on the most productive work of the day.
• Additional capacity. Let’s say you don’t feel you need an administrative assistant just yet, but the calls from clients are starting to be a bother. You still want your clients to feel valued with a human touch, but you’re not sure how you can make enough time for them and still get your day’s work finished. A virtual administrative assistant can take calls from anywhere and keep your clients in the loop.‍
• Time off. Hiring a virtual administrative assistant isn’t just about giving yourself more time to work. It’s also about giving yourself more time off. Rather than work over lunch to finish data entry for a project you’re working on, it’s the perfect task you can outsource to a virtual assistant.

How to Tell When You Need a Virtual Assistant

Maybe the scenarios above sound nice, but you’re still on the fence. How can you tell whether you’ll truly get enough productivity out of a virtual administrative assistant that you’ll feel the investment was worth it? Here are some signs that you may already need one, and just didn’t know it.

The Prohibitive Costs of Hiring Employees

If you’ve been pulling your hair out because you’re overworked and your company doesn’t have the capacity to meet the demand, then you’ve likely entertained the idea of hiring new people. The problem is that hiring new people is expensive. Very expensive.