who will probably want to continue to work with other clients.
• Recruiting services have an excellent hit-to-miss ratio. They are an effective way to find the right people for the roles you’re looking to fill and avoid hiring the wrong people.
While the above methods are the heavy hitters, they aren’t the only means out there for finding good quality VAs—if you’re willing to do a little extra work, you could also try using social media to find your VA. After a poor first experience with outsourcing, janitor-turned-entrepreneur David Risley turned to Twitter to find his next VA, and he loves the simplicity of the microblogging site.
In closing this subject, I suggest that whenever possible, you chat—and ideally video chat—with the person you’re hiring via a service like Skype or Google Hangouts. This will give you the opportunity to see, or at least hear, your potential VA and understand his or her personality a little more. This might not be needed all the time; I doubt I’d be concerned with personality if someone were just designing a logo for me, for example. But in some cases this “face-to-face” conversation might turn out to be the difference between hiring and not hiring someone for the job.
The 10 Elements of a Good Job Description
I can’t stress this enough: Hiring the right people begins with defining the roles your business needs.
Once the roles are defined, the next step is to create a solid job description that will help you attract the right candidates if you’re using a job-posting site and will serve as a guide through the interview process if you use a recruiting service. Putting in the time and effort to create a really strong job description will enable you to find the right people to work in your business.
Here are the ten elements a good job description should have:
1. Job Title
The title should clearly reflect the role. Avoid gimmicky or misleading titles.
Here are a few examples of particularly good job titles I’ve seen recently:
• Part-Time Data Entry VA Needed for Growing Tour Company
• Graphic Designer Needed for Children’s Kindle Project
• Web Developer Needed for E-mail Newsletter Template Design
• Virtual Assistant Needed to Support CEO on Daily To-Do List Items
2. Type of Position
Note whether the job is project based, part time, or full time.
3. Working Time Zone
In which time zone are you working and in which time zone do you require your VA(s) to be working? This allows candidates to see at a quick glance what your working structure will be like together.
4. Skills
What particular skills will this role require? Be extremely specific here.
5. Daily Reporting and Accountability
In order to avoid confusion or miscommunication, you should have your team members give a quick report at the end of each day summarizing what they worked on and any progress or problems. This can be done through a simple e-mail or by updating a shared document via a file-sharing service like Google Drive or Dropbox. It’s a good idea to note your expectations of daily reporting in a job description.
6. Proposed Compensation
This is what are you willing to pay. You can specify a maximum number of hours per month for part-time workers or maximum monthly pay for full-time VAs. Be sure to offer what you feel the VA is genuinely worth.
7. Daily Work Description
Write a concise description of the duties and responsibilities for this particular role. The more detailed it is, the better.
This might include
• key skills required on a day-to-day basis
• daily tasks to be performed
• experience required in using certain tools, software, and systems
• hardware requirements, such as a webcam or scanner
8. Weekly Work Description
If applicable, list the revolving weekly tasks the person in this role should expect to perform for you.
9. Quarterly Tasks
List work that will not need to be done daily or weekly but will need to be completed on a quarterly basis, such as updating spreadsheets, attending brainstorming sessions, and making suggestions on how to improve your systems and processes.
10. Potentially Harder Tasks and Skills
This is an opportunity to highlight the more difficult skills you’re looking for. It’s important to ask your VA how he or she is continuing to enhance these skills. Be careful here, though—you don’t want to scare the VA away!
No matter where you found them, once you’ve solidified your job description and the applicants have started to present themselves, the next step is to chat with the people who look the most exciting on paper.
This is a job description that we received recently from a Virtual Staff Finder client. You’ll see how simply it’s laid out while still being quite detailed. This is how organized you need to be if you want to do this thing right from the outset.
| Job Title | General VA |
| Position Type | Full-Time |
| Time Zone | Happy to have them work their normal workday hours. |
| Daily Reporting | Just a simple bullet-point e-mail at the end of each day is fine. |
| Proposed Compensation | Starting at $550 per month with a review at 12 months. |
| Elaborate on Tasks and Skills | Generaleye for detailexcellent English reading and writingability to clearly follow instructionshigh level of organization and ability to prioritizeself-management and initiativeDaily TasksClean up new database entries from the last 24 hours.Check e-mails and reply to all e-mails that you can do.Check Facebook personal messages.Accept new Facebook friends and categorize by list.Send a personal e-mail to everyone who joins client database, so we can tag.Send e-mails to new members for photos and to add them to the Facebook group.Schedule social media updates in HootSuite.Weekly TasksCall everyone who has stopped receiving e-mails to get new e-mail addresses.Ensure that your computer is backed up and all files are in more than one place.Add new posts on our blogs.Load new member photos in template and upload files to Dropbox.Comment on other related YouTube channels.Quarterly TasksTranscribe any new YouTube videos and upload transcription.Create spreadsheets of contact data from websites.Ongoing/Revolving TasksClean up old database: filter spam, unsubscribes, etc.Create playlists for all current YouTube videos.Follow up on undeliverable mail: call people to get correct addresses and update in database.Online research: sourcing gifts, restaurants,
|
