How to Find a Virtual Assistant That Sticks Around

Like other busy executives, you may find yourself rushing to Upwork or Fiverr to hire a virtual assistant to manage your workload. However, as with other executives, you may quickly learn that the VA you hired is not up to the task and that you need to start recruiting a replacement, resulting in wasted time and resources.

The hard part is never about hiring a virtual assistant, but rather identifying one who understands your business context so they can have a strategic impact on your performance.

In this blog, we’ll cover how to find a virtual assistant, including where to source candidates and what to look out for, so you can partner with the right assistant.

TL;DR – How to Find a Good Virtual Assistant

Here’s a quick overview of how to find the right virtual assistant to partner with:

1. Define your expectations and VA outcomes
2. Decide whether you need a VA or EA
3. Identify the right platform from which to recruit the VA
4. Schedule one-on-one interviews to assess VA capabilities
5. Onboard the VA to your team

The virtual assistant you hire should reduce your administrative burden, allowing you to focus on strategic tasks. In some situations, your support needs may warrant switching to an executive assistant for integrated life management.

Why Virtual Assistant Hires Often Fail the First Time

Many executives fear that their principal-assistant partnerships failed because they did not onboard their VAs effectively or provide ongoing feedback.

However, while these are possible reasons, many virtual assistant hires fail before work begins for the following reasons:

• Hiring Based on Wages: A high hourly rate does not always translate to high-quality support. However, using the “cheapest hourly rate” as one of your filters when selecting a virtual assistant is likely to get you a VA with limited experience or capability gaps. 
• Not Communicating Your Expectations for the Role: Many executives hiring a VA for the first time want someone to handle only administrative tasks. However, unless you outline the specific tasks so your VA can add them to the executive assistant daily checklist, they are likely to prioritize wrongly or overlook important tasks, causing bottlenecks.
• Assuming Past Experience Means Readiness: Hiring a virtual assistant without documented processes, clear communication protocols, and decision-making guidelines often sets a VA up for failure. Additionally, skipping onboarding often frustrates new VA hires, increasing their turnover.
• Poor Delegation: Assigning too many tasks to a new VA hire may overwhelm them, leading to underperformance. In contrast, micromanaging your EA will likely frustrate them, as it signals a lack of trust and harms the executive assistant relationship. 

Where to Find a Virtual Assistant Worth Hiring

The VA outsourcing landscape caters to various hiring needs, depending on the tradeoffs you are willing to make, such as low cost, fast access, or pre-vetted assistants. 

As an executive looking to hire your first VA, you must understand what to expect from each platform so that you can manage expectations.

Let’s discuss the various VA hiring platforms in detail below.

1. Freelance Marketplaces (Upwork, Fiverr, OnlineJobs.ph)

These are platforms that offer massive candidate pools, including access to overseas virtual assistants. Most platforms openly display their pricing, with varying rates depending on whether a candidate is US-based.

The downside of using a freelance marketplace is that you have to vet all candidates yourself, which can be time-consuming for a busy executive. Additionally, you will have no way to verify the candidate’s credentials, which poses significant future confidentiality risks.

2. Virtual Assistant Agencies and Staffing Firms

Staffing agencies often charge a one-time fee to handle candidate screening, recruitment, and onboarding, after which the contract terminates. 

A significant advantage of using VA agencies is that they do the heavy lifting and only present you with 1 to 3 candidates, from among whom you can choose your preferred assistant.

The main drawback of using staffing agencies is the inconsistent quality of VA hires, as you will be trusting their judgment without visibility into the process.

3. Specialized Executive Assistant Agencies

Services like ProAssisting partner busy C-suites with EAs who have at least 5 years of experience supporting busy executives at global brands such as Victoria’s Secret, the WNBA, and Comcast.

This includes providing U.S.-based remote executive assistants to ensure cultural fluency, integral to maintaining strong principal-EA partnerships in the long term.

Additionally, ProAssistants undertake executive assistant tasks to help you reclaim up to 15 hours weekly and perform roles that bring a strategic impact to your business.

We call these roles performance multipliers, and they include the following:

• Business Partner: Your EA learns about your business, allowing them to represent you in team meetings and CSR events.
• Chief of Staff: Your EA becomes your primary point of contact, which includes screening meeting requests to identify what needs your personal attention and what can wait. 
• Scheduler: Your EA plans your schedule to align with your productivity cycle and work rhythm, ensuring you are at your best when undertaking high-impact strategic tasks. 
• Project Manager: Your remote executive assistant coordinates travel end-to-end or undertakes other projects, such as planning board meetings and family vacations.
• Personal Assistant: Your EA helps you manage life outside work, including coordinating grocery shopping for your household or reserving a restaurant table for your child’s upcoming birthday.

At ProAssisting, our EA service is built on a 3-to-1 client-to-assistant ratio, which allows our ProAssistants to gain a deep understanding of your business so they can support you effectively. Additionally, ProAssistants retain up upto 75% of your monthly retainer, maintaining competitive pay that is integral to attracting and retaining top talent.

Schedule a free consultation to explore the available executive support options.

4. Referrals and Direct Hiring

Referrals and direct hiring from friends and colleagues are often a convenient way to hire a VA with a proven track record, supporting an executive in a similar role or context.

However, direct hiring often comes with additional tasks, such as contract preparation, payment processing, equipment provision, and performance management, which add to your already busy schedule.

How to Find a Virtual Assistant Without Wasting Time

The process of finding the right virtual assistant starts way before screening candidates’ resumes or conducting interviews. You must first identify your executive support needs and define VA expectations to help you find a virtual assistant that possesses the right skill set for the role.

Here’s how to hire and onboard the right virtual assistant the first time:

1. Define the Outcome You Need from the Hire

Outline how you want the VA to impact your performance or schedule, as opposed to thinking about the tasks you will delegate. 

An example of an outcome would be, “I need to reclaim at least 80% of the time I currently spend on administrative tasks,” or “I need all key stakeholder communications to be handled within 24 hours.”

These outcomes should then help you create a detailed job description for the VA role.

2. Decide Between a VA, EA, and Fractional Support

A VA, EA, and fractional EA usually handle administrative tasks to reduce their principals’ workload, but their roles impact the executive differently.

As such, you should assess your support needs and decide on the type of assistant to partner with as follows:

• Virtual Assistant: You only want to delegate clearly defined, repetitive tasks and are comfortable providing instructions every time.
• Executive Assistant: You are a busy executive and need integrated life management to achieve work-life balance.
• Fractional EA: You need EA support, but your demands are seasonal, so you cannot generate 40 hours of work per week for your assistant.

3. Choose the Right Sourcing Channel for Your Needs

Now that you know the type of assistant you need and the outcomes you expect, you can match these attributes to the best-fit sourcing channel.

For example, you can use a staffing agency or a freelance marketplace if you only need a VA to handle straightforward tasks like data entry. On the other hand, reach out to a specialized executive assistant agency like ProAssisting to partner with an EA on a fractional basis, such as utilizing ⅓, ½, or ⅔ of their capacity based on your support needs. 

4. Run a Real Vetting Process Beyond the Resume

Schedule one-on-one sessions with shortlisted candidates where you can ask executive assistant interview questions to help you assess the following key areas:

• Work experience
• Problem-solving skills
• Confidentiality protocols
• Soft skills

Additionally, watch out for red flags such as poor communication skills and a lack of empathy, as these affect how the VA supports you, especially when interacting with stakeholders.

5. Onboard with Documented Processes from Day One

Avoid skipping the onboarding phase when integrating an executive assistant into your world, as this often sets them up for failure. 

Instead, share your executive’s Bible with your virtual assistant so they can learn how you like things done, including:

• Project and task timelines
• Communication preferences
• Travel and accommodation preferences

Additionally, communicate your work rhythm and pick performance hours to help your VA align your schedule with your productivity cycle. 

Finally, start by delegating small tasks and monitoring your VA’s performance before trusting them with projects that have a strategic impact on your business. 

Common Mistakes and Red Flags When Hiring a VA

The virtual assistant you hire is arguably the single most important factor in the number of hours you are able to reclaim.

As such, you do not want to hire a VA who adds to your scheduling bottlenecks or requires constant reminders and instructions to undertake their roles.

Here are additional pitfalls to watch out for when finding the right VA to partner with:

• The Price-First Hire: Hiring a virtual assistant purely based on their hourly rate increases your risk of partnering with an inexperienced, low-skill assistant. Instead, set a budget for VA support and convert it into an hourly rate based on the number of hours they’ll work a week, and use it as a guide when comparing cost vs. expected ROI.
• Vague Roles and Unclear Outcomes: Not communicating your executive expectations sets your VA up for failure, as they don’t know how to meet your support needs. Onboard your VA effectively, including communicating your business preferences, sharing standard operating procedures, and granting access to the executive assistant tools they need to streamline your workflows.
• Missed Reference and Review Checks: Failing to verify a VA’s work experience and references increases your risk of hiring the wrong candidate. Reach out to at least 2 or 3 references and request an objective assessment of the candidate’s work ethic and professionalism.
• No Clear Contracts From Agencies: Professional agencies readily provide contracts and service agreements outlining the VA’s scope of service, pricing structure, and replacement policies. As such, dodgy agencies that are reluctant to disclose service terms or provide written contracts are a serious red flag, and you should avoid partnering with them.

When a Virtual Assistant Is Not the Right Level of Support

For executives without an assistant, hiring a VA can significantly reduce their workload, especially in the short term.

However, for most busy executives and C-suites, the answer to frequent scheduling bottlenecks and disrupted work-life balance is not in hiring a VA but in onboarding an executive assistant with whom you can partner long term.

Below are some situations where you should prioritize onboarding an executive assistant over a VA:

• You Need a Strategic Partnership: Hire an executive assistant if you need someone you can bounce ideas off of or trust to understand your business and prioritize tasks by strategic importance. 
• You Need an Assistant Who Can Function as Your Extension: Go for an executive assistant if you want someone to represent you during meetings with stakeholders or handle email communication and correspondence on your behalf. 
• You Need Integrated Life Support: Most VAs are trained to handle only administrative tasks, such as data entry, email communication, and calendar management. As such, an EA will serve you better if you want an assistant who’ll also double up as your PA.
• You Need an Assistant That Can Function Without Constant Oversight: Most VAs require constant guidance and clarification, which can be frustrating for busy executives who expect their assistants to operate with some level of independence. In such cases, partner with an EA whom you can grant controlled authority to make independent decisions and to prioritize tasks appropriately, contacting you only for issues that require your personal attention.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Below are answers to common questions executives ask about finding a virtual assistant.

What Is the Average Turnaround Time on a VA Task?

The average turnaround time for a VA task depends mainly on its urgency. For example, low-urgent tasks, such as research or inbox organization, may have turnaround times of up to 48 hours.

In contrast, emergencies such as canceled flights may require EA services after hours or urgent requests to avoid disrupting the executive’s schedule.

Should I Hire a Generalist or a Specialist VA?

The decision to hire a generalist or specialist VA depends on your executive needs. For example, a generalist VA works best for executives who only need an assistant to handle repetitive administrative tasks.

In contrast, you should onboard a specialist VA for niche-specific tasks, such as social media management or graphic design.

Are Virtual Assistants Worth It for Solopreneurs?

Absolutely. Virtual assistants are worth it for solopreneurs to help them reduce their administrative burden. However, solopreneurs in high-pressure environments, such as startup founders or creative entrepreneurs, are better served by an EA who can serve as a utility player (undertake roles beyond basic task management).

Conclusion

The virtual assistant you partner with should free up your time to focus on strategic roles. This means prioritizing the VA’s work experience and skills over choosing a candidate solely based on their hourly rate.

However, as a busy C-suite, you may quickly establish that you need executive-level support, which most VAs can’t offer, prompting you to onboard an EA. At this point, you need to find an EA that has the right skill set and experience supporting other busy executives. 

At ProAssisting, we have a rigorous vetting process that results in less than 5% of candidates qualifying for the role. Additionally, all ProAssistants have at least 5 years of experience supporting C-suite executives and board directors at leading organizations, including Stanley Black & Decker, MSNBC, and Boston Consulting Group.

Schedule a call with our co-founder, Ethan Bull, to discuss how partnering with an EA can help you reclaim your time.