How
to hire a personal assistant online is one question or challenge that
the perpetually busy business owner or entrepreneur will eventually ask
himself. He or she reaches that turning point upon
the realization that a lot of his time is being consumed to paperwork,
menial tasks, and small but time-eating chores that could have been
delegated to a junior member of the staff. He or she keeps on missing
out on important meetings with customers or cannot focus on strategy formation and other executive decisions.
At the same time, the company may not have the kind of budget that will
allow them to hire a department or several staff members who can assume
this workload for them.
The
option to hire a personal assistant online then becomes attractive to
him. First, the costs compared to hiring full-time employees are smaller
by comparison. Second, an online personal assistant can work under a
more flexible arrangement that is more suitable to the business owner’s
objectives. For example, his work hours and pay rates can be increased
or lessened according to the needs of his boss or supervisor. Third, he
or she may have generalist skills — such as communication,
documentation, travel arrangements, and project management — but can
also contribute other extra and vital works that the business owner may
not have to shell out a lot of money for. These extra skills can include
but are not limited to marketing, IT, sales, and event organization.
Steps to follow to hire a personal assistant online?
First,
he must have a clear idea of what he wants from the personal assistant.
A list of the tasks that he wants to offload or add must be completed.
It would be better to start with the one that he really wants to
delegate. Another way to make this list easier is to categorize the
tasks. For example, under administration, he can put in tasks like
coordinating meetings or filing online documents. Under finances, he can
list down tasks like budget computation or financial statements.
Second,
the business owner must be able to estimate how many hours he wants his
personal assistant to spend on each task. He can also schedule same.
For example, all of Monday, for an entire eight hours a day, would be
spent on administration. Finances can be done at the end of each week,
taking only five to six hours. If there are guests flying into the
company, then travel arrangements can be inputted in for one hour each
day.
Next,
once he has a firm image of the tasks he wants to be done, the business
owner can then set reasonable expectations for the deliverables he
anticipates. He would have to determine the competencies and
capabilities of this virtual assistant. To hire a personal assistant
online, he would need someone who can not just communicate verbally and
online, but one who is organized, quick on the job, mentally alert,
adept in computer software, and trustworthy. He might want to add a few
more skills that he needs help in, such as research and marketing
studies.
Third,
once the expectations have been set, the third step to hire a personal
assistant online is to ask help from the experts who can find him one.
Asking recommendations from friends or browsing platforms peopled by freelancers are
the more popular options, but they too can be time-consuming. The
business owner would end up adding more hours to his to-do list just
posting job ads online, downloading resumes of potential candidates,
sifting through them, selecting the suitable ones, and then calling or
emailing them up for interviews. Without realizing it, he is continuing
the problem he wants to solve. He must remember that he needs to hire a
virtual assistant, and not fill it unintentionally that very same
vacancy.
A
more cost-efficient and productive way is to ask the help of companies
that do managed outsourcing and have a talent pool of capable, reliable,
and skilled staff who work remotely. One advantage in this approach is
that the talent pool is already packed with proven talent who have the
necessary experience and skills. Second, the managed outsourcing company
will do the actual screening and selection of the personal assistant
based on its meetings with the business owner. Third, it will
continually monitor the remote worker’s performance while keeping the
business owner updated about his progress. Aligning with a managed outsourcing company is the best way to hire a personal assistant online.
HOPLA is
one such company who can help free you up from your heavy burdens by
finding the right personal assistant for you. Call us now.
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