Suppose you’re a business owner or executive and planning to hire a virtual assistant (VA). In that case, knowing what tasks a VA can handle is essential.
Whether outsourcing those tasks to a VA is the right choice?
While virtual assistant service companies and freelance VAs list a wide range of tasks they can do, they don’t fit well for all of them.
In this article, we’ll discuss what virtual assistants do and when it makes sense to use them. We’ll also explore what tasks are suitable for outsourcing to a VA.What tasks may be better handled by specialized freelancers, agencies, or remote executive assistant services? After this article, you will possess a more comprehensive understanding of the services provided by VAs and determine whether they suitably fit your requirements.
Virtual Assistants Offer Hundreds Of Services. But for Which Tasks Do They Fit Perfectly?
When searching online, you can find various tasks that virtual assistants (VAs) can handle. Some of the most commonly cited services include
• Email management
• Phone calls
• Calendar management
• Travel arrangements
• Bookkeeping
• Social media management
• Graphic design
• SEO
• Content creation and marketing
• Lead generation
• Customer support
• Research, etc.
After providing remote executive assistant services for four years, we have discovered that VAs best suit recurring tasks that do not require high responsibility or skill. Examples of these types of jobs include data entry and spreadsheet management. Hiring a part-time VA may be a good option if you need this support.
We only recommend VAs for recurring and simple tasks for several reasons.
• VAs may have a different familiarity with your business than an in-house employee, limiting their ability to make crucial decisions.
• They need help toadapt to your industry’s changes quickly.
• Some tasks require specialized knowledge or expertise that VAs may not possess.
3 Factors That Make VAs A Poor Fit For Many Of The Services They Offer
If you’re considering hiring a virtual assistant (VA), it’s essential to understand that some characteristics of VAs make them a poor fit for specific tasks. Here are three common traits of VAs that you should consider before hiring one:
- VAs works as part-time contractors: There’s nothing inherently wrong with hiring a part-time assistant. A full-time assistant who works closely with you on daily tasks better suits your needs, such as email and calendar management. These tasks are crucial for managing essential business relationships. It requires high trust and understanding of an executive’s preferences and priorities. It’s a big responsibility to outsource to a part-time VA who will need more confidence, experience, and organizational knowledge to do these tasks well.
- VAs work as generalists, not specialists: Like administrative and executive assistants, VAs can manage a wide range of tasks but don’t specialize in any specific area. Generalist VAs won’t have well-developed skill sets in more technical areas.It’s crucial to remember that several VA services necessitate technical or specialized skills, such as SEO or content creation for digital marketing services. Depending on your needed services, you may be better off hiring specialized freelancers or services.
- VAs aren’t usually thoroughly investigated: When hiring VAs through freelance marketplaces or virtual assistant service companies, no thorough investigating process is generally available to test and qualify VAs to ensure consistent competency and capability. Iit’s rare to find VAs who can competently perform the wide range of tasks they claim to offer. This means that the competency and qualifications of VAs could be more consistent.
By understanding the strengths and weaknesses of VAs, you can decide whether or not they’re a good fit for your needs. For these reasons, it’s best only to use VAs for simple, repetitive tasks. Using specialized services or remote executive assistants is better if you need more complex tasks requiring specialization or advanced business knowledge.
When Does A Specialized Assistant Or Remote Executive Assistant Make More Sense?
Suppose you need a skilled assistant to handle various tasks, including complex ones like email and calendar management. In that case, a remote executive assistant might be your best solution. With thoroughly explored and suitable characteristics, these competent assistants can carry out most of the tasks offered by virtual assistants. Unlike freelance marketplaces and VA companies, finding a skilled generalist requires a more sophisticated strategy.
However, hiring a freelancer or agency specializing in that area may be best if you require specialized services like digital marketing. To determine which type of assistant is best for your business, consider the tasks you want them to focus on and whether you want them to specialize or work on a range of functions.
For example, if you need someone to create original content, you must hire a content writing specialist. A talented executive assistant will be suitable if you need someone to handle proofreading, publishing, posting content on your social media accounts, and other tasks.
Similarly, if you need a leading brand designer who can develop and direct the look and feel of your brand,then a freelancer or agency specializing in graphic design would be the best choice. But if you require someone to create graphics periodically for social media or email marketing, among other tasks, a skilled executive assistant can handle this effectively.
The following section will outline our remote executive assistant service, highlighting its unique features and the tasks our assistants undertake for our clients.
When Does A Specialized Assistant Or Remote Executive Assistant Make More Sense?
Our company provides a service that matches startup founders, entrepreneurs, and executives with skilled, reliable, competent executive assistants in many different areas. Our assistants can manage various tasks, such as handling communications, scheduling and time management, project management, social media marketing and management, business operations, people operations, strategic planning, client services, and special projects.
What sets our service apart from others is our unique hiring process. We use a methodology that assesses candidates on four key areas that predict success in a remote virtual assistant role. These areas are problem-solving ability, essential character and behavioral traits, communication ability, and tech savviness.
We assess candidates using quantitative assessments, structured interviews, work sample projects, communication exercises, and reference and background checks.Our hiring process enables us to consistently deliver top talent to our clients who exceed their expectations and exceed what most remote or virtual assistant services can offer.
How Our Remote Executive Assistant Service Works
Our company offers executive support to various industries, such as tech startups, non-profits, real estate, and professional services. If you’re a founder, entrepreneur, small business owner, or senior executive, you can try our service for a month or two without any long-term commitments.
Here’s how to start using our service:
Step 1: Fill out a form to tell us what you need.
Step 2: If we can help you, let’s schedule a call to discuss our service in more detail.
Step 3: We’ll hand-pick an assistant who will be an excellent match for you based on your needs.
Step 4: Our talent team will guide you through onboarding over 2-3 weeks.
Step 5: You’ll pay a flat monthly rate to receive 40 hours of remote work per week from your world-class assistant, who will be like having a full-time employee without a long-term commitment.