A Complete Guide to Working With and When It’s Time To Hire A VA

The answer to ‘When is the right time to hire a VA?’ is different for everyone, depending on a variety of factors, such as the type of business you run, your budget, and the sort of additional tasks you need help with.

But, if we were to generalise, here are just a few obvious signs that it’s the right time to start looking for your first VA:

You’re Stressed

You started your business full of hope and excitement that you’re finally working for yourself, and doing something you love to do.

However, you’ve recently started to get stressed, overwhelmed, and on the verge of burnout by all the additional admin and other tasks running a business involves.

No one should feel this way when running a business, and suffering this sort of stress is one of the most common reasons business owners decide to hire a VA.

You’re Focusing On Low-Value Tasks

You know the things you need to do to make your business grow, high-value tasks, such as nurturing customer relationships or designing new products and services.

But, as time goes on, you’re finding yourself bogged down with repetitive and low-value tasks, like mundane admin, accounting, or posting daily posts on social media.

This ‘drift’ away from the tasks that help your business grow is often a clear sign that the time is right to hire a VA, someone who’ll take care of all of these tasks, and a lot more.

You’re Missing Deadlines

Meeting deadlines and keeping track of details is essential for your business, especially when you’re up against some fierce competition from other businesses looking to muscle in. 

But, if you’re starting to miss deadlines or forget important details, customers may start to lose trust, and eventually start to look elsewhere for the services or products you provide.

If you’ve reached this point in your business, and it’s something that’s causing you stress, this is another sign the time may have come to hire a VA.

You’re Not Realising Long-Term Goals

Your business needs long-term goals to ensure the business grows in the way you want it to grow, and to give you and your team a way to measure success.

If however, you’re not focussed on long-term goals, strategy or vision, this could be due to the fact you’re forever putting out fires or dealing with other issues.

Is this a situation you recognise? If it is, this is certainly a sign that your business would greatly benefit from the services of a good VA to help you regain that essential focus.

The experience you’ll have working with a VA will vary depending on the tasks assigned, but, to get a better understanding of what it’s like to work with a VA, it’s a good idea to compare it with working with a full-time employee.

In general, the key differences you’ll find between working with a VA and hiring an assistant as an employee are:

A VA requires less training

A skilful and experienced VA will already be trained in the process of their assigned task, so, all they’ll need to know is what you want them to achieve, and then they’ll do the rest.

However, it’s still important to realise that the VA will need some guidance, and systems that perform correctly, especially if they’re expected to take over detailed work.

A VA works their own hours

When it comes to hiring a VA, remember that VA’s work to their own schedule, meaning that they’ll do the hours assigned throughout the day or night.

The reason for this is that you won’t be a good VA’s only client, so, expect them to fit your jobs in and around other clients, and prioritise which jobs to rush through.

A VA will have specific expertise

Unlike most full-time employees, a VA will have specific skill sets, one or two things they’re extremely good at that align with the task you require them to do.

If however, you have numerous different tasks, we’d suggest hiring multiple VA’s, each with their own specialised skillsets, so that tasks are completed by the best person for the job.