I recently came across this useful article from VANetworking – a social network for virtual assistant, the article provided some interesting insight for clients on expectations for a virtual assistant when you’ve only hired them for 10 hours or less a month and I couldn’t agree with the author more on the points she made.
- Communication – Any working relationship requires communication, but when you’ve hired someone to assist you for only a few hours a months it all the more important to make sure that you communicate your expectations clearly and be as specific as possible of what your expectations are. Any virtual assistant worth their weight will let you know how realistic or unrealistic your expectations are, but at the same time a virtual assistant is not a mind reader so if you don’t tell the VA can complete the work.
- Momentum – keep the momentum, the more people connect and work together the better each person can understand the expectations and know what needs to be done. If you hire someone on a retainer keep that person on retainer, this builds consistency for both yourself and VA and any projects that have been started can continue to the next month. Also it ensures that your time that you’ve paid for via retainer is available for you. If you hire someone inconsistently they’re going to move on to a client that is consistent.
- Pick your projects – ensure that the projects you are handing off to your virtual assistant have realistic expectations. Make sure that each item has a defined beginning, middle and end with clear expectations. The more you can hand off and empower your VA to manage without much input from you after you’ve set the expectations makes it easier for yourself and your VA to function and build a strong working relationship.
10 hours a month might not seem like much, but that is 2.5 hours per week that you didn’t have before, just think what you could do with an additional 2.5 hours per week.
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