One entrepreneur’s journey to find a Virtual Assistant

I recently came across this blog entry outlining David Risley’s experience in finding a suitable Virtual Assistant and while it isn’t a new entry, it has some very pertinent information. It lends some useful insight and helpful information in guiding anyone who may think of hiring a Virtual Assistant.

Thank you, David!

Finding a Virtual Assistant

June 6, 2007

I have been spending time here and there over the last week attending to a very important action for my business: hiring a virtual assistant. Now, let me say ahead of time that I have not yet signed a contract with the person I am going to try out, however I should be doing that before the end of the week. I would, though, like to blurb about my experience thus far on finding a VA.

First off, a virtual assistant (VA) is essentially an assistant that does not work in my office. In other words, they are not an employee, but an independent contractor. They provide their own material and they work remotely, doing whatever you ask them to do. With the technology we have today, there really is no reason that you HAVE to have people in your office. In my case, I operate out of a home office. Even if the VA needs to work with your own software, you can give them remote desktop access and they can use a computer in your office while sitting anywhere in the world. Hence the name virtual assistant.

My first attempt to find a VA was to go to Elance.com and post. Elance is a great resource for finding labor. It works similarly to Ebay. Service providers have profiles and get feedback. You can judge any service provider by their feedback and by their portfolio. I recently found a writer on Elance, and although she is not yet done with my project, I am happy with her so far. I decided to post for a VA position. They do have a category for Administrative Support, Personal Assistants, and all kinds of other categories. I got a total of 13 bids on Elance. The bids were hit and miss, and you have to do a good job on Elance of evaluating your bids. First of all, realize that you are going to get mostly overseas bids. A vast majority of bids I received were from India. Their hourly rates were very low to our standards – averaging $5/hour. I obviously like the price, but is that the only important criteria? Absolutely not. What I observed in the bids was:

• Many of them were not writing in correct English.
• Some bids were not really VAs, but programmers. That’s fine. I need a programmer, but I’m asking for a VA here.

The other thing to do is to clarify the hourly rate with them. Most of the bids would come in as whole amounts, like $50. But, $50 for what? An hour? 10 hours? So, use the private message board to clarify with them if they don’t specifically tell you in their initial bid. You also want to be careful with what they are bidding on. I had a couple companies bid where they say we would work out a price later, but they would bid something now to get my attention. In other words, I would choose their bid only to be given another rate once they find out more about what I want. No thanks.

All in all, Elance is a great place to find labor, but it can be a lot more work. I’ve worked with a few overseas people before. The lowball price is attractive. But, you get what you pay for. The language barrier can be a problem, especially when you’re trying to get them to deliver something specific. Another thing to keep in mind is that many of the really GOOD providers are probably not going to be out there bidding on projects on Elance. Why? Because the good ones are usually pretty busy already. To find the good ones, you usually need to go to where the good ones hang out and ask them to work for you. I recently watched a video of John Reese talking about finding a Flash guy to do his Flash intro for Income.com. Did he put a project out on Elance? No, he went to FlashKit and found somebody in the forums. That’s where Flash people hang out.

My next source for finding a VA is VANetworking. This is a site by VANA (Virtual Assistant Networking Association). I went and submitted a request for proposal (RFP) where they will then, in turn, post on their forum of VAs. I got just as many bids (if not more) from VANetworking as I did from Elance. The big thing to keep in mind is that most of the bids you will get from here are American. That means they cost more. Most of the bids I had were coming in anywhere from $20/hour to $40/hour. But, the quality of the bids was significantly higher than Elance. These women (and most of them were indeed women) really knew their stuff and offered good detail to me in their proposals. I even had a great VA bid who had an office in Tampa – only about a half hour from me.

Ultimately, I have found a lady up in Minnesota who I cam going to be working with. We have agreed on terms (at least preliminarily) and she will be getting me a contract tomorrow. She is a VA, but with a real penchant for internet work. That’s obviously great for me being in the business I am. I’m looking forward to getting out from underneath of some things as well as getting things moving on otherwise stagnant projects. For me, I think finding a good, quality VA is going to be an important step for me.