Tips and Ideas to get the most from your Virtual Assistant

When the world is moving towards offshoring for effective business management within your budget, what is your excuse? Your inhibitions in the way to hire a virtual assistant can hold you down against the opportunity to access infinite benefits of having a virtual work platform. Out of virtual assistants available from several other countries in the market, Indian virtual assistants have been ranking on top of the charts due to their proven skills and exemplary professionalism. So, if you are also thinking of starting up a new company and want to keep operational costs down, hiring virtual assistants can be an ideal option. But remember that if you fail to establish a dependable working relationship with your virtual assistants, you will not be able to make the best of their skills, experience and workmanship. This situation can be easily curbed by acquiring some basic management skills, with which, you will be able to maximize the output from your virtual assistants and also make them feel an essential and motivated part of the family. Let’s go through some of the basic ideas to put your virtual assistants on the right road!

 

 

Never hire before interviewing

Hiring a virtual assistant is more or less same as welcoming another team member into your office. As there are a lot of outsourcing services providers out there, opting for the best must involve initial screening or interview. While interviewing prospective virtual assistants, do not forget to check whether they are comfortable with English as this gap can lead to plenty of blunders ahead. Then, you must screen their resumes to have a clear idea about their educational and professional background. In fact, you can request for their work samples or give them a mock assignment to see how well can they perform. Bring them on board, only when you are fully satisfied with their capacities and work ethics.

 

Always provide clear instructions

As your virtual assistants will be sitting far away and not in your own office, there can arise situations where they misinterpret tasks at hand. To avoid such circumstances, you must ensure that instructions about the task at hand are clearly communicated to the remote team. While at it, also check how much time your virtual assistants are taking to complete every project and also if it matches the universal professional standards. When you hire a virtual assistant, doing things transparently will not only lead to better resource utilization, but will also increase their productivity.

 

Foster an environment to learn

Adding up to your virtual assistants’ knowledge bank of cross-functional skills and certifications is always going to act as a sturdy back support for effective business management. Therefore, you must try to assign them creative assignments so that they can learn and grow. For instance, if you ask them about their suggestions on enhancing the work process, not only will they feel closer to the team, but this will also motivate them to go above and beyond their KRAs (Key Responsibility Areas). To further strengthen the bond with your Indian virtual assistants, you can also ask them what they want to learn and try to provide them the desired opportunities.

 

Working with experienced Indian virtual assistants can simply transform the way your business is progressing. By paying a little attention to the points mentioned above, you can utilize their abilities most advantageously and as soon as the process is set in place, attributes like work organization, time management and meeting deadlines will be easy to achieve. So much so, that monitoring them 24x7 will not be required for ensuring that right work with right quality is delivered at the right time. Thus, whenever you decide to hire a virtual assistant, note that with a little watchfulness and some amends here and there, you can reap the benefits of offshoring like cost effectiveness and the freedom to scale up and down, as and when you wish to.