How to hire your first virtual assistant: What to hand off, what to keep, and how to start

Business

Nobody wakes up planning to hire a virtual assistant. It usually happens after a week where the inbox got away from you, a meeting got rebooked three times, and an invoice sat unsent because anything else felt easier. Here’s how I’d hire your first virtual assistant, and what I’d hand over before anything else.

Do a Time Audit First

Keep a rough log for one week. Don’t worry about being precise. Round to the nearest quarter hour and move on. Write down every task with a guess at how long it took, including the five-minute ones that somehow eat an afternoon. At the end, circle whatever didn’t need your judgment. That pile is what you hand off. Pricing, brand voice and anything a client trusts you personally to do should stay with you for now.

You Aren’t the Only One Stretched Thin

The SBA Office of Advocacy counts 33,185,550 small businesses in the US. That’s 99.9 percent of all businesses, and together they employ 46.4 percent of private sector workers. A Forbes report on a survey of 251 US entrepreneurs found they spend 36 percent of their work week on small administrative tasks like invoicing and data entry. And 31 percent spend between a quarter and half of their working hours on tasks like these. The survey was commissioned by a company that sells assistants, so I’d read it with that in mind, but it’s still a lot of invoicing. Among the same group, 85 percent of expert delegators reported higher profits over the past 12 months, against 74 percent of all the other survey respondents.

Remote Is Normal Now

Buffer’s survey of 3,000 remote workers found that 98 percent want to work remotely at least some of the time for their careers. Flexibility over how they spend their time was the top reason at 67 percent, followed by skipping the commute at 63 percent and living where they choose at 60 percent. And 98 percent would recommend remote work to others.

Choose the Time Zone Before You Search

In that same survey, 74 percent said their company operates across multiple time zones, and 62 percent said they work directly with teammates in other time zones, and 19 percent named it a struggle. Async is common too: 29 percent work mostly that way, and 31 percent split their week evenly. So decide how much overlap you actually need. If you want answers while you’re still on your first coffee, Latin America works well, since Bogotá is within an hour of New York time. If waiting overnight is fine, someone in Manila is twelve or thirteen hours ahead and can clear your inbox while you sleep. One catch: the US moves its clocks in March and November and most of those countries don’t, so the overlap shifts by an hour twice a year.

Where to Find One

Job boards and your own network cost almost nothing up front, though you do all the screening yourself. Freelance platforms are faster, but quality varies and a good freelancer may leave once a bigger client turns up. If you’d rather not, you can hire a virtual assistant through Globaltize. It sends three to five vetted candidates within 7 to 14 days, with resumes, video intros and interview notes, and each hire comes with a 12-month replacement guarantee. There’s a recruiting fee, so it suits a role you plan to keep.

Try Them on Real Work

An interview mostly shows who talks well, and I’d rather see a small piece of work. Give each finalist the same task, taken from your own inbox, with private details removed. Keep it to an hour and pay for it. Check their internet speed before day one, since it’s an easy thing to overlook. Notice whether they ask what you mean or guess.

The First Month

Give them one short document: your tools, who to ask when they’re stuck, how quickly you expect replies and what finished looks like. Agree on a written update each day and a call each week, and keep the call short. Buffer found that 52 percent of remote workers spend one to five hours a week in meetings, and another 23 percent spend six to ten.

In week one, hand over a single task and check every result. Add another in week two. Once something has come back right three times in a row, stop checking it.