How to Vet/Screen Virtual Assistants?

[jdainter]

Hello All.

Firstly a big hello. New to these forums but am a huge follower of Tim Ferris' methods.

I have always been somewhat of a productivity geek and for many years have been using virtual assistants and planning ways to eliminate mundane work, and to effectively become one the NR!

Then I read 4 hour work week, and realised I was not alone in this quest, so shall be spending a lot of time on these forums I'm sure!

My first question....

I have been through dozens (no, probably hundreds) of VA's and staff to help with outsourced assignments. This ranges from administrative VA assistance through to web development outsourcing and so on.

I have pretty slick system in place (being a high tech kind of person, my systems are too using evernote to dictate tasks from anywhere in the world into a synced desktop account on the VA's machine, processed into Basecamp then actioned). This works a dream.. but the biggest fallback of them all...

1) As it stands I dont have a huge budget for VAs so I tend to focus on the overseas VA's with little experience perhaps (nor some other box "unticked")

2) As a result I attract a much larger range of help from the decent "good eggs" through to the thoroughly bad ones.

This is all fine with me so far, you pay for what you get right? The hurdle for me is the cost when:

* You end up spending lots of time through varius channels funding a good set of VA's to vet

* After painstakingly reviewing each and speaking perhaps to each you then get one on board, then the training begins. Even with my (what I would consider to be "slick" ) systems in place this still takes a good 1-2 weeks to get a VA up to speed with all the processes we use. Until that point they dont have a full grasp of the business and therefore they arent much use to me. I can probably get some of the training time down with the use of screencasts and wikis I suppose.

then the problem.....

....THEY BAIL OUT!

Nightmare. After all that energy/cost they decide that VA work isnt for them, or their electricity cuts out or... [insert excuse] and they stop work.

Needless to say this leaves me in a situation worse that where I started, with a pile of backlogged VA work and no VA to carry it all out!

My question (finally here it comes)...

Has anyone here experienced this and what have you done to combat this (please don't reply saying pay your PA's more as that is a luxury I don't have right now!). Has anyone ever tried out any slick testing/vetting processes? online exams? Ideally what i am after is being able to minimise the amount of energy/work that goes into finding/vetting a PA, testing them out, and then recruiting a new one should they bail on me. Any ideas?

Thanks in advance and nice to meet you all.

[Bishop81]

You know, sometimes the electricity does cut out for a bit.

I found my programmer and a writer through onlinejobs.ph, indirectly through ReplaceMyself.com. I haven't had a bit of trouble with them at all, but the two other writers that I tried to hire both disappeared after I gave them their training work. My writer (who could easily sub as a VA) costs around $200 per month, and I'm training her to learn how my business works.

As a result, when I have different stuff for her to do, I send it. If I don't have anything new, she just continues writing content in the way that I've taught her, and moves on to the next article.

It's something to check out, anyway...

[jdainter]

Hi Bishop81.

Thanks for this and for your thoughts here.

This hasnt really answered my question though. I am familiar with sourcing VA's (there is a plethora of sites out there a quick google will reveal) but the issue here is that quite simply I have to accept that due to the budget I am on and the nature of the work (high stress sometimes and fast paced) I will get a high drop out rate.

This doesnt mean I wont find some diamonds who will go the extra mile, but it does mean I have to accept a higher than normal staff turnover until I am in the position to increase budgets and get a higher caliber of staff - does that make sense?

My question was more focused around what systems anyone has found to vet VA's and similarly to get the process of recuriting a new VA and getting them up to date? Does anyone use questionnaires for this? screencasts? Any stories here?

Im sure the VAs you have found have been great, but what happens when one of them decides they have had enough. How have people overcome this issue and swapping cost involved here?

[outofbandii]

Mightn't be the answer you want, but I find that the more expensive the VA, the better value they are (more work done per $$ spent). Particularly ex-professionals who want to work part-time from home while raising kids, but have great skills.

[jdainter]

Appreciate the responses here guys but I did clearly put...

"(please don't reply saying pay your PA's more as that is a luxury I don't have right now!)"

I hear this argument load and clear but have been fairly specific here with what I am searching for so would like to stick to the question in hand here if possible.....

I am keen to know if anyone has put any processes in place for high speed/efficient vetting of VA's?

Perhaps I'm barking up the wrong tree/forum here!?

[Bishop81]

Appreciate the responses here guys but I did clearly put...

"(please don't reply saying pay your PA's more as that is a luxury I don't have right now!)"

I hear this argument load and clear but have been fairly specific here with what I am searching for so would like to stick to the question in hand here if possible.....

I am keen to know if anyone has put any processes in place for high speed/efficient vetting of VA's?

Perhaps I'm barking up the wrong tree/forum here!?

Good luck, then. If they're getting fed up then something's wrong. I suggest more money or less/different work. Until you're making enough to afford somebody who wants to keep the job, then you may likely cycle through them.

My post was simply to say that it doesn't take a lot of money to hire a full time employee that enjoys their job. While I didn't address the question of "What do you do to find somebody who doesn't bail?", I feel it does address the issue at hand. If you have less than $200 per month for a VA, then you might not be in a position to hire one. While they're very important, the time you have to spend training each one will be time wasted that you could have been focusing on your business.

Others may have what you feel is better or more relevant advice, so consider all opinions and insight.

In direct response to your actual question, I didn't have anything specific that I did when selecting my person. I told her exactly what I expected (no outrageous demands, keep it real) and paid very close attention to her English skills. After that, I went with my instinct. I think it's important to not place too many demands on somebody that you're paying such a small amount for. I also think that in order for them to keep from getting burned out, it's important to provide them different tasks to do. If they're writing articles, have them write an occasional article on a subject of their choice. Keep the job fun for them and they'll do great work.

It's also important to remember that other countries don't have our infrastructure. While we think it's unlikely for power to be out a whole day, this is common in some places. It's important to be understanding when that happens and treat them like a real person. We're paying them so little, generally, so what's the big deal if they missed a day because the power was out? If it becomes a problem, then address it or move on, but most people are grateful for the job opportunity, and don't take advantage of it.

In the end, I think there's more that will help you than simply "This is how I find somebody". From your initial post, I feel that the above areas are where you're lacking. I could be wrong, but the impatience in the second and third posts drive me more to that conclusion.

In the end, though, remember that I'm just another person trying to make a living. My opinion is simply that, my opinion, which doesn't make it right.

[outofbandii]

I think you're wasting money trying to save money. Good luck.

[adam.sn]

I've actually got a course coming out on it tomorrow ;)

I'll post the thread here for review purposes.

Cheers
- Adam

[FrozenCanuck]

What are you paying your VAs and what country are they in. Maybe you don't need to pay more. Hard to say unless I know more. I've been at this a while.

I do a bunch of things to filter good from bad now. Simple compliance tests and problem solving stuff mostly.

[jdainter]

Thanks for feedback here. I didn't intend to sound ungrateful for the feedback earlier so apologies if that's how it came across (after re-reading perhaps was a little blunt in that last response). Bishop81 particularly apologies if I came aross as rude, fair points made there and perhaps I am a little frustrated here as I had asked everyone to steer away from the debate of "pay staff more" - but this is probably my own fault in giving too much background information here.

"Wasting money trying to save money" - to be honest yes I do agree there is an element of that at the moment, but to be honest I wanted to steer away from that line of argument for this simply because I'm aware of the issue and the solution (eg making more money, and as a result paying more money) is somethign I am working on!

Lets be clear, I'm not some kind of scrooge here, the last VA I was paying around 150 to 200GBP (based on incentives) per month to do some basic virtual assistance for me which is a pretty reasonable budget given the work load (it wasnt full time by any means). She dropped out because she had commitments at her local church which meant she didnt want to work the hours she was working. The one before that (who was a great VA and we had a good pay system in place), dropped out because she got pregnant. These things happen whether you pay staff well or not, but I would argue they happen MORE often when using overseas/freelance/outsourced work.

My point is, unlike the more "traditional" route of getting staff, which I consider to be:

* Taking interviews
* Employing someone in the country (normally in the same city) on a salary (whereby employment laws kick in as well)
* That person making a hufe life/career decision to come and work for you and base a huge amount of their working time in your office...

...clearly the VA set up is different. My point was in my experience of using many outsourcers/VAs you will always suffer a higher turnover rate than more traiditional "job offers".

Anyhow - again we're going down this path of the questioning staff turnover, or pay. For the sake of keeping to what I was trying to establish, can we assume that this is the situation I have at the moment and potentially find out more about:

* What ways do people test your VA's?
* How far do you go in automating this test process?
* How do you quickly test for real talent (/common sense) vs a snazzy CV (lets face it all VA's claim to be the best VA in the world)
* Once you have a VA signed up, what methods do you use to automate the training process
* Does anyone make use of screencasts for training/interviews?

Walking through an example of the recruitment process (this is the process I am trying to make more automated/less effort)..

1) Initial feelers go out through my existing contact base of freelancers and via online freelance platforms (elance etc etc).

How we automate this:

* Very clear briefs that state at the top of the brief not to apply if you fit whatever criterion. That cuts out a lot of admin (though you still get people applying without reading your posts!)
* Online registration form whereby we ask anyone who applies to fill this out so we have all the necessary information in advance (skype, phone, full name, best email etc). This saves a lot of faffing around.

Any others? What do you all do during this process?

2) Filtering the good the bad and the ugly

We then go through the process of filtering the list to remove anyone who doesn't cut the mustard. This is currently done very manually, we study portfolio links, look into references of past work, look into the professionalisms of the responses, etc etc. We dont currently automate this very well (and can do in my opinion)

Any ideas? What do people do at this stage to test candidates? Does anyone know of any online tools/links that would help here?

3) Select a candidate and start training

Candidate is selected and then training begind which takes maybe 1-2 weeks tops to go through all our cloud based/remote systems so that they can get on with autonomously. (I wont go through the whole list of systems we have here as I'll save that for another post!)

What we do to automate this:

* We use an internal wiki and grant candidates access so that they can get up to speed in our company without having to do this individually one by one.
* We provide a series of tasks in basecamp (basecamp support templates luckily so this isnt time consuming if you build that list in advance) for the candidate to tick off as they go through (getting up to speed with the wiki, looking at tutorials how to use our systems, etc).

At this stage because we don't have the necessary tests/exams in place in step 2 some candidates show their true colours and we realise what they are capable of vs what it says on their CVs dont match. In some cases they realise its too much work (despite being clear up front) and drop out. Step 2, would probably reduce this if we were to test/assess candidates better.

How do you train staff? dos anyone use an automated system for this? please share!

FrozenCanuck - compliance test/problem solving stuff sounds really interesting. Would you be willing to share any examples of these? Do you administer the tests "manually" or use any tools to do this?

Thanks again for all the feedback.

[Bishop81]

I'm not really sure how you can automate that stuff, but I'll think about it. Automation is part of my day job. :D

In the end (after seeing your examples), you've got much more experience than I do, in regards to hiring and training your VA's. Mine was simple. I knew what I was looking for, searched through the online Filipino job board, and emailed the person that looked right. After a couple emails, and reviewing an article that she had written, I hired her. There weren't any tests, or anything like that.

I went with my instinct, and it's paid off (it always does, either with success or a great education).

Maybe it's the country that you're hiring from?

[jdainter]

I'm not really sure how you can automate that stuff, but I'll think about it. Automation is part of my day job. :D

Great - thanks. I'm not really seeking to get this to 100% automation to be honest (probably possible but the effort involved to set that up would be counter productive I would think), rather, just limit the amount of manual work that goes into this.

compliance/intelligence/psychometric tests would be useful and could be administered easily with an online tool (I have yet to find any good ones, any ideas anyone?)

Would be keen to see if people already do this, what types of questions they put in the test that work well.

To give you a practical example... I was thinking of doing a spot of outsourcing next week for some of our social media accounts (twitter/linked in/facebook etc). I have recently installed hootsuite (great tool so far and allows you to integrate all your accounts together nicely for free). Is a perfect situation to get a data enterer (or perhaps freelance writer) on the case to start scheduling posts. However its not quite as easy as that as to do this job the candidate will need to be:

* Extremely fluent in english (eg being able to use slang/colloquial text very well)
* Know what our company does very well (as one of the main purposes of these posts will be to pull traffic into our sites)
* Quirky/creative. Boring/heavily sales focused posts are a huge off in social media as I'm sure you all know
... the list would go on.

Going through the typical process, I agree there is a certain amount of gut feeling involved, but I am certain this type of process can be automed. For example, lets say (and I have yet to find this tool but lets assume it exists) you can administer an online exam that:

a) Shows the candidate a video screen cast of you (the superviser/company owner/whatever) briefing the candidate and saying hello
b) Takes them through a series of questions that are very hands on. For example things like "Assuming you started the job right now, post 10 messages that will go out on twitter linked in, and facebook".

These two questions alone would seperate out a HUGE amount of those who simply "talk the talk" vs actually being talented/creative/in the know enough to manage a social media channel.

The main thing for me is, this process is low in manual input and easy to repeat. This means is:

* Someone bails out on me (for whatever reason)
* You want to hire another person
* Your candidate goes on holiday and you need a quick 1 month replacement...
(etc)

.... then its a simple 30 min job to post on the freelance channels and get a recruit set up - rather than a 2 week laborious process.

Am I alone on this quest or is anyone else out there as anal about this kind of automation as I am!?[/QUOTE]

[adam.sn]

I pay my VA 275 a month and she's 100% fluent in english and is university educated.

She's from the Philippines ... much better to hire there than India. English is their second language.

[pharmsj4]

Jdainter,

You are mistaking your cash for your value. If you have truly had 100s of VAs and spent all this time training them and finding that they drop out or don't work out you would save a ton of capital by hiring someone slightly more expensive with a track record. Paying someone an extra $2/hr for long-term, quality work will pay back dividends compared to your current system. Calculate how much money you have "thrown away" on VAs and cost-average it out. I promise it will be worth your time.

[ayaz786amd]

Hello All.

Firstly a big hello. New to these forums but am a huge follower of Tim Ferris' methods.

I have always been somewhat of a productivity geek and for many years have been using virtual assistants and planning ways to eliminate mundane work, and to effectively become one the NR!

Then I read 4 hour work week, and realised I was not alone in this quest, so shall be spending a lot of time on these forums I'm sure!

My first question....

I have been through dozens (no, probably hundreds) of VA's and staff to help with outsourced assignments. This ranges from administrative VA assistance through to web development outsourcing and so on.

I have pretty slick system in place (being a high tech kind of person, my systems are too using evernote to dictate tasks from anywhere in the world into a synced desktop account on the VA's machine, processed into Basecamp then actioned). This works a dream.. but the biggest fallback of them all...

1) As it stands I dont have a huge budget for VAs so I tend to focus on the overseas VA's with little experience perhaps (nor some other box "unticked")

2) As a result I attract a much larger range of help from the decent "good eggs" through to the thoroughly bad ones.

This is all fine with me so far, you pay for what you get right? The hurdle for me is the cost when:

* You end up spending lots of time through varius channels funding a good set of VA's to vet

* After painstakingly reviewing each and speaking perhaps to each you then get one on board, then the training begins. Even with my (what I would consider to be "slick" ) systems in place this still takes a good 1-2 weeks to get a VA up to speed with all the processes we use. Until that point they dont have a full grasp of the business and therefore they arent much use to me. I can probably get some of the training time down with the use of screencasts and wikis I suppose.

then the problem.....

....THEY BAIL OUT!

Nightmare. After all that energy/cost they decide that VA work isnt for them, or their electricity cuts out or... [insert excuse] and they stop work.

Needless to say this leaves me in a situation worse that where I started, with a pile of backlogged VA work and no VA to carry it all out!

My question (finally here it comes)...

Has anyone here experienced this and what have you done to combat this (please don't reply saying pay your PA's more as that is a luxury I don't have right now!). Has anyone ever tried out any slick testing/vetting processes? online exams? Ideally what i am after is being able to minimise the amount of energy/work that goes into finding/vetting a PA, testing them out, and then recruiting a new one should they bail on me. Any ideas?

Thanks in advance and nice to meet you all.

I am freelance bookkeeper and i have worked for many clients at $7 per hour. It is almost 100% times that my client's has not provided me any instructions about what to do. They provide me bank statement, invoices etc and that's it. Now i know the rules and how to complete my work on time.
The problem with you is you try to save your cost by hiring newbies. You should hire expert people by paying 1 or 2 dollars more this will save your time. Also another important point, you can ask question about any particular situation which you have not experienced but your experienced virtual accountant does because he/she has already work for many businesses. So if you want quality you have to pay for it but the results will also be highly standard.

[Bishop81]

I pay my VA 275 a month and she's 100% fluent in english and is university educated.

She's from the Philippines ... much better to hire there than India. English is their second language.

I think we've established that it's not a matter of the price you're paying them, but most likely the source where you found the worker? I'm thinking that instead of just hitting up the freelance channels, you might try looking for somebody who wants a permanent job. The Philippines seems to be a great place to start.

I agree that your idea for testing the social media savvy of your worker would probably work. Maybe provide a little info about the business, along with 5 sample posts that you would personally write, and then see what they would write for their 10 sample posts. That's similar to what I did with my ezinearticles posting. I gave my writer 2 author biographies to look at that I had written, and asked her to accomplish the same thing. The interesting thing is that her bios are so much better to read than mine. :)