What Is a Virtual Assistant for Small Business Owners?

A Virtual Assistant for small business owners is usually an independent contractor who offers technical and administrative assistance to startups and small businesses in various industries. 

Although they can take over different responsibilities, depending on your needs, VAs usually handle administrative or recurring tasks, such as managing calendars, invoicing, trip planning, or handling customer service. Some VAs are more specialized and can carry out more demanding tasks, such as lead generation, email marketing, graphic design, website maintenance, SEO, and many others.

Hiring a Virtual Assistant is much more cost-effective, especially for smaller businesses that can’t afford too many full-time employees. Getting a VA doesn’t require you to provide additional office space, supplies, work equipment, or free company meals, saving you many unnecessary expenses. 

What Can a Virtual Assistant Do for Small Business Owners?

The specific responsibilities of a Virtual Assistant heavily depend on their skills and industry-specific knowledge, as well as the employer’s needs.

Still, the most common services that Virtual Assistants provide to small businesses include:

• Replying to phone calls and emails—A VA working for a small business is typically tasked with handling correspondence, replying to messages, answering customers’ questions, or redirecting them to other staff members
• Managing your work calendar—This includes scheduling, rescheduling, and confirming appointments, meetings, interviews, and various other activities. A VA can also remind all participants in advance of these events to ensure maximum attendance, but the role can also entail other personal or business-related activities, such as booking your flight tickets, making travel accommodations, and notifying you of important dates in your work schedule
• Keeping account books and reviewing invoices—A VA in a small company can also be entrusted with tracking company expenses, making reports, as well as reviewing payments and invoice details

These are just a few examples, but you can essentially outsource any part of the work to a Virtual Assistant, provided they have the technical knowledge and experience to execute it properly. 

For example, you can find VAs who can create presentations, help with recruitment, conduct all kinds of research, manage your social media accounts, proofread your documents, blogs, or important presentations, and so much more!

How Much Does It Cost To Hire a Virtual Assistant for Small Business Owners?

The costs of contracting a Virtual Assistant can vary a lot depending on the number and complexity of tasks they perform, as well as their years of experience, level of education, field of expertise, and geographical location.

According to ZipRecruiter, the average yearly salary of a Virtual Assistant in the United States is around $43,000, which is approximately $21 per hour.

The biggest benefit of hiring a VA for small businesses is the fact that VAs are paid only for the number of hours they work or an agreed amount for a completed project. This is handy in situations where the tasks in your company don’t require attention 40 hours per week.

In addition, you’ll save your business the expenditure of paying pricey employee benefits, such as health insurance, sick leave, vacation time, or monthly/yearly bonuses!

Expert Tips on Hiring a Remote Virtual Assistant for Small Business Owners

Although Virtual Assistants can bring a lot of value to a small business, finding and hiring the perfect one can be a difficult process. 

For one, you need a qualified individual with the right skills and level of experience, so you can’t base your decision on low rates only. And you also need someone reliable as they will have access to confidential business information.

Take a look at some of the tips that have helped us scale our team from 1 to 45 members in under 2 years:

1. Create a detailed job ad—Include a clear, all-encompassing list of responsibilities and requirements. Be super-specific about the technical skills, previous experience, and tool proficiencies necessary to perform the job well. Doing so will drastically reduce the number of unskilled applicants in your hiring funnel
2. Evaluate as many candidates as you can—The only way to find a first-class VA is to go through dozens upon dozens of applications. The more candidates you assess, the greater the odds of finding a skilled individual who requires little to no training or supervision
3. Don’t go for the cheapest candidate automatically—Low rates are great for small businesses that don’t have unlimited resources, but if you don’t focus on the VA’s skills and experiences, you might have to pay more down the line on micromanagement and fixing their mistakes
4. Automate your hiring process—Screening applications, reviewing portfolios, distributing tests, and interviewing candidates will eat away at your time—if done manually. By setting up an automated hiring funnel with Workello, you’ll streamline your hiring process and simultaneously reduce your hiring costs by half

Hire a Reliable Virtual Assistant for Small Business Owners, Faster

You can think of Workello as the perfect virtual hiring assistant. Our fully automated hiring funnel is the product of countless hours, over $100,000 of investment, and dozens of iterations. With Workello, you can automate testing, scheduling, and email correspondence with candidates so you can focus on scaling your business and maximizing revenue.

Here’s how Workello makes hiring Virtual Assistants for small business owners a breeze:

1. Sign up for a free Workello account and launch your automated, pre-configured hiring funnel in less than 3 minutes
2. Post your job ads across LinkedIn, Monster, Facebook, Indeed, and all your other hiring channels and link to your Workello job ad
3. See all your candidates in a single unified Workello dashboard, regardless of which hiring channel they applied from
4. Reject, test, interview, and send offers to Virtual Assistants with a single click
5. Filter out unqualified candidates with Workello’s built-in testing feature
6. Trigger automated emails and move candidates through your hiring funnel simply by changing their status from a drop-down menu
7. Minimize transactional questions by enabling candidates to see a live status page that tells them exactly which stage of your hiring funnel they are in

Don’t waste hundreds of hours looking for a perfect VA for your small business that’s supposed to save you valuable time. Set up a fully automated hiring funnel with Workello, cut your hiring costs by 50%, and start accepting ideal candidates today!

Sign up now and review 5 VA tests for free.