Why Hire a Virtual Assistant—8 Ways a VA Can Help Your Business Flourish

For many contemporary businesses, contracting a Virtual Assistant has become a better alternative to hiring a full-time employee. Startups, in particular, have found VAs indispensable for both one-off projects and repetitive, time-consuming administrative tasks.

But why hire a Virtual Assistant instead of a regular employee? 

To grow your company efficiently, you need to dedicate as much of your attention as possible to business-critical tasks. That said, there are numerous office duties that require your time and attention and consequently slow down the pace at which your business grows.

This is where Virtual Assistants come into play—instead of handling every tedious task on your own or having a high-level employee tackle them, you could outsource part of the work to a Virtual Assistant.

In this article, we’ll answer the three biggest questions regarding VAs:

1. Why you need a Virtual Assistant
2. What the main benefits of hiring a Virtual Assistant are
3. How you can find a skilled VA faster, at virtually any price point

Top Reasons To Hire Virtual Assistants

The advantages of hiring a Virtual Assistant are numerous. These professionals can perform a variety of tasks that will make your business run more smoothly from a remote location. 

Outsourcing certain tasks to a VA will allow you to:

• Raise your company’s overall productivity
• Save money by paying only for completed work
• Avoid paying costly in-house benefits
• Scale your business more efficiently
• Be more flexible with your business operations
• Get repetitive tasks completed with minimum supervision
• Avoid having to provide training, office space, and work equipment
• Tap into a vast global talent pool of candidates with various levels of experience and expertise

Boost Your Productivity

By having a Virtual Assistant carry out various administrative duties remotely, you and your executives will have more room to focus on revenue-generating activities.

The table below shows some crucial day-to-day tasks that a Virtual Assistant can complete:

Pay Only For the Work Done

While VAs salaries can vary greatly, one of the main benefits of Virtual Assistants is that they get paid either on an hourly basis or per finished project. As a result, they’re more cost-effective than full-time employees who receive a full paycheck regardless of the scope of work or time needed to complete a particular assignment.

Additionally, you can agree on the exact number of hours a VA will work per week/month, which will help you keep the expenses within budget.

Save on Employee Benefits

Unlike a regular employee, Virtual Assistants don’t have to be paid any additional bonuses or benefits, including:

• PTO
• Sick leave
• Maternity leave
• Health insurance
• Pension

Due to this, the cost of a top-skilled VA is actually much lower than that of a salaried in-house employee. With a Virtual Assistant, there are absolutely no additional costs on top of the rates that you agree on!

Scale Your Business More Efficiently

Hiring a Virtual Assistant is the ideal solution if you’re looking to scale your business both quickly and cost-efficiently. Apart from simple administrative tasks, many VAs also specialize in particular fields and possess varying degrees of skill in different industries.

This means you can have them perform much more demanding tasks that are vital for the success of your organization, at a fraction of the cost of hiring an experienced, in-house professional for the same job. Additionally, contracting a VA is a great option if one of your staff members is on sick leave, and you need to fill the gap fast.

Here are some of the most popular types of Virtual Assistants you can contract to  handle a variety of business-critical tasks for your organization:

• Healthcare Virtual Assistant
• Technical Virtual Assistant
• SEO Virtual Assistant
• Virtual Assistant for Web Design
• Ecommerce Virtual Assistant
• Interior Design Virtual Assistant
• Real Estate Virtual Assistant
• Content Marketing Virtual Assistant
• Video Editing Virtual Assistant
• Website Maintenance Virtual Assistant

Achieve a Greater Level of Flexibility

Having a VA on board can be helpful if some of your clients are in different timezones, and you need someone who can respond to their questions and concerns promptly. As they work remotely, a Virtual Assistant can help keep your business operations going even when the rest of your executives are out of the office.

The best thing about contracting a Virtual Assistant is the flexibility of the arrangement. You can contract a single VA for one-off tasks, or hire multiple Virtual Assistants to provide additional customer support, for example, during peak season. 

Additionally, you can always upscale or downscale the VA’s services, depending on your business needs. Most Virtual Assistants will happily take on more work from a single client since that means added security and reliability of monthly income. 

At the same time, you can easily replace a VA or terminate the contract if you’re not satisfied with their performance. The process of contracting and onboarding a new Virtual Assistant is much faster, simpler, and easier than replacing a full-time employee.

Tap Into an International Candidate Pool

An additional perk of Virtual Assistants is that you can hire them from anywhere in the world. You’re not restricted to a particular region or country, which means you have access to a far larger talent base to choose from.

Though costs vary from state to state, as well as from country to country, hiring remotely means that you have much greater chances of finding a seasoned VA at a rate that your company can afford.

In addition, you don’t have to pay any employee benefits or country-specific fees and taxes. You pay them only for services rendered—and it’s up to the VA to handle any additional costs of freelancing that apply in their region.

No Need for Micromanagement

One of the major reasons to hire a Virtual Assistant is that skilled VAs don’t require much supervision or micromanagement. 

They will deftly perform all the mundane administrative duties in the background, allowing you to put more effort into developing your marketing plan, attracting customers, and generating a profit.

No Need To Provide Training or Equipment

Since they perform their work remotely, you don’t have to worry about providing VAs with office space, work equipment, or any physical tools and supplies. 

They also typically don’t require weeks of onboarding and training that full-time employees typically do, saving you valuable time and money.

Use Workello To Attract and Hire Top Virtual Assistants, Fast

There are dozens of reasons to get a Virtual Assistant, but finding one whose skills perfectly match your company’s needs is not easy. 

You can’t just hire an applicant with the lowest rates—they’re typically inexperienced and lack the crucial skills necessary to perform the tasks well. 

Additionally, you’ll be sharing sensitive company information with a VA, such as passwords and emails, so you need to find someone who is both competent and reliable. And the only way to find such a candidate is by evaluating, testing, and interviewing as many applicants as possible.

Still, this can be an extremely grueling process without an automated hiring funnel. Reviewing one or two portfolios is easy, but sorting through dozens of them daily is a tedious, mind-numbing task when you’re doing everything manually. 

That’s why we developed Workello—a fully automated applicant tracking system that streamlines your hiring process and helps you find the perfect candidate faster and with no hassle!

Once you sign up for Workello, you’ll be able to:

1. Post your job ads on as many hiring websites as you please
2. Review all applications in a single, unified dashboard, regardless of what website the candidates apply from
3. Send out tests that will help you determine whether a candidate has the right competencies for the job
4. Update your candidates’ status by choosing the appropriate option from a drop-down menu
5. Streamline candidate correspondence through automated, templated emails
6. Reduce the number of transactional questions to a minimum by giving candidates access to the Candidate Status page

Sign up for Workello for free, and start testing and evaluating Virtual Assistants today!