VA Series 2/5: How To Find Amazing VAs Step By Step in 2023
What’s up guys
In this guide, I am going to lay out our entire strategy for finding VAs, how much to pay them, and break it down step by step so you can copy it to have the same success we did.
Finding VAs or any employee or contractor can be hard. Especially, hard if you do not have a system or process to hire them
My process originally was inefficient. What I used to do would just go onto onlinejobs.ph or Upwork - (2 of the main sites for finding virtual workers), post a job without a structured summary of the job, and get hundreds of responses. Which was overwhelming, then randomly pick a few that seemed good. They weren’t - hire someone, be annoyed that they weren’t good, and then go back to doing everything myself. Not good.
I’ve also heard a similar story from others who tried, so again if you are here, we are going to make sure that isn’t happening to you
What this looks like today now that we have 8 full-time VAs that help run the business is a completely different process
The hiring process now consists of 5 steps
Figuring out what tasks a VA can/should do for you
Create a crystal clear job description and describe the outcomes you are looking for
Posting the job description, but do it in a way that starts to self-screen the applicants and makes your life way easier when people become interested
Having a formal application and adding this one specific thing to it will change your entire process - The loom
Creating a test project leads to starting your interview process. We will talk about interviews here a bit - but we are going to have an entire video on it in the next section
1. Figuring out what tasks a VA can do for you
It might sound obvious, but a VA can do any task that requires a phone or a computer
They just can’t help with physical tasks
But in the world of post covid, remote work world, there is no reason you shouldn’t be able to find a talented VA that can help your life or business’s digital tasks
To kick off - Here are some of my favorite tasks or activities we’ve delegated to VAs that have had a huge impact:
Email management
Airbnb guest management
Video/audio editing
Deal analysis
But you can also go much deeper with things like:
Building Reports
Creating presentations or slide decks
Running ads - on YouTube or Facebook and other platforms
If you haven’t seen part 1, I talk more about delegating a few tasks that changed my life and business. We will have the link in the summary again if you want to check out
But 2 of the biggest ones for me are Airbnb guest communication/management and email management
2. Creating a crystal clear job description
A lot of times people think they have a good job description but it does not.
A job description should give a quick background about you and your company.
And then explain the type of person you are looking for.
If you take anything from this video, take this - do not give the job application in the job description - i’ll explain in a minute…
Here is an example of what one of our job descriptions looks like:
As you can see its pretty thorough. Something I learned really early is that the more you put into the front-end process of finding people, the higher chance you will have of finding a great person that stays with you long term on the backend.
The main things we like to have included are:
About me/about the company
Job description
Responsibilities
Requirements - if we have any*
Tools we use - tools we would like the person to be proficient in
Communication and hours
Why us
Start date
And - how to apply
Also if you have a brand and you want them to check it out - add that
3. Posting the job description, but do it in a way that starts to self-screen the applicants and makes your life way easier when people become interested
So it might seem like a natural thing to post a job description and include the job application.
And used to do it that way but we don’t anymore - here’s why
We got too many unqualified applicants who were just pressing a button.
You don’t want people like that in your funnel.
Instead, now we will post the job description and at the bottom of the summary and we will say something like:
‘To receive a formal application for this job, please email hiring@jonfarber.co with the word ‘blue dolphin’ in the subject line to receive the application’
Then, inside Gmail, we set up an auto-reply so that anytime someone reads the job description and follows the instruction of using the right keyword in the subject line - they will receive the application automatically.
And we set a filter in Gmail so that all that stays in a folder and doesn’t clog up our inbox.
By doing it this way, you accomplish a few things.
you see if the applicant actually cares about the job and if they even read the description fully
you see if this person can follow instructions - this is where the interview begins. If someone doesn’t follow the exact instructions with the word you asked for to the correct email, they will never even receive the application
It makes your life easy! You don’t need to do anything other than set a few things up once and then you are done with the first step
4. Having a formal application and adding this one specific thing to it that will change your entire process - The Loom
So once the applicants receive the application, we want to make sure we get the relevant information possible.
The application should be made up of questions about their proficiency, their experience, and also their technology including wifi speed and computer speed, but there is something else we started adding that made a huge difference.
We ask all candidates to submit a looming video to answer a few questions for us on camera.
Loom is a video recording software. Where someone can record a quick video and send it to someone with a link instead of having to download and upload large files, it’s a lifesaver and something we use in our company 5-10 times per day.
Anyway, the reason this is so great is because you get to see the person and hear them speak.
Its almost like you get to interview them, except you don’t have to do all the scheduling and 20 minutes on a zoom since these take 5 minutes and you can watch them at 2x speed,
Also, you get to see how well they can use technology. Anyone who can’t figure out the loom after we give instructions is automatically removed.
you get to see how well they speak English - which is SO important, and you can see their energy level and personality which is a huge part of working with remote people. We don’t work with people we can’t enjoy a conversation with.
5. Creating a test project, which leads to starting your interview process.
We will talk about interviews here a bit
So we have a great pool of people, but now we want to see if this person can do the job so we can start the interview process.
What we like to do is come up with a small test for the person related to the task.
If they are interviewing for a video editor position, we will find a 30-second raw clip and ask them to edit it.
If they are interviewing for Airbnb management, we would create a Google form with guest scenarios or questions from Airbnb guests and ask our applicants how they would handle that scenario or how they would reply.
You learn a lot about people when they have to think, instead of just reading prepared answers in an interview.
Then and only then. Once they have done a good job with the test projects, we will schedule an interview.
We recommend using Calendly to schedule your interviews.
6. How to Compensate your VAs
Our VAs are all full-time and we pay them anywhere from $500-1k/mo.
If you are looking for part-time work, you can find VAs for anywhere from $5-8 per hour.
I know it’s a little scary at the beginning to hire a full-time person but I recommend it.
It gives the person more time to learn about your business and also feel more bought into the mission.
Either way, that is the process I wish I would have understood to find people when I was first starting.
If you are interested in getting our VA pricing guide, we will have that linked in the summary for free - make sure to grab that.
Be great and see you at the next one!
And oh! Check out the video on my YouTube channel! 👇
