Before you dive into a decision of choosing what business you would like to venture into, it took you time and effort to make out of something from the several factors that you have. 

You weigh each factor carefully, not to overlook anything just to be sure that when you spend your limited resources such as time, money, and energy, you get to see a business that would not make you regret later.

Just like when you decide to grow your business and hire a virtual assistant to help your business. It takes a lot to consider, for one, you as ready to delegate tasks to your virtual assistant, and two, if what you’re looking for is what you really need for your business.

So here are 5 things to consider to get you ready in hiring a virtual assistant.

1. Set your own goals.

Having clear goals for your business is not something that you should take lightly. While goals are there not to make you feel overwhelmed (if you are unable to get it), they are there to make you have a clear vision of what you want to achieve, the end results that you want to see for your business.

Begin with an end in mind. Knowing that you have a glimpse and clear goals for your business, then all your tasks and priorities would revolve around your goals. Making sure that at the end of the month and even in a year, you’d be able to see that you hit your goals and move on to the next goals for the future.

You can use tools which can help you clear out your mind and jot all the goals that you have in mind. You could also use a trustee pen and paper to jot down all of these goals. Or you could download our Make it Happen worksheet that lets you write down all your goals for each month of the whole year. You can download the “Make It Happen!” worksheet here.                   

2. Establish your tasks and priorities.

Based on the goals that you set for your business, for each month or for the whole year, you would be able to list down all the essential tasks and priorities that would lead you to achieve your goals. 

But why do a list of tasks and priorities, you can just do the routine tasks that you always do for your business? 

This is the reason why you have to make a list of tasks. Usually, business owners and entrepreneurs get stuck in doing repetitive and routine tasks instead of the more important things that can leverage their business. And these routine tasks keep on growing and become never-ending, consuming all your energy and time especially for yourself and your loved ones. 

Looking back, you may feel productivity shame, a feeling that you may never have done enough work. You can read more of what productivity shame is and what you can do to end its vicious cycle here: The Vicious Cycle of Productivity Shame.

You can use a powerful tool that will help you set which tasks need to be prioritised and which tasks come after. You can list tasks down based on importance and urgency. You can use this tool to set your top priorities: The Prioritisation Matrix 

Writing down your tasks and prioritise would help you have clear tasks for the day, for the week, and even for the coming months. You can set a target deadline for each of these tasks and set which tasks should be prioritised and completed first. In this way, you would be able to see your progress that hits the set goals you made. You will not wander and wonder whether you are doing something important for your business. 

3. Know which tasks to delegate.

Once you have listed all the tasks and prioritise, you need to know which tasks you need and want to do and which tasks you need and want to delegate. 

You can use the Kaya Tool that we use to help delegate tasks to our virtual assistants. You can download it here: The Delegation Matrix. 

The delegation matrix can help you decide which tasks you need to do and which tasks you need to delegate based on wants and importance.

Once you have decided which tasks to delegate, you can now use several tools that can set your tasks and priorities for yourself and to your team members. You can always make use of some of the best software tools that I use to create and keep track of the tasks and priorities for the month. You can read them all here: The Best Virtual Assistant Software Tools 

4. Create a Job description.

This is one of the most important things that you need to consider before you hire a virtual assistant. You need to make sure that you have defined the specific role for your virtual assistants. You can check our resources at Services Page to find out the list of virtual assistant services to have a reference about the different types of virtual assistants, their roles and job descriptions.

When creating your job description, you need to list down all the tasks that you can delegate, the processes that need to be followed, and which department should your VA be under. You need to know which area in your business need help (sales, customer service, content, website, etc.)

Once you have determined the specific role you are looking for, it will be easier to create a specific job description fit for the virtual assistant role. 

5. Create your VAs schedule.

Having a clear schedule for your virtual assistant is important because you would want to consider the amount of time, the working days, and hours that your VA would have to spend working for you. This can help both of you track not only the VAs progress but also the time spent working which is very important if they are paid per hour or even per project. 

There are a lot of time-tracking tools that you can use to help track your progress as well as the time spent in finishing tasks. You can also view the total spent on specific projects your VA accomplished using these specific tools. You can view the tools that we use to track our team’s progress and time spent on each project or tasks here: The Best Time Tracking Tools for Your Virtual Assistants.

From these 5 things, you could ultimately start hiring your very first virtual assistant. Of course, looking for the best VA for your business and the hiring process that you need to go through would be more tedious than hiring a physical staff. 

To help you with all these things, you could always ask help from outsourcing firms that can help you get your hands off the whole hiring process. Kaya Services is an Australian-based outsourcing firm that specializes in providing virtual assistance to business owners and entrepreneurs who want to claim back their time to the most important things that matter in their business as well as outside their business: their personal lives and family.

To know more about Kaya Services and what services it offers, get a Free 30-minute Consultation here to help you get started and truly start growing your business with the help of virtual assistants!