How to Get You and Your Business Ready to Hire a VA
If you feel like you’re being slowly drowned by a million tiny tasks and things keep being forgotten or done at the last minute, whilst you’re simply doing your best with the time you have left to look after your clients or do revenue generating things… you’re probably thinking about hiring your first or next VA right?
But what do you need to do, so you can hire and hand stuff over super fast before you hit burnout?
If the thought of hiring a VA has crossed your mind, whether that’s for a few months time or something you plan to do pretty soon, then this is going to be a really key listen for you.
Because when we hire in a hurry and without preparing for it, it doesn’t always go smoothly.
But there are a few really easy things you can do right now to prepare to hire your VA that will make it a success straight away.
1️⃣ Define the role and responsibilities
I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it. If you’ve thought about hiring a VA, then you’re going to want to keep a notepad or digital list nearby, write down everything you think you’d like to hand over or have a VA help you with.
When you start with a list, you can then begin to define the role and responsibilities effectively.
Spend a few minutes daily logging your tasks, or at the end of the week jot down the things you’ve done but would love to hand off.
When you come to interview them, you’ve got this beautiful ‘everything’ list to discuss with your potential VA.
Plus you have a better idea of what you want the role and responsibilites to be, because whilst VAs can guide you and help you figure out what to hand over, they are reactive, so you have to think about what you want and need to delegate.
Because fun fact - VAs can’t do everything, but if you give them a list it gives them a chance to say what they do well, the things they don’t know how to do but can figure out and things that just might be for someone else, like a social media manager.
But giving them a list is a great starting point and it gets your brain into gear before you’re ready to officially hire, you can start thinking about delegating - which is key.
2️⃣ Document Processes, Preferences and Softwares
SOPs or standard operating procedures are vital to a businesses.
Let’s say a VA will be your first hire and up to this point it’s been YOU doing everything in your business, wearing all the hats right?
YOU are the one person who knows how to do everything.
But if your methods only live in your head, it’s very hard to delegate or grow.
So start documenting how you do things, think about what you do on repeat and better yet, use something like Komododecks.com which is similar to Loom, which is a screen recording software.
Except Komodo records your screen and using it’s inbuilt AI tools it automatically writes a step by step guide to the thing you’ve just demonstrated.
SO easy. Even if you just record yourself talking about how you do certain things.
I know delegation doesn’t come easy to everyone, it’s a learned skill for sure, but if you can start documenting your process, preferences, methods and anything else you do on repeat and want to think about handing over to someone waaaay before you’re ready to hire - you’ll find when you do hire a VA, it’ll be SO much easier.
Also create a list of the tools and software your business uses so you can chat about that on the discovery call with them. Then if the VA needs training on these tools, you can simply prepare tutorials or guides using Komodo and creating SOPs so they can get cracking easily.
3️⃣ Set Expectations & Think of Questions for them
You can absolutely be guided by the VA around how it’s going to work for the first few months, as they are the organisatonal expert, but it’s also up to you to say how you want things to go because if you have expectations they need to know also.
Think before you hire about how you want this relationship to go.
Do you have certain standards in your business that they need to meet?
i.e will they need to go back to your customers or clients within a certain time frame - let them know, ask them if that’s possible.
How often will you be able to communicate with them, think about carving out a bit of time in the morning and afternoon, start adding it to your diary now.
Write down questions you’d like answered, things like;
What’s the task turnaround time?
How will I know how many hours are left?
How will we communicate day to day?
How often will we meet on Zoom?
What do you need from me to do your job effectively?
What happens when you’re on holiday, or I am?
Are there any days or times we both aren’t reachable or regular days you don’t work? (ie school runs or Fridays)
How do we determine between us if this is working?
Come with that list in mind and you’ll be great.
Often the discovery call or interview with your future VA is a chemistry test, so keep in mind this person will be side by side with you and so you get to ask any and all questions you like.
I’ll have an episode coming about how to best interview your next VA effectively - so you’ll definitely want to listen to that also.
So to recap we discussed the three ways you can get you and your business ready to hire a VA and they were:
Define the role and responsibilities - making sure you come to the call knowing what you’d ideally like your VA to do for you.
Document processes, preferences and softwares. Start documenting how you do things before you hire, so everything you do so well doesn’t just live in your head, but it’s down on paper using a handy little tool like Komodo
Set expectations of the role and come with lots of questions for your interview or discovery call with your potential VA.
Often client hire in a rush, when they’re overwhelmed and they want to hand things over but they’re so busy they don’t have time to explain how they do things that it holds up the process.
Preparation is key.
This way, if you know one day you want to hire, whether it’s a VA or anyone and you start preparing for it now - you’ll make that hiring, on-boarding and start for them and you SO much easier.
Better yet - let us find you the perfect VA, we’re currently taking on new clients this month.
