Use an effective process to hire the best people.
Outsourcing is becoming the way many online businesses are choosing to work. This being the case, it is vital that you find a suitable way to hire A players to join your virtual team. The George Foreman way is one way to ensure you hire virtual assistant behind the virtual desks.
It is called the George Foreman way, because before the candidates are chosen for your business, they must undergo a grilling!
Before you set about choosing the best man or woman for the job, you need to think clearly about what you want to get done and in what time frame. Draw up a typical working week for the employee you plan to find, so that you know exactly what you are going to ask of them before you hire them. This will ensure that you don’t just hire someone because you think you can afford to, and then put them to work on meaningless tasks in order to keep them busy. Hire your next virtual office assistant with the same forethought you would put into hiring someone for an offline business. The rules do not change just because you are working online.
Know exactly what personal characteristics you need in an employee, along with the work skills you require. Things like integrity and honesty will be even more important in an offshore employee than for an in house employee. This is because they do not have you looking over their shoulder while they are at work. You need to be able to have complete trust and confidence that they are going to have the best interests of your business at heart at all times.
Tailor your ad to the sort of person you want to employ. The next step in order to hire virtual assistant is to post the ad on oDesk or Elance if it is a short term job and JobStreet if it is more long term. When you receive the resumes in response to your ad, immediately discard those which do not reach your standard for whatever reason. Their cover letter may be full of grammatical errors, their resume may have long gaps when they do not seem to for any reason to have been employed.
A questionnaire is the next step for those you have selected. This should have some test of English, as many of the applicants will not have English as their first language. From these, you can select four or five to give a couple of small tasks to in order to see the speed and standard to which they can complete work you will be requiring of them in their job. This will leave you with three or four applicants you will then want to interview.A good book to help with the final interview is Topgrading by Brad Smart. He gives some very helpful tips about how you should structure the interview and the type of questions that should be asked at this stage. Using this technique, you will be able to identify the top ten percent of performers.
If you follow this step by step process you should be able to hire virtual assistant today and build a very satisfactory team of A players who will be able to work with you and grow your business.
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