Hiring Work at Home Help

As we all know, the economy sucks. What this means for the workforce is that jobs can be hard to find and hiring new people or keeping on your current employees can be too expensive. A new trend and a great solution is hiring work at home help. Don’t just take my word for it, but check out this great article in the Washington Post:  Virtual Assistants in Higher Demand .

The Benefits

Virtual Assistants, contract workers, virtual consultants, etc., provide a myriad of services and all from their home. What does this mean to a business owner? That you can hire extra help without needing to provide fringe benefits such as health and dental, 401K packages, etc. Those of us who work from home are pretty basically our own business. I, myself, have established myself as Trisha Jones Business Solutions. I pay a yearly fee to maintain what my town calls a “Privilege License”, I’m responsible for paying my own taxes, and I have health, dental, and eye care through my husband.

Another great benefit of hiring a VA is that you only pay them for the hours that they work. What does this mean? It means that they aren’t billing you for lunch, coffee breaks, personal phone calls, chats with coworkers, or any other distractions throughout the day. At least reliable, conscientious workers aren’t charging for these things. You, the business owner, are only paying your contracted workers for productive hours which will seriously cut down on your overhead. Paid vacations? NOPE!!!

These are definite benefits to a business owner operating on the edge. However, there are also things you should be aware of and keep in mind when hiring virtual help.

Keep in Mind

First of all, if you’re bad at communication, having a virtual assistant is probably not for you. Since all your communication is going to be via phone and/or e-mail, you have to be willing and able to be in contact. Yes, your VA is working from home and should be able to do so without constant supervision, however, your VA is going to have questions and you need to be available to answer them and in a timely manner. You’re going to have instructions so you need to be clear about what your expectations are. I will give you a real life example from my work past.

I had this client who hired me for a specific project. It started out great. The person claimed that they loved communication and would encourage a dialogue between us. However, once I got started, I realized that the client’s expectations would totally unreasonable. I could do what they asked, bill them the hours, and get paid, but they were not going to get the results that they wanted. I certainly didn’t feel right doing this, so I tried to get in contact. Once I had discovered that they were out of the country, I sent a detailed e-mail. They e-mailed back, didn’t address one single thing in my e-mail but told me to bill them for the month, and that was the last I heard from them. Fine by me. Despite the excellent pay, it wasn’t worth it to me to work for someone that couldn’t do something as simple as answer an e-mail.

Secondly, credentials are great, but in this emerging field of virtual assistants, you may be limiting your resources by insisting that a potential VA come with all sorts of degrees and certificates. For example, social media marketing isn’t a credentialed field…yet. Instead of asking for a pedigree, ask for references and recommendations.

Something else to ask is what kind of computer, software, and Internet access your potential VA possesses. Depending upon what type of business you own and what you expect your VA to do, this could be especially important. Personally, I send out several Excel spreadsheets a week to my clients and I couldn’t imagine doing so on dial up access. How long would that e-mail take??

Ask to see specific examples of their work, i.e., spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, etc. Also, if you’re hiring for social media expertise, make sure that your potential VA gives you their IDs for the different social networking sites such as Twitter and LinkedIn so that you can get an idea of what they know how to do.

This is a personal pet peeve of mine but worth mentioning. If you’re on Twitter and you tweet your need for a VA, don’t ask for a Direct Message (DM) back from those that are interested. You can only receive a DM if you’re following that person. Instead, have an e-mail address on your profile to where inquiries can be sent.

If you do decide to hire a VA, have them sign a contract. This contract should state your expectations, pay, length of contract, and have a non-disclosure section as well. This protects both you and your VA.

 

Should You Hire a VA

Of course, the ultimate decision is up to you. Some people are too much of a traditionalist to hire a telecommuter to work for your business. After all, this is new and you’re putting a tremendous amount of trust in someone you’ll probably never meet face to face (this is where references come in ). You’ll need to weigh the pros and cons and decide what is best for your business. My recommendation? Keep your options open and keep and open mind.

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