If you’ve been feeling burned out lately and there seem to be not enough hours in the day to play your role properly, then you may need to consider having a remote staff with these qualities.

This article is an excerpt from my free Book, “Delegate or Automate, A Simple Guide To The Virtual Workplace.” 

But first, you need to define what type of person you’d want to work with. Below, we round up 10 key qualities that you should look for when hiring a Virtual Assistant:

1. Reliable

Reliability is a top quality that your virtual assistant should have. No matter how qualified they are, your working relationship won’t work if you can’t rely on your VA. When you give a task, your VA should be able to do these two important things — report their progress and reply to your questions. You’re not the one who should chase them and ask for updates.

2. Has good communication skills

The next quality is as important as the first. Apart from responding and updating you, they need to be able to communicate well. Poor communication can lead to disastrous consequences. Misunderstandings can also lead to delays and extra costs. Should you consider hiring a VA who’s not a native speaker of English, make sure that this person speaks and writes English decently.

3. Efficient

In the first place, you’re hiring a Virtual Assistant who can help you focus on core activities. Hence, it’s a must to hire someone who works in a very organized matter and improves work efficiency. Your VA should free you up from attending to the non-essential tasks and let you attend to high-priority tasks. In short, your VA should not be wasting your time.

4. Resourceful

Your chosen VA should not only provide you regular updates and be able to communicate well. He/She must be proactive and resourceful enough when carrying out tasks. Instead of asking you obvious questions, they find out the answer themselves by doing a quick Google Search. While you should not expect them to know everything, VAs should at least know how to work around a problem and be able to figure out how to do things even when it’s their first time to encounter such.

5. Hardworking

If your VA is able to find out the info themselves and always meets the deadline, you know you’ve found yourself a hardworking assistant. VAs should go the extra mile and not settle with the minimum. If you’re the type of entrepreneur who loathes mediocrity, a hardworking VA is what you need by your side.

6. Good in Time Management

While research claims that there’s no such thing as multitasking and that you need to set your eyes on one task at a time, VAs must be able to do a lot of things within a day for maximum efficiency. All tasks are equally important and so your VA must have good time management and outstanding organization skills to help you in your business.

7. Experienced

It’s not enough that your VA should possess praiseworthy traits that are essential in your fulfilling your day-to-day tasks. Your VA should at least have prior experience on the tasks that you would require him/her to do. But if experience doesn’t matter to you and would consider hiring beginner VAs, look for someone who has the eagerness to keep on learning and can guarantee a 100% quality service to your needs.

8. Has Multiple Skill Sets

In connection with number 7, your VA must also have several useful skills to deliver effective and efficient results. These days, multiple skill sets are the norm. It’s not an excuse that your potential VA only knows certain basic skills. There’s a ton of courses all over the web. If your supposed VA isn’t taking advantage of them, that’s already a hint that he/she might have little to no interest in upgrading his/her current skill set.

9. Responsible

Sometimes, there are days when you just don’t have time to check on your Virtual Assistant. It’s definitely a relief if your VA carries on providing high-quality work while you’re busy attending to more important matters. Consider yourself lucky if you find a VA who ensures timely delivery of positive results.

10. Honest

It may sound cliché but no one is perfect. Your VA is also human and is prone to mistakes, errors, and shortcomings. Therefore, it’s important that you find someone whom you can trust and is ready to tell you the truth. If you need something done by a certain day, he/she must be truthful enough to tell you when problems arise and an unexpected event might delay the output.

Considering the qualities you should look for in a VA is only a small part of the entire process of hiring Virtual Assistants. Apart from laying down the important qualities, you need to figure out where to find potential candidates, how to attract them to apply for your job post, up to the point of training and managing them.

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