Personal Assistance Virtual Assistant

These days, most of the things people need can be done virtually or online. This means that your personal assistant hire need not be a physical employee. A personal assistance virtual assistant (VA) can do nearly all the same tasks a physical employee can, but at a fraction of a cost.

Hiring a virtual assistant instead of a physical employee gives you access to a wider, global pool of talent, and frees up cash that you would have needed for office space, utilities, and equipment.

Being a business owner is never a small matter. It takes up a lot of time and energy, and it leaves you with little personal time. When your to-do list seems endless, hiring a personal assistant can be a lifesaver. Personal or executive assistants can take many of your time-consuming tasks away from you.

Getting personal assistance services will not only help you manage your business, it can also help you manage your life outside work. Personal assistance doesn’t just cover the tedious day to day tasks of your business, it can also help keep your personal diary straight and even remind you of important personal events, like family members’ birthdays and important anniversaries.

You can give your personal assistant virtual all kinds of tasks. What’s more, you can even ask them to do tasks that a general admin assistant can’t do. While an admin assistant is shared between you and your team members, a personal assistant is focused on you. This means that they can not only take on personal tasks, they can also learn your personal preferences to tailor their personal assistant service and become less reliant on heavily detailed instructions from you.

From customer support to personal errands, personal assistance virtual assistants can handle a wide variety of tasks for you, including:

• Calendar management. Personal assistance VAs can make sure you don’t get double-booked and that all your important meetings and tasks, whether personal or work-related, have their places in your calendar.

• Reminders. Personal assistance VAs can remind you of important events or deadlines. You can also arrange to have daily morning sessions with your personal assistance VA to review your appointments and set daily debriefs after your last meeting to prepare for the next day.

• Filing. Personal assistance VAs can take over organizing your files, bills, and receipts, so that you don’t have to spend hours working on these menial tasks.

• Handling travel arrangements. Your personal assistance VA can book flights and take care of other long-term travel plans including booking your lodgings and handling car rentals. This way, whenever you have to go on a trip, all you need to do is hop on and off.

• Screening phone calls and meetings. Personal assistance VAs can be the first point of access to you. That way, you don’t need to waste time handling meetings or people that others can take care of instead.

• Managing correspondence. A personal assistance VA can help you take care of your emails and even social media. They can screen everything so that they only pass on messages that need your personal touch. They can even coordinate with your digital marketing team so that your personal public accounts can stay aligned with your overall business marketing strategy.
• Fielding inquiries. When you’re very hands-on and your name is tied closely with your business, you can get a lot of basic business inquiries on your personal accounts. Personal assistance VAs can take care of this kind of customer service, leaving both you and your customers happy.

Virtual personal assistants need to have a variety of skills to work effectively with you. Here are just some of the skills you should look for in a personal assistance VA.

• Good at multitasking. Personal assistance VAs need to handle a wide variety of tasks at the same time, so they should be able to handle multiple things at once.

• Detail-oriented. Personal assistance VAs are your second pair of eyes to avoid mistakes in your paperwork and calendar. Thus, they should be able to see things that are easy to miss.

• Strong integrity. It is important to be able to trust your personal assistance VA because they will be privy to many of your personal documents and accounts.
• Good communication skills. Personal assistance VAs not only communicate with you a lot, they also represent you in many of their daily tasks. As such, they should both be able to communicate well with you and also be clear and leave a good impression on others.

There are many ways you can hire a personal assistance VA. You can hire an independent contractor offering virtual assistant services, get a freelancer, or engage a virtual assistant business or agency to handle your hiring for you.

Companies like 20four7VA can source applicants for you and sift through them so that you don’t have to waste time doing this yourself. Whether full-time or part-time, they can help you hire, onboard, and train prospective virtual assistants.