How We Hire The Best Virtual Assistants For The Job
It’s safe to say that a majority of our success here at Byron is owed to the quality of the virtual assistants that we hire and onboard to our platform. If it weren’t for our virtual assistants, our company would honestly be nothing. In this post we’re going to outline some qualities that we personally look for when on-boarding virtual assistants and the steps we take to ensure that we are placing the right assistants for the right job.
Balancing Cost & Quality
The obvious reason for hiring a virtual assistant is to save time and money, but as you look for assistants within the freelance market you see hourly rate ranges all over the map. For example, if you are looking for a marketing assistant to help you with managing your Twitter and Facebook posts you will find scattered rates like this:
India Virtual Assistant: $6/hour
Philippines Assistant: $9/hour
US Based Assistant: $17/hour
US Based Assistant: $35/hour
US Based Assistant: $45/hour
US Based Assistant: $55/hour (yes, this is an accurate rate)
US Based Flat Rate Social Media Assistant: $400/month minimum
US Based Flat Rate Social Media Assistant: $700/month minimum
US Based Flat Rate Social Media Assistant: $1,500/month minimum
How do you decide what option is the best value for you? Our logic here at Byron is to go the “US Based Assistant: $17/hour” range. We have written in the past why US based assistants are typically a better value, but the reason why we go with the low hourly rate is because you can find amazing assistants at $17/hour that beat out assistants who charge $45/hour. In the early days at Byron we tested out a majority of the US based options and we found that skills level, response times, and quality were not in line with the assistant’s rates so we created an internal system to weed out assistants that had high hourly rates and low quality. Some of the tests and traits are outline below.
Typo Litmus Test
At the very start of our interview process we have all of our assistant applicants submit the following materials.
Fill out our application
Provide a resume
Provide a written response the following scenario:
How would you handle the following scenario?
“Say you’re working with a client named “John” and he gave you a research project that he absolutely needs back by 6:00pm. When you first committed to the project you thought that the 6:00pm deadline would be possible, but now it’s 5:00pm and you now realize you still need 3 more hours to complete the project.’
Please type an email that you would send to John if you were in this scenario.
Our first simple internal rule is, if there is a typo or large grammatical error in any of the application materials we receive, we decline the resume. The reason for this is because this speaks wonders to the assistant's attention to detail.
Basic Competence Test
We have created a proprietary test that we call “The Basic Competence Test” which asks 40 questions ranging from spelling, grammar, math and logic. This part of the process is pretty straight forward for us. If the assistant score 35/40 or higher they move onto the next round. We also look at how long it takes them. If it takes then longer than 33 minutes to complete the test we take an further in depth review of the test.
Personality Test
Using only personality tests to determine if you should hire a virtual assistant is not a great idea. Over the years we have tested a number of personality test companies and tried to find a correlation between a personality score and the quality of a virtual assistant, but there is not one. So why do we keep the personality test within our virtual assistant application? It’s because it really does give us an inside view into what type of person we might be working with.
For example, here are some things we can learn about an assistant from a personality test:
The assistant is super responsive in replying your client’s messages, but their attention to detail is typically an 7/10.
The assistant's attention to detail is super high, and they are very mythical when it comes working on projects. The assistant might ask a lot of question about a project before working on it, but when they deliver the project back it will be perfect!
The assistant is extremely reliable and will deliver back a project when they promised.
Those are some examples after assessing 200+ personality tests. Something to note is that these example are only assumptions. It’s not right 100% of the time. We take all of these tests with a grain of salt.
The most important part to these personality tests, is that helps you steer the conversation when you go to interview the virtual assistant.
For example, if an assistant scores high attention to detail in a personality test, we might ask them during the video interview how they would handle a situation if a client asks them to make a number of assumptions on a project and they couldn’t ask the client any questions. We will basically put the assistant out of their comfort zone a little bit to show his or her true colors on the spot.
Video Interview
Video interviews are extremely important to do when hiring a virtual assistant. We have video interviewed 100+ assistants and our assistant recruitment team can typically tell within the first 10 minutes of the interview if the candidate is a good match.
Here’s how we typically structure video interviews:
Introductions between the assistant and the interviewer
The assistant provides a general background on themselves
Interviewer asks questions regarding the assistant's relevant experience. During this time the interviewer makes notes of specific categories they believe the assistant will be good at within the Byron platform. For example, are they a good marketing assistant or a data entry assistant?
Interviewer provides the assistant with questions on how they would handle certain scenarios. These questions typically range depending on the personality test scores!
Allow the assistant candidate to ask any questions.
Internally, each section of the video interview gets a score of 1-10. Assistants who score over 43 moves onto the next round of the process.
Subject Level Tests
After the virtual assistant passes the video interview we provide any remaining tests that relates to the positions that assistant applied to. For example, if an assistant applied to be a data entry assistant, and if he/she did well in section #3 of the video interview then we would provide a typing test to see if they pass our standards. Our typing test standards are typing 55 words per minute or more.
References
Finally after the assistant passes all of their subject level tests we reach out to their references. At Byron, we reach out to three references that have worked in a professional setting with the assistant. We need 2 of the references to provide glowing reviews. If any of the references provides a negative or neutral review our recruiting team internally meets to discuss the candidate.
When we reach out to the references we not only ask them to provide a review about the assistant in general we ask them about the specific tasks that they handle for them. This helps us confirm they can work within a certain category within our platform.
What Comes Out? A Great Valued Virtual Assistant!
As you can see, we have put a lot of though (and even some data!) behind how we hire our virtual assistants to work with us and represent our company. After we offer a virtual assistant a position we don’t stop there – we will train them on how to interact with clients and how to follow best practices as it relates to each category they work in.
What Next?
When you (the client) are eventually placed with a long-term virtual assistant (whether through Byron or elsewhere) we suggest you follow an outline and structure to properly work and set expectation with your highly vetted virtual assistant!
