Many SME owners have this wrong notion that VAs would be an extra expense for them when they can handle the entire set-up themselves. Now, this is just a myth which has to be debunked. If you have to look after every aspect of a business, when will you get the time to concentrate on business development and creative strategies? Following this argument, it's actually smarter to hire the virtual assistants and it's even less expensive than hiring in-house full time employees as you won't have to bother here about employee benefits or perks.

This post here is a brief on how to hire virtual assistants for your SME.

Take to VA companies

There are individual VAs working as freelancers while there are VA companies as well who can provide you with a team of assistants for each of your needed tasks. It's smarter to opt for the latter, as here you will be getting all your assistants from one portal. It will assure easy management of the Vas, as you have to handle one monthly contract per month and not multiple contracts for each individual assistant.

A reputed VA company

You must make sure to settle with a highly reputed VA company that works with seasoned and specialized virtual assistants for various industries. The best companies generally follow rigorous selection criteria for the assistants so that they can provide the crème de la crème for the clients.

Make sure to take a comparative survey on a handful of potential names before selecting the company.

Wide range of flexible plans

This is one of the most important points to check when you are looking to hire virtual assistants. The best VA companies generally offer a wide range of plans so that you can choose as per your budget. Moreover, make sure that your selected VA portal guarantees good flexibility- where you can downgrade or upgrade or cancel your plan whenever you wish to.

Know what you want

You will get virtual assistants to look after almost every aspect of your business, but you will not always need help with everything. It could be that you would like to look after your website administration yourself, and hence, won't need to splurge for an assistant here. So, before you hire your virtual assistants, make a list of the services that you can and cannot do yourself. This way, you can make sure that you are only spending for the services you have to. Always make sure to provide a clear job description while you are hiring the virtual assistants to eliminate any form of misunderstandings regarding their duties towards you and your expectations from them.

Easy communication

You must have detailed interviews before you hire your virtual assistants to check the compatibility level. If they are not easy to communicate with, look elsewhere.

Customized plans

Your chosen VA company should come up with customized plans for every client so that you are not forced to pay for the assistants you don't want to.

24/7 support

Your chosen VA company should assure you of 247 virtual assistants so that your cust omers can always have someone to address their queries, even at odd hours. Emergencies can strike any time and such critical situations do not care about usual business hours. The best companies have their VAs attending their customer's clients round the clock through live chat, phone or message board.

One final word

You will need to share your business-sensitive data such as passwords with your virtual assistants but then again don't start sharing such critical details from their very day of joining- you never know whether they can be actually trusted or not. So, you should start small here, like granting accession to your social networking accounts initially and always take some time to pass on the most confidential details to them. Moreover, before you do, you should make them sign a formal nondisclosure agreement.