What makes a perfect first project for your new virtual assistant?
I’ve heard a lot of people say they don’t know where to get started when they hire a virtual assistant. What should they have her do first?
You could give her the assignment of getting to know you and your company - reading your website, for example.
That’s fine, but it isn’t actually productive work. Most people learn best when they are doing something useful. Besides, both you and your assistant will be happier if you are making progress on your goals.
So, what makes an ideal first project?
The idea first project for your virtual assistant
An ideal project is one that has these 10 characteristics:
1. Requires relatively little background knowledge about your company and its products/services,
2. Does not need a lot of training or education from you,
3. Has a process that is fairly simple to explain or is already defined somewhere,
4. Requires materials or information that are easy to gather and can be easily sent to someone by email,
5. Is not critical to the business or highly confidential,
6. Takes 5-10 hours to do,
7. Does not require the involvement of a lot of other people in the company or outside it,
8. Has an output that you can easily describe,
9. Has goals that are easy to define or where it will be easy to tell if they have done a good job or not,
10. Does not have a hard and fast deadline.
Can you think of a project that fits those criteria?
If not, here are a couple of ideas:
1. Research
A research project is often an excellent starter project. Is there a product or service you are thinking about buying? Do you need more background information about a particular topic? Define the parameters of what you are looking for and ask your virtual assistant to spend a couple hours doing research and present you with her findings.
2. Proofreading
Is there a document that needs to be edited or proofed? If your assistant has the ability to do this work, this can be a good beginning project. She will be learning about your business as she works with the document.
Just to be safe… take the time to check it yourself after she finishes in case her editing and proofing skills are not as strong in this area as you hoped.
3. Update contact list
If you’re like most of us, there are people you’d like to be in touch with on a more regular basis - maybe prospects or customers or partners. Have your assistant pull all the information together and develop a solid mailing list (with phones, websites and email addresses) that you can use as the foundation of a nurture program.
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