Virtual employees or virtual assistants are workers who are employed on contract by companies. Sometimes, even individuals who wish to see some of their projects completed or duties fulfilled. These companies hire virtual assistants to help with various administrative tasks such as entering data, answering business calls, managing the calendar, and much more.
At the same time, these employees are also capable of delivering digital marketing services like content management, SEO creation, designing websites, developing mobile applications and more. The prominence of such virtual employees is such that companies look forward to Hire Virtual Employees, even for industries like real estate and graphic designing.
For IT-based companies, the concept of virtual employees takes a large and prominent shape, owing to the benefit which they bring to the organization.
Stated equally, hiring a virtual employee is quite similar to hiring any ordinary employee for the organization. The only stark difference to be noted in the former case is the reality that you may never even get to meet such employees in person. Hiring them, thus becomes quite a task in this one respect.
An employer needs to ensure that the hired personnel has the requisite skill and talent to perform the job for which he is being employed. As long as the needs of the employer are being met, working with a virtual employee might turn out to be the same as with any employee. The only exception might be that he will not be located in a traditional office to hear out your commands.
This being said, let us dive deeper into the specifics of hiring a virtual employee and explore why they are a much sought after option for working personnel today.
When should you hire a virtual employee, where might you hire them, and why should you hire them?
Usually, the need to Hire Virtual Employees might not be felt, as long as you can meet the daily demands of your business. The motivation to hire virtual assistant usually arises from redundancy in tasks and the inability of the current employees to meet them.
Thus, when you feel that there is a horde of functions in your organization, which could be handled better by outsourcing them to a virtual employee, you should opt for this arrangement. This is quite plain and simple, like hiring IT outsourcing services. You pick a few employees, outsource your administrative jobs to them and get your work done. Virtual employees could be located in any part of the world.
How to hire Virtual employees?
The process to hire Virtual Employees is a tad bit different than your regular employee. The first and foremost thing that even a company looking for IT outsourcing companies does is to find if the proposed employee is capable of handling the task assigned to him. After all, you don’t want to be stuck with employees who cannot handle IT outsourcing services.
Any employer who plans to hire a virtual assistant should design to conduct an interview, even if it is telephonic, to assess the skills of the employee whom he intends to employ. This will help in deciding whether the employee, whom he wants to engage, possesses the requisite skills and ability to handle the workload which he might assign to him.
The employer should begin by documenting the process which he wishes to outsource. What follows is the preparation of a job description, the inclusion of an application test and conducting an interview. Once selected, a likely employee from this process can be employed on a trial basis and if found worthy, he can be trained to perform the tasks assigned to him in a certain way.
If at any point you feel that the virtual employee hired by you isn’t performing up to the mark, feel free to disconnect with them and make another round of hiring.
Tips to Hire Virtual Employees
Hiring a virtual employee is not as easy as it is made to sound. Shared below are some of the best tips that you can use to hire a virtual assistant.
Reach out globally to hire virtual Employees
One can hire virtual Employees practically from all over the world. This calls for doing some research and finding some of the popular global destinations which are known for a workforce, qualified in the field of IT.
You must know where to look for an offshore employee so that you can focus your search in those locations and make job postings there. For those employers who seek to employ someone on a long term basis, searching on a freelancing website may not be a good idea. Traditional job posting websites might be the best and most reliable option for you.
Use visual technology to interview like IT outsourcing companies
While interviewing a candidate who is located across the globe, make use of video conferencing technology. A person’s facial expressions and personality can be judged in this way, which speaks a lot about his knowledge in the field of IT, skills and manner of doing work. For obvious reasons, you might still want to hire a virtual employee who are well polished and suited to the job that you have for them.
Usually, some of the best IT outsourcing companies conduct more than one visual interviews to consider and evaluate the proficiency of the candidate and test his abilities. Sometimes more than one employer must interview to check if the employee gives the same answers.
Select from a number of options when hiring remote employees
Always try to narrow down on a reasonable number of choices or top contenders while hiring remote employees. During this time, get into discussions with the team members of your organization to seek their advice about the candidates and their knowledge in the field of IT. This should especially be done with the people who will be directly working with the chosen employees.
Consequently, they will be able to put up various questions to the employees and hire someone who is best suited to the requirements of the job in question. It should be a win-win situation for the employer and the team members to include such virtual employee in the team.
Work on a trial basis like most IT outsourcing companies
Most IT outsourcing companies use this tip to make sure that their choice of a virtual employee is a worthy one. In this case, the company goes on a trial run with each employee for a few hours, let’s say, and tests their performance. During this time, they are sent a task or two to complete. Their performance at the job is assessed to find out if it is satisfactory or not. At the same time, the employer gets a broad scope of choice to determine the employees and find out one or two, who are the best at what they do.
Test the employee for more than one skill while you hire a virtual employee
This one focuses on testing an employee for more than one skill set. This tip is most relevant in the case of IT outsourcing services. Sometimes, employers compile a list of other services that they might expect the chosen employee to perform, or else, to assess his skills in that area. While these skills may not form a part of his mainstream work tasks, this activity might speak a lot about the ability of the employee to handle pressure and in general, attend to queries, which fall outside the scope of his services. With virtual employees, this might be an excellent strategy to start with.
Hold a personal conversation with the virtual workforce
When you set out to hire a virtual employee, make sure that you are aware of their personal goals and expectations from this employment. This is necessary to ensure that at some level, the goals of the organization and that of the employee may be capable of being reconciled with each other. For this, an employer needs to hold a conversation with an employee and seek answers to vital questions such as these. As an IT-based company, you may need to follow this tip more than any one of the above one’s.
Conclusion
Given the stark advantages of the concept of hiring virtual employees today, organizations are significantly in favor of picking them over traditional employees. At some level, these employees also pose some limitations to the work of an organization, but on a larger scale, their benefits make them an indispensable option in today’s organizations.
