I will walk you through the entire process of hiring, onboarding, and training virtual assistants in your company in this article. Any owner of a small business can benefit from reading this blog. Although I will be discussing how I employ virtual help in my Amazon business specifically, most of this will be applicable to any type of business. So let us just dive right in and start with the basics. After that, we will go into all the specifics, the tactical details that will help you actually implement your business and, at last, begin to increase the value of your time as the owner of the company.
To begin with, what exactly is a virtual assistant? You probably already know the main idea if you clicked on this blog, but in essence, anyone we can recruit for either full-time or part-time work will be able to handle any online duty that has been taking up a lot of time in your company. The great majority of my employees are from the Bangladesh, which has worked out really well for my company because they are generally fantastic, extremely hard workers who also speak English fluently, so there is not as much of a language barrier as there might be in other nations. As I mentioned earlier, the data shows that the average monthly salary of full-time employees in the Bangladeshis approximately $300, which is in line with the disparities in cost of living. We will discuss what a fair salary is for each member of your team, therefore I would not advise you to start at this. However, this immediately shows that there is a significant chance for us to step in and offer a considerably better-paying position. Things like commuting to and from work are eliminated, and you and your virtual assistant can collaborate effectively.
Who, then, ought to employ a virtual assistant? I am assuming you are ready to hire that virtual assistant because you clicked on this article, but before you go ahead and increase your company’s expenses, let me ask you a few short questions. You should ask yourself, “Do I really need to be doing everything that I am doing in my business?” as your first query. I was therefore quite confident when I began using virtual assistants to aid me in managing my Amazon business, and I knew how to dedicate a significant amount of time to searching for goods to offer in my Amazon store. It came down to the fact that I knew what I was doing, but there was a lot going on because I was in college, had classes all day, and had additional obligations after school. Because of my hectic schedule, I was able to hire my virtual assistant using the process I am going to explain to you, and we were able to start a back-and-forth instead of spending a lot of extra time finding new products to expand my business. And because I now essentially had an extension of my talents as a product sourcer for my Amazon business, it was the reason my business was able to grow so much.
Scheduling appointments, reading emails, and checking messages are all very routine duties that most entrepreneurs would like to eliminate. It may take you a considerable amount of time to really go out and complete that task, and you can essentially describe what has to be done in one or two phrases. A virtual assistant can get right in and start assisting you with your business. The opposite of that is the second question you should ask: Am I already capable of performing this person’s job? When it comes to employing virtual assistants, you will typically need to provide them with adequate training and demonstrate your way of thinking about a particular procedure or task that you want them to complete. For instance, many people make the error of not knowing how to source things independently when it comes to Amazon enterprises. They have little money to start, so they think it is a great idea to hire a virtual assistant even if they have no idea what they are doing. Ultimately, they simply lack the ability to say, “Hey, you are doing a good job; here’s why,” or “You are not doing a good job; here’s why this thing that you found is not really any good.”
Therefore, before I even considered employing someone to assist, my firm and I were already making between $20 and $30k a month. If your firm is still in its very early stages and you are already wondering, “How can I get lazier with this? What are some ways that I can reduce my time?—perhaps not the frame of mind you wish to adopt. You should not expect to be able to rush to success by paying a virtual assistant a few hundred dollars a month because almost any successful business you start will require a significant upfront time investment.
But now that we have covered the fundamentals, I can not wait to get on the computer here. Let us go over each step in detail because I have been able to create a team of virtual assistants for my Amazon business through this procedure, which has enabled me to work on projects worth roughly $2.5 million annually with only 30 minutes of my own time each day.
Let us begin by visiting onlinejobs.ph, the first website that would be very helpful. As you can see, I have already set up a search example here. I am looking for a group of people whose job descriptions—basically, resume descriptions, that kind of thing—specifically mention internet arbitrage. As you can see, 450 people on onlinejobs.ph have already mentioned that they have online arbitrage skills, which is relevant to the specific niche that I like to hire in (and I imagine many of you reading this article are looking to hire in as well). And you can see what we mean when we talk about fair pay—you will see a lot of demands for pay like that, starting at $4 or $5 per hour. As you can see from the website, this is a rather fair income that they themselves anticipate receiving.
You can begin browsing the resumes of those who have already posted them on our website. Going ahead and posting a position right here at the top has been far more fruitful for me. You must subscribe in order to post a job on this website. You may always cancel it, utilize it for the month you need it, and so on if you do not intend to hire somebody for the foreseeable future. However, you may simply post the position here as soon as you get that website subscription. You may view their job title, contact information, and the number of hours they would like to work each week. I will include a job description, particularly if you are looking to hire a virtual assistant from Amazon. This job description is available here for you to copy and paste onto the website. Additionally, you can find some example interview questions in the link below, and I will also explain how that step of the process operates. However, I have included a link below if you would want a few freebies that will help you with this procedure.
Additionally, when you proceed through this process and begin completing a job posting, something similar will eventually appear on the internet. You see, this is one of my job advertisements from the previous year. We start at $450 a month, and they have to work 40 hours a week. It sounds a lot like the job posting I will leave for you guys below. And keep it really easy. To be honest, you will receive an unbelievable number of applications after publishing a piece like this. I will give you a preview of what your inbox would look like when you post something on this website.
Additionally, you might browse at websites such as Fiverr and Upwork. If you are seeking for full-time assistance, I usually like to stick to this. The audience is simply slightly different. Those websites you may be familiar with can be excellent for part-time work, but I have employed almost all of my full-time employees for my own Amazon company when a large number of applicants come through onlinejobs.ph. As you can see, they will respond to the application for a job. Usually, you will receive between two and five hundred applications, which is obviously a ridiculous number.
So I want to break down a specific gem that’s in the application process here. I always ask them a couple of questions, and one of them is always just completely unrelated to the job posting. That way, I know that they’ve actually read the job posting; they’re not just looking at any Amazon-related jobs and spamming the same resume qualifications, that type of stuff. And you’ll see—ask them for their favorite animal or, “Show me what’s your favorite travel destination?” Right? So here’s an example of someone that I went ahead and went through the next part of the process that I’ll talk about, but I just got this response from them. They kept it super simple. They said, “I have experience with the tools that you asked us to be able to use.” They broke down how they’ve learned how to sell on Amazon before, so that was useful for me. And then they also just very simply stated what their dream travel destination was. Right? That was the question I was asking here: “Where would you take a trip if you could take a trip anywhere?” Right? So they kept it super simple, I liked it, showed a personality—they’re an anime fan here in this case. You just want to get to know these people as people and not just copy-pasting the same application over and over again.
And then through this part of the process of the applications that look really good, they meet the criteria you want to look for. I’ll usually shoot them a response back, and I’ll send them a super simple project. So this is going to depend on the type of role you’re hiring your virtual assistant for. For me, I sent them a project that has like a couple of different Amazon products on it. I showed them like the data—the Keepa data, if you’re familiar with Amazon—and I say, “Is this a good product? Is it not? I have them find a product or two for me.” When I just say, “Hey, if this takes you more than 30 minutes, stop immediately. I don’t want to make them work for hours and hours unpaid, but I also need to see a little bit of that skill before we actually go ahead and move forward.”
The same would be true of anyone that maybe you’re hiring for social media. Say, “Hey, take this clip, edit it into a short-form clip, and let me know how it goes.” I’ve done that before. Honestly, if you’re doing sample projects and it takes any more than 30 to 45 minutes, I would highly encourage that you pay them for their time. It’s only fair. I know that a couple of you guys probably coming from the corporate world have probably spent a ton of time on job applications in the past and maybe felt a little ripped off when you put a bunch of time and effort into it. So if you’re going to have them put a bunch of effort into that sample, pay them for it. If not, make it super short, make it super sweet and simple.
If you are hiring Amazon virtual assistants, I have all the training documents. I have that sample test that I’m talking about and lots more good stuff that helps you hire and train that virtual assistant, and that’s in the FBA Roadmap, which you can check out down below.
So let’s go on to the next step of the process. You’ve got lots of great applicants using a filter question. You can see who’s actually reading your application. You get some great sample project results from that. Usually, I’d say 50-75% of the people who get a sample project actually send it back to me. And so of the people who do really good on the sample project, I’ll go ahead and send them just a Calendly link. Right? You can send them like a Google Sheet that just has some times on it, whatever you need to do. And so in this case, I’ll send them a 15-minute chat, so they’ll just go on here, click a time that works for them, you guys will hop on Zoom for 15 minutes, and that’s where I’ll start asking them some of these questions here.
Again, these are down below if you want to check these out for free. I’ll just quickly walk through a couple of the ones that I think are really important. The first one I really like to hammer in on is: What was their last job? Right? I want to see if they had a product sourcing job before, they had a job doing the same thing, or they’ve had a couple of them and they only stayed for a month or two. That tells me that they might not be the best at the job—they keep getting cut by their past clients, that type of thing. I’ll also ask them how the sample project went. I like to see who’s really confident, who’s going to be overconfident compared to how well they did on the sample project. I just want to see basically who can back up what they did on the sample project, see how confident they were in that.
No matter what, you want to see what kind of experience they have. Typically, I’m always hiring people who already have experience. Through the sample project, through the interview process, I’m going to be asking them Amazon-specific questions. But at the end of the day, if you find somebody who’s just super smart, they’re sharp, they’re willing to learn, they’ve gone and taken some extra steps through the process so far—that’s what you really want to look for: those super coachable people who are just excited to learn, excited to work with you.
A couple of housekeeping-type questions I’d recommend you ask: How fast is their internet? Do they have backups, that type of thing? You never know when it comes to all these other countries if they have good internet, if it’s bad, if they’re going to be sitting on 1 megabyte per second the whole time they’re working for you. It’s probably just not going to be the best. I’ll also try to ask them a couple of just more questions that let them maybe brag on themselves a little bit: How did they learn how to speak English? That kind of thing. Where are they in their country? If you know anything about like the local geography, I’ve tried to like learn a little bit of local geography about the Bangladesh just to have some real conversations with these guys and gals, try to get them to open up a little bit.
I’ll ask them like just some super simple questions: “If you could hang out with anyone, who’s someone that you look up to?” That type of thing. Those can go down some really fun conversations. And the thing you want to do through the interview process is get them off of the things that they’ve probably prescripted—the things that they know: “These are the softwares I’m familiar with; this is my favorite sourcing method.” You want to see, “Yo, if you could hang out with somebody, who would it be?” You want to see, “Oh, okay, a lot of them will say like their mom, their wife, their dad,” that type of thing. You’ll get some really funny celebrities suggested. I just like to see that personality and see who I can get along with. Especially if this is your first virtual assistant, it’s going to be someone that you’re talking to, you’re going to be spending a good amount of time with them. You don’t want to dislike them as a person, even if they’re a good worker. You want to get along with each other.
And then some other quick things I’ll ask them: “What are your long-term plans?” I’ll usually say, “This isn’t a trick question; don’t worry, just let me know. I’m genuinely curious.” Sometimes you’ll see, “I want to be running my own business in 5 years,” or “I want to be promoted up into your company in 5 years,” that type of thing. I like to just see what their personality is. A lot of times, those people who mention that they want to start a business—those are the real go-getters. So you might lose them if they’re actually, you know, successful and they have a great business idea later down the line. But I’ve had good success with those people who are just—they seem to be pretty motivated, they’ve got some lofty goals.
And then obviously, you also just want to clarify how much money you’re looking to make. Specifically with Amazon team members, like I was showing you the job posting earlier, for me, the absolute bare minimum is going to be around $450 bucks a month. That would be for someone who has basically no experience. And then if you have some really skilled positions, they’re really good at what they do, you could be paying $1,500. I’ve seen people paying up to $2 grand a month for really quality virtual assistance. And if you’re getting up to those higher numbers, they’re probably managing some other people in your team. For most of you guys, anywhere from the $400 to $1,000 bucks a month range—that’s going to cover most people’s requested full-time rates, and you can just set standards for what you think is reasonable for your own business.
I’m asking if they’ve got a PayPal. I like to use Wise to pay my team. It’s another website; it’s a good resource that’s going to be useful as you start to use virtual assistance there. It’s just a good way to pay your team in different currencies with seems to have the lowest fees for yourself and for the people receiving them. So I usually like to ask them like who they’ve received payments from before. Most virtual assistants have had a virtual assistant job before; if not, you’ll be able to learn about that through this question right here. You can see how comfortable they are with that process.
And through that process, I’m going to go ahead and typically through the interviews, I’ll hire (Free Trail) two or three of the people that really stick out to me, and I’ll go ahead and put them on a trial week. Or we’ll just say, “Hey, we’re going to work together for a week. I’m going to be sending you some training materials.” Like I was mentioning, if you’re looking for the Amazon virtual assistant, I send them that training guide that’s in the FBA Roadmap. If you’re hiring for something outside of Amazon-related businesses, send them whatever documents they need to actually go ahead and get set up.
I want to show you a couple of tools that are really useful for you if you’re hiring Amazon virtual assistants. The first thing I’ll pretty much always set up for my product sourcers is a Google Sheet. Right? So this is the backend of Seller Amp right here, and what I’ll do is—let’s say you just hired a new virtual assistant; his name is Mike. Right? You can just set up a custom Google Sheet. I’m just going to use like a back-to-school spreadsheet for example. You can name these whatever you want. And so as they’re going through here and sourcing products for your business, they can just go in here and, you know, click their name, click back to school, whatever holiday you have them sourcing for, whatever it is. You can have all that information that you want sent to that Google Sheet right there. This is all custom configurable as well, so all these drop-down boxes, you can add whatever you want. There’s literally like 100-plus options of data that you could export. Try to keep it as simple as possible where you just source it, what is the profit on it, all that good stuff.
As far as sharing passwords for any tool you need to have them use—whether that be Seller Amp, whether that be your video editing software, whatever it is—you can use a tool like 1Password. There’s also Bitwarden, LastPass—all those are pretty much the same. Some of them have had some data leaks in the past, so make sure you’re careful with the one you actually do go ahead and trust. I personally use 1Password and Bitwarden.
And then as far as actually communicating with your team, staying up to date, and especially as you grow a team, I’ve always hosted everything on Discord. I already have some communities on Discord; I’m already used to using it. If you’re already used to using Slack or any other kind of group chat-based platform, that doesn’t really matter so much. Just go ahead and make sure you set up a company team group chat, that type of thing. And on the Discord, I’ll be updating them: “Hey, this looks like a good place to source some products today,” “Hey, this brand sent us some complaints; let’s stay away from this brand for a couple weeks,” that type of thing. That’s just a good way to stay up to date with your team, and you can also hop on calls together on Discord.
So through that first week where you’ve decided, “Let’s see if this is a good fit,” I’ll usually hop on Discord a couple times at least. We’ll dive into the work that they’ve done. I’ll say, “Hey, this was a great job; here’s why,” or “This wasn’t such a good job; here’s why.” And you really just want to have them think like you think as soon as possible, especially when you’re trying to have them basically replicate and be an extension of your own skills within your business.
But the biggest thing I want to stress through this process is: Hiring a virtual assistant, hiring employees—it’s not going to be the magic bullet for your business. So please don’t look at it like it is. Pretty much anytime you hire someone, it’s going to take a lot more work over the next at least few weeks for you to basically train them and continue doing what you’re already doing. Otherwise, the work’s going to fall behind. So just keep in mind that right after you hire help, you’re actually probably going to be working harder than you were before. But obviously, if you found some great help—someone who’s actually able to be a long-term player for your business—that’s not going to hang around so long.
If at all possible for the role you’re hiring for, if you can offer some kind of performance-based bonus, that’s also a great way to motivate your people. For example, in my Amazon sourcing team, depending on how much profit they find, they get a percentage of profit that they made that whole month on their profitable leads. At the end of the day, the people you’re hiring—you want to make more profit as a result of it. So if you tie your incentives together, and then obviously the more profit they make, you make more profit as well—everybody wins when there’s more profit rolling in through the business.
But if you’re currently spending a ton of time on menial tasks that you probably don’t have to be doing yourself, hopefully this guide was an awesome step-by-step breakdown for you. Go use everything we just talked about to find your next great virtual assistant, and I’m excited to see how your business is able to scale because of it.
If you guys do have any questions, comments, feel free to leave those down below. I’m always happy to help you out with that stuff. Also, go ahead and hit subscribe, like, all that good stuff—helps me out with the YouTube algorithm. And if you want to come to our next free live masterclass where we break down the full 0 to $10K a month Amazon step-by-step game plan, also leave that down below as well. That’s always a blast. But I really appreciate you reading this video, and I will see you next time.
