A virtual assistant should be your right hand man and as they are probably the person you’ll speak the most to every day, it’s important you find someone who you like and trust. After all, an assistant is the person that people get to know before you. The face of your company almost. So finding the perfect match is no easy task and takes time and effort. Luckily, we’ve cut a few corners for you at Outsourcery by ensuring all of our assistants are very highly trained and more importantly, we try to ensure the most effective working relationship possible by matching your profiles together – a bit like a less seedy dating site. Here’s five qualities you can expect from a great personal assistant:

1) Judgement
It seems obvious, but this is undoubtedly one of the most essential skills of any assistant. Day to day you’ll remember things that need to be done, not necessarily right at that moment but at some point in the near future. If you’ve made your personal and professional priorities clear to your assistant, they should be able to take note and understand that you don’t always remember things in the right order of action. Here communication is key, if it’s early days in your working relationship make sure you outline some sort of deadline, or suggest your assistant builds an online working to do list which you can both add to when something pops up. After a while, you should be able to trust your assistant to keep track of this on your behalf and alert you to any foreseeable problems that could arise.

2) Enthusiasm
The more your PA likes you and understands what the business is trying to achieve, the more likely they are to go the extra mile in making your life easier. Our assistants might work virtually but they’re all real people with families and interests. Get to know your PA and make sure they feel like their happiness is your concern just as much as yours is theirs. It’s important they feel part of the larger team so that they are comfortable with communicating with other employees and colleagues on your behalf.

3) Organisation
This is probably the core to any administrative based job. PAs tend to have many responsibilities and it’s absolutely essential for them to keep on top of things from managing your diary, setting up meetings, organising calls, note taking and booking travel arrangements. We ask that you clearly define what you’d like to delegate so we can find you the perfect person to handle your to do list.

4) Technology
New technology can take time to wrap your head around which is why we make sure all of our PAs are experts in not only the basics (word, excel and PowerPoint) but they also know a thing or two about new fancy programmes which could make your life that little bit less stressful.

5) Communication
A good PA should have excellent communication skills, both written and verbally. You need to trust them to answer emails professionally and personably and write up research or notes in a way that you can understand.

Interested in finding out more, speak to us via www.avirtualuk.wpengine.com