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Virtual Staff Finder is more of headhunting service than a true virtual assistant company. Founded in 2010 by entrepreneur Chris Ducker, the firm promises to match you up with qualified workers in the Philippines.
In my mind, Chris is right up there with Tim Ferriss when it comes to lifestyle design and using virtual assistants to help achieve your goals. He’s been in the outsourcing arena for 10 years and he and his staff know the Philippines very well.
Virtual Staff Finder is a simple process which works like this. After you sign up, you complete your Job Description requirements, listing all the skills you’d like your virtual assistant to have and what kind of tasks they may be doing for you. Then, for your viewing pleasure, Chris has put together a series of helpful training videos on how best to select and work with your new VA.
Meanwhile, the team at Virtual Staff Finder is hunting for the best candidates. All their virtual assistants are screened, tested, interviewed, and background checked – all before you’re even involved.
Then, the company presents you with the 3 best candidates, and you can do your own interviews and make your selection from there. If you’ve ever tried to find a VA on Elance or oDesk, you’ll appreciate all the screening work Virtual Staff Finder does for you.
Over the years, VSF has helped place over 1000 virtual assistants with new employers so they definitely have their systems down.
Virtual Staff Finder Review
For this, they charge a one-time $395 fee. After that, you and your new virtual assistant agree on a salary and you pay them directly. Because there is no more company overhead, you can expect to pay market rates for your VA, which typically range from $400 a month for full time general administrative help up to $750 a month for more skilled work.
Virtual Staff Finder specializes in matching entrepreneurs with four distinct types of virtual assistants: general admin support staff, web developers, content writers, and SEO specialists. If you’re looking for other skills, you might consider Remote Staff Recruit, another popular recruiting company in the Philippines.
The company offers a 10-day guarantee, which means if you don’t end up hiring any of the 3 candidates they selected for you, or if you did hire one and they didn’t work out without the first 10 days, Virtual Staff Finder will source you another 3 candidates for free.
Have you worked with Virtual Staff Finder? We’d love to get your feedback below.
Hi There!
Just wanted to say thanks for the cool write-up. Very nice of you. And if any of your readers have any questions, etc., they can feel free to comment here, or simply tweet me through @chriscducker.
Thanks again!
Best,
Chris
Hi. I think what virtual staff finder does is really great. It saves you time looking and screening for a virtual assistant to hire. Since you will be presented with 3 candidates, you are sure you will be screening already qualified candidates. What’s left for you to do is decide who to pick. With others, you will be screening a lot of candidates, making it more taxing and most of the applicants don’t even have the qualifications or the experience yet.
I have used Chris Ducker’s Virtual Staff Finder to find two Virtual Assistants for me. The process was simple and professional. After filling in a form with describing what I wanted my VA to do (I have to say this was a bit vague for my first one as I knew I needed help but not sure in what fields) I was given three potential candidates.
In both cases the quality of the people put forward by Virtual Staff Finder was excellent. The hardest decision I had to make was which one to choose. I know that if I was not happy with their selection they would have supplied more candidates for me, however, in my case this was certainly not necessary. I now have two reliable, professional employees gained with no stress or worry on my behalf.
As a nationally awarded business advisor, to rural and regional Australian businesses, it is very important that I have the best staff in my business but also be able to help my clients get the best possible staff for their businesses.
Many times business owners complain they don’t have enough time because they are tied up in the day to day low value stuff in their business. One of the first things I do is get them a VA so they can get back the time they need to focus on the important things that bring in the money.
At this time I have two VA’s in my business who Virtual Staff Finder found for me. Their service offers the best of both worlds in having someone on the ground in the Philippines to screen suitable people while not having expensive on-going fees to pay.
The service has been just wonderful, smooth, super simple and hassle free. And if I ever need advice in this area they are just a Skype chat or Facebook message away to help with staff issues, even after I have employed someone.
Virtual Staff Finder will get more business from me, and the many happy business owners I point in their direction
Jump in! The water is warm in the Philippines!
I’ll admit, when I first thought about hiring a VA I was really concerned about the time it would take to source candidates, interview them, select the right one, and then train them. I knew I needed help but I was so swamped with work it was almost like I couldn’t step back long enough to make it happen.
I was really impressed with Chris Ducker and the Virtual Staff Finder service. I sent in all my requirements and within a couple weeks had 3 candidates to interview. All three were great, but one really stood out and has been working out really well so far. I’m so grateful.
Quick, easy, painless, and supportive. Thank you so much!
My experience with Virtual Staff Finder was a huge help as it was my first time working with any type of virtual assistant. Steph did an awesome job in a short time. Keep up the good work!
Thanks to their quick and professional service and great recruitment selection, I found the perfect VA I was looking for. I’ll definitely be taking advantage of their services again when I need another virtual assistant.
My experience was generally the same as everyone else. After trying one of those VA “companies” that really only specializes in booking vacations and setting appointments, I made the leap to get a dedicated VA.
I was looking for a part-time general VA, and I found a gem. It’s only been a month, but I can already feel the relief of letting go of a lot of the repetitive tasks and focusing more on the things I do best.
My VA even helped me find someone in the Philippines to help me with web development work, which was unexpected. I assumed I’d go back to VSF for that, but when I told her I was thinking about it, she used her contacts to find me a candidate really quickly. We’ll see how it works out.
Either way, I would never have found my VA without VSF. Great service.
I had a pleasant experience with VSF. The staff was very helpful in finding me a great VA. I would use them again when the time comes.
Really good experience with VSF. I was searching for a senior programmer and they offered me 3 candidates with good qualities. Also the information on the websites is good. You know what to expect and they even helped me to setup the contract with the VA.
I really would recommend them when searching for a VA.
When my longtime VA told me she was leaving the company, I was eager to test out the waters in the Philippines given the massive shift there in the virtual assistant marketplace.
Virtual Staff Finder had several glowing reviews here and tons of other positive testimonials, so I thought I would give them a try. If nothing else, it would be an interesting experiment right?
Right after I placed my order I had an email explaining the process and asking for my detailed job description. The staff did a good job of clarifying my needs and trying to figure out the best recruiting approach to find the right person.
Now here’s the thing. VSF specializes in finding VAs in 4 areas: general admin, SEO, copywriting, and web development. If the job you need done doesn’t fall neatly into one of those categories you might have some issues.
In my case I was looking for someone with excellent English writing skills, who I could then train to do pay-per-click, excel work, and customer service.
So very quickly I had a list of 3 candidates. They say it can take up to 14 days but I had my list very quickly, no more than 2 days.
Each candidate had their positives and negatives, which I’m sure is true for every hiring decision, but I was really hoping for one stand-out no-brainer VA. I asked for a couple short trial tasks and a writing sample from each, and conducted skype interviews. Again, none really stood out as the clear winner. In fact, at various points in the process, each of the 3 took turns as the “frontrunner”.
But the wages these women (they were all women) were asking for were between $450 and $500 a month for full-time, less than half what I was paying my previous VA. So I figured I could well afford to get started, even though none were slam-dunk candidates. I found myself with an extra 30+ hours of work back on my plate and I think I was eager to offload some of that as well.
So we got started on a trial basis and did some on-the-job training. But within the first 2 weeks, it became evident it just wasn’t a good fit. It’s hard to pinpoint any one area that was lacking, but we had difficulties in setting a consistent work schedule, in problem solving, in communication, and in following instructions.
It was a really difficult and painful decision (I hate firing people), but ultimately I had to let her go.
For their part, Virtual Staff Finder was really gracious and offered to find some new candidates for me, even as I was pushing the limit on their 14-day satisfaction guarantee.
But it took much longer to source the new applicants, and by the time I got the new list, I’d already found an awesome VA on Elance. She’s way more expensive than the Philippines, but I’m happy with the hire. I didn’t even end up interviewing anyone from the 2nd Virtual Staff Finder list.
To sum up, for my investment in VSF I got some very valuable experience, but no VA. I’m not going to rule out the company or Filipino VAs in general for when the need arises again in the future, but I’ll definitely be more targeted, patient and selective in my hiring process.
After working with A LOT of part time VA’s, full time VA’s and project base VA’s when I was working for corporate, I knew that the recruitment process when using websites like Elance or oDesk is absolutely horrific. It takes for ages and ages, skimming through hundreds of candidates that all seem the same on the paper, with no way or time to perform any due diligence and weed out the week candidates.
I often had disappointing results with these websites, so for my personal brand I tried working with two professional VA service companies, one of which was AskSunday and the other I can’t remember already. That was 100% horrific.
Then I heard about Virtual Staff Finder. The idea of a matchmaker that will search through the endless sea of candidates and bring me 3 suitable candidates to choose from was a no brainer. The $400 charge is nothing compared to the amount of time and stress that they take away.
So I signed up, sent in me very specific and detailed requirements and waited. Even though it was Xmas time, they got working, and kept communicating and updating me all along the way. Finally, and within the promised time frame (again, even though it was Xmas) I received my line up. It blew my mind: Not only they have found 3 suitable candidates out of all the people that must have applied, but they also made a personalized summary of their CVs and commented on how each item on the CV applies (or not) to my needs.
Then Chlea from VSF set all the Skype interviews for me. When one of the interviews took longer than planned, she took care of the rescheduling process. Before the interviews, I received free videos on recommended questions and tools to use, that where a goldmine on their own.
The 3 candidates I received were all able to perform my tasks, but I can gladly say that VSF sent me 3 very different people. This was great, because it guaranteed that one of these personalities will “click” with mine. The decision was easy, and Chlea took on herself the work of letting down the two candidates that didn’t get the job.
Next, Chlea sent me a contract template for me to use, and was available for all the questions I had during the setup period. Oh, and have I mentioned they give you a 10-days guarantee starting the day your new VA starts working? Not that I needed it.
Anyway, it’s been a month and a half since I hired my VA. I’m very, very pleased that I chose VSF to ease this process for me, and have no doubts that my next VA will be found through their services. It would be crazy to look anywhere else!