VirtualAssistants.com is a jobs board and directory listing specializing in virtual assistant positions. The company was founded in 1999 by Belinda Stringer in response to the rising tide of dubious “work from home” scams online.
(I had a feeling they’d been around awhile given the choice domain name!) They pre-date The 4-Hour Workweek and The World is Flat by at least 7 years … helping people find virtual assistants before the term even went mainstream.
In fact, the company was one of the first “virtual” job boards and has helped connect thousands of home-based staff with employers across the country. VirtualAssistants.com maintains an A+ rating with the BBB.
The service is headquartered in Ohio and the virtual assistants are nationwide — US-based only.
Table of Contents
How it Works
With VirtualAssistants.com, companies and individuals seeking a US-based VA can post their job for free and receive proposals from the qualified members of the site.
One cool thing is you can select how “virtual” you want your candidate to be — meaning you can elect to only see applications from candidates within a certain radius of your business.
Services
As a prospective employer, you can use the site for either ongoing or project-based work. Around 200 jobs are posted each week, and the company pre-screens them before they hit the board to make sure both the role and the employer are legitimate.
That screening process is one element that attracts a quality pool of virtual assistant talent to pull from.
I asked Belinda if there were any service areas they were particularly strong in, and she explained, “Our focus is administrative; customer service, website help, social media, transcription, etc. But we have extremely talented VAs with experience in telemarketing, research, editing/proofreading, writing, medical coding/transcription, tech support, accounting, and more.”
As with any jobs board, the range of experience and qualifications will vary, but you have the freedom in your job description to spell out the exact role you envision along with the desired skill-sets.
Once you collect the applications, you are free to screen candidates, schedule interviews, negotiate rates, and make your hiring decision. From that point on, you’re working directly with your VA in a virtual-employee relationship and paying them directly; there is no markup or management cost from VirtualAssistants.com.
Plans and Pricing
VirtualAssistants.com is free for employers. They collect a membership fee (regularly $15 a month) from the VAs so they can get access to the job listings.
From the employer perspective, that barrier to entry — however small — helps improve the overall quality of your applicants. You know that the virtual assistant applying on your job has at least made a small investment in his or her business and takes it seriously.
The typical hourly rate for a qualified US-based VA can range from $12-50/hour and up. In this case, it’s up to you to negotiate salary terms, hours, and conditions directly with your new VA.
As an employer, you may get fewer applicants than on alternative directories or the big freelance sites, but in general you should expect a higher caliber of candidate on VirtualAssistants.com.
The VAs like it because even though there’s competition and always will be, there’s not the sense of it being a race to the bottom on price like you might elsewhere.
Your Turn
Have you hired anyone through VirtualAssistants.com? If so, please take a minute to leave a short review of your experience below.
I have tried to look up a few jobs – over time – in Virtualassistant.com and none of the jobs ever panned out. Trying to find out about a job has been a nightmare – the program kept going to another job page, never to a page to APPLY for the job I applied for. I really could use a part time job due to my home life. But I will try with another company.
I have used VirtualAssistants.com for both locating jobs and workers. I have found many jobs on their website and they go above and beyond the call of duty by doing the much needed research for you and weeding out all of the SCAMS on their website.
I have also used them by hiring virtual assistants from their website as well when I needed to hire someone to perform virtual assistant duties for myself and my business. They have top notch virtual assistants that are more than ready and qualified to handle the job for you.