What is a Virtual Assistant
Your Online Personal Assistant

The term virtual assistant is becoming increasingly popular online. Most people these days may have heard the term but still not sure what a virtual assistant is. They realise of course that a virtual assistant has something to do with an online presence but how they come in to the picture and what services they provide remains a mystery.

Basically a virtual assistant is someone who provides online support to businesses and private individuals normally of an administrative nature. Wikipedia says it is an "entrepreneur who provides professional adminstrative, technical or creative (social) assistance to clients from a home office". The key terms in this definition are entrepreneur, assistance and from a home.

A Virtual assistant typically works for small business. Usually owners of these small businesses are struggling to keep up the menial administrative tasks that get in the way of carrying out their primary money generating activities. Consultancy groups also find it worthwhile to employ VAs. It is not known how many people operate as virtual assistants but it would seem to be somewhere between 10,000 to 40,000 worldwide and still growing. Much of this work is on a "fly-in, fly-out" (FIFO) staffing basis. This means that they are taken on for certain tasks or duties rather than being employed totally by a client on a long term or permanent basis.

The primary mode of of communication of a VA is naturally through the internet and telephone. Emailing is the primary means of written communication however they are very conversant in writing letters, reports and articles. Many virtual assistants prefer not to use the telephone and feel more comfortable if communication is done through the use of emails or online chatting, consequently they are becoming a primary user of voip. Fax machines are also commonly used for communcation.

Most virtual assistants begin with about 5 years of administrative experience in an office including roles as executive assistant, office manager/supervisor, secretary, legal assistant, paralegal, legal secretary, real estate assistant and other fields. This however is not an absolute as their is no specified qualification for a virtual assistant. It is quite possible for a person to set themselves up without any qualification or experience and do quite well as long as they have personal characteristics and intelligence to handle the work. It is quite possible for some not to be capable in what they are doing and therefore clients need to take some care in their selection of an online personal assistant.

There are some very good training colleges and courses that are being set up to train people to become virtual assistants. One such organisation is VAclassroom. VAclassroom runs a variety of courses, some of their more interesting ones are in virtual event management and social media management. Other courses include how to blog and develop internet marketing skills.

There are also some very fine associations that virtual assistants can join. A very good association, especially if you live in Australia is A Claytons Secretarial Network and internationally International Association of Vertual Assistants of America has a very good reputation.

 
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