Awhile back, I posted on LinkedIn that I was hiring a marketing virtual assistant. That post alone was my highest reaching post ALL year, even surpassing the announcement I made when I quit my job.

This told me two things:

For those looking for a virtual assistant or just curious about the process I went through, I wanted to share.

After 8+ months of writing this newsletter, posting on LinkedIn and Instagram, updating landing pages, onboarding a cohort, I had identified repeatable tasks that I knew I could delegate.

Part of me thought I was a bit too early onto hire a VA—maybe I needed to wait until I made more money and things were a bit more stable. But after talking to other solopreneurs, it was clear that getting even just 5 hours of support per week could free up my time to focus on only the things I could do.

And as a business of one, my biggest constraint is time.

The people I work with describe me as organized, but I don’t always feel that way. I have lots of ideas and can use my brain linearly (thanks to 10 years in corporate), but it’s not the natural way I think.

I often create systems and get them to 50% but have a hard time following through. I blame this on the “N” in my “ENFJ” Myers-Briggs type, where I don’t follow a linear path to get to my end result.

I wanted a virtual assistant who was more of a step-by-step thinker to complement my brain but also a jack-of-all trades person who was eager to help with tasks they may not have had experience in.

I also wanted someone who could grow with the business over time. Today, they may be focused more on marketing but in the future they may be helping with community.

Originally, I considered having an agency help with the hiring process and honestly looking back, I think it would have saved a lot of time.

But I had never done recruiting before, and I viewed it as a learning opportunity.

I knew I didn’t have time to speak to every candidate directly, so I asked them to fill out a form and record a Loom video introducing themselves.

From the 86 applicants, I reviewed all of their videos and chose 16 applicants, or 18%, to move onto round 2. I filtered them based on their experience, their skillset, and their “vibe”. I was looking for someone with grounding energy and very detail-oriented (I know I can lack this).

From round 2, the sample assignment was to create an Instagram and LinkedIn post based off my newsletter. This was a super helpful step as it allowed me to see both their creative process and their thought process.

Based off their submissions, I narrowed it down to 6 applicants to have 30 minute conversations with. I connected with candidates that connected with my mission, but I also made it a case to learn more about what their longer term goals were.

In the end, I tried to use my head, my heart, and my gut (intuition) to make the decision. I ended up hiring Angela who fit my initial criteria (calm, collected) and had experience working with entrepreneurs.

Understand what you’re optimizing for:
Do you want to save time and outsource the hiring to someone else? You might want to consider an agency, like METEOR. If you want to do the screening yourself, just know it will likely take more time than you realize.

Hire someone with complementary skills:
For me personally, I went back and forth on whether to hire someone more like me vs more different than me. Ultimately, I wanted someone who offered complementary skills to my own vs giving me a ton more creative ideas to sift through.

Taking action is better than indecision:
Looking back, I could have moved faster with hiring. I waffled on whether to post on LinkedIn or just hire within my network. The more I hesitated, the longer the process was taking. By taking action, no matter the expected result, I was able to move forward step by step.

If you’re in the market for a VA, here are a few candidates who stood out:

Overall, I felt understandably overwhelmed throughout the process. There were SO many applicants, and I had to choose just one. There were also moments when I felt like I was letting people down or wasting their time.

Now that I’ve made my first hire, I don’t regret doing it the “hard” way because I learned a lot about myself in the process… but maybe this is also a lesson in disguise to ask for more help!

Where could you ask for more help in your business? How will you do that?

My friends and I have birthdays 1 day apart from each other. In just a few months, both of them are leaving NYC 😢

So we decided to go big for this year’s joint birthday party, renting out Oddfellows Ice Cream in Williamsburg and asking our friends to DJ 🎵

It was super fun, but I’m definitely feeling kind of sad that they’re leaving the city. Lots of new beginnings next year!

None for the rest of the year!

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