Virtual Assistants are huge these days. The sector has grown rapidly over the last year or so due to COVID and the many changes that businesses and families have made.
This also means that the variety of tasks that can be handled by a VA is also growing or indeed has always been vast.
When you say admin it really does cover a multitude of sins and can mean so many different things to so many people.
Even when you think about the level of ‘jobs’ that involve admin and their job titles it brings many different levels of understanding. Such as admin assistant, administrator, secretary, personal assistant and executive assistant or even the office manager role.
Now that the position has become virtual, more job titles have emerged and that range of work has expanded even more. With Virtual Assistant, we now get virtual PA, OBM and Operations Director! All from people starting out in the corporate world as a PA.
So, to be perfectly frank asking what we do is like asking how long is a piece of string? Bearing in mind the experience, background, knowledge and qualifications of people that go into the VA sector you can certainly get a very different service from one to another.
Take me for instance – I’m a trainer and coach by ‘trade’ after my corporate PA time. So, supporting trainers and coaches with their business is very easy; I even know the language and usual ways of working so I can also guide them and talk about their world with insight and help them to move their business forward.
Michelle from virtual assistant company Virtual Hand “The thing about Unique things is probably just ‘what we do’ for many VAs but we do get asked to do things that we’ve never been asked to do before – but perhaps someone else has!”
For example:
Creating an Investor Pack for an entrepreneur at the start of his journey who had a fabulous idea but needed funding. Fortunately one of our team is also an investor so we were able to support him easily with this project.
Supporting a client through probate after the loss of her husband. So, sending documentation to those that needed it, liaising with solicitors, chasing actions and generally keeping her stress levels down during a difficult time. This also included transferring everything over to her name such as cars, houses, utilities, phones etc.
Creating installation maps and invoices for a contractor for a major communications company. Extracting a small part of their job to ensure accuracy and timely production of job documentation.
Organising (during COVID) a cheese and wine tasting event for a large organisation. Where attendees were spread over Europe but not one supplier delivered to all areas. Luckily a relation of one of the team lived in France and could help us by visiting a local shop!
Providing voice overs for a training course PowerPoint – as the client didn’t want their voice on them. Ideal for online courses.
There are so many one-off or indeed ongoing projects that we love to get involved in. Variety really is the spice of life for a VA – well, this one any way. My team are just the same. Happy to try new things to support our clients.
Don’t be afraid to ask – the majority of time the answer will be ‘yes’.
