While many have used Upwork and other outsourcing agencies, they are not ideal for most serious businesses and virtual assistants. 

If you're not familiar with Upwork, let me explain. From a VA's point of view, working through Upwork means taking on work that is not ideal for our skills and talents while underbidding the competition. For the client this means that they will receive less than adequate service. 

The way to move up on these platforms is to work for "pennies" and hope that the client will provide a stunning review. This leads to better paying tasks as some clients refuse to work with VA's that don't have reviews. And still the VA has to underbid the competition. 

VOA is working to change this. With Virtual Office Agent the client gets top quality services because our VA's don't have to compete with each other. Nor will our clients find language or cultural barriers like they would find working with VA's from over seas. 

I am a firm believer that all VA's are colleagues and not competition. I've based the VOA agency on this statement and my team believes this to be true also. When we think of each other as colleagues and not competition we can focus more on our specialties and lifting each others strengths to help our clients to our fullest potential. 

As you work with the VOA team, you'll realize that the level of service you receive from VOA is so much more than what you will get from other freelance companies. 

Hiring is a very tedious and time consuming task and even doing it correctly, you still have to dig through all the applicants to find the right one. 
Here is the process that VOA follows to make this monstrous task easier. 

1. Attract the right candidates through attraction marketing
2. Screen for qualifications
3. Background and reference screening
4. Perform 1st interview
5. Schedule 2nd interview with you and your team
6. Send welcome information to candidates
7. Update employee database
8. Ensure new hire paperwork is correct and complete
9. Prep and schedule training
10. Schedule 30 day review

90% of office professionals experience office stress in some form. But many of them experience stress from their own habits and workflow and don’t even realize the impact it’s having.
Sitting up straighter, drinking enough water, and taking frequent stretch breaks are all important but so is how you go about prioritizing your day, how you file data and even how you respond to both coworkers and customers.
Others can pick up on your stress and it can bring down how your superiors see you as professional. It’s ok! I have an easy solution!
Here are 3 easy steps to make your day flow better and leave the office feeling calmer.

1. Sort your email
I know that many other articles say to avoid your email in the beginning of the day but what they aren’t telling you is that when you live out of your email for tasks, it can be hard to avoid your job. The best way to overcome this is to sort your emails into 5 key folders.
i.Urgent
ii.Read and respond
iii.Review
iv.Action
v.Waiting for
With these 5 folders you can see your day clearly from start to finish. Don’t pick up anything from your inbox unless it’s urgent. Start with the 5 folders and work through them by priority. You can thank me later.

2. Start with your least favorite task and work to your easiest or most favorite task.
Doing this will allow you to get what you hate done and out of the way so that the rest of the day you can breathe easy knowing it is done and you no longer have to stress on it. When starting this task make sure that you have everything you need at hand to tackle it and complete it with as few breaks as possible. Being human we naturally want to procrastinate on tasks that we don’t like or seem hard to do. Then when it comes down to the wire, we panic causing more stress.

3. Don’t let distractions get in the way.
This means turn down the notification sound on your phone and computer for when and email comes in. It takes on average 7 minutes to refocus on a task once distracted. Close your office door or use earbuds with white noise to block out outside noise. If you can keep on track and power through, you’ll be surprised how fast you become a completing tasks and how much time you’re saving in other areas. Not to mention how much your boss and coworkers will notice the improvement. 

Before even thinking about hiring a virtual assistant there comes a time of frustration and overwhelm. This is what fuels and motivates a virtual assistant. All they want is to take that frustration and turn it into something useful.

When you are ready to start looking for a virtual assistant, it is best practice to jot down 3 main things.
1. What tasks do you dislike doing the most?
2. What tasks take up most of your time?
3. What tasks do you have a hard time completing or don't fully understand how to do?

Whether you delegate these tasks to your future VA or not is not the point of the exercise. The point of the exercise is to understand where your frustrations are coming from.

Now that you know what you dislike the most, what takes up the most time, and what you just don't understand how to do effectively, you can start to identify tasks that are at the top of the list to give away.

Keep in mind that there are MANY types of VA's and it is possible to find one that is already trained in what you need them to accomplish.

Once you've identified what you would like to delegate, visit www.voa-services.com/contact and schedule a free consultation.