A Personal Virtual Assistant Can Make a Huge Difference to Your Productivity

It is wonderful to have a personal assistant to take care of all your daily routine chores so that you can concentrate on nothing but your work. Of course, you have to be a very busy person like politicians, businessmen, executives and celebrities to justify employing a helper.

However, a helper is not just an errand boy. His job is to understand your routine, desires and expectations and cater to your needs without explicit and specific instructions at all times.

An assistant must be sharp enough to think ahead and anticipate your requirements. The very purpose of employing a personal assistant is to enable you to simply forget about some matters.

The job of the help is not just to do his or her duties but to do it in such a manner that the employer never has to worry about the assigned matters again.

Unless the work involves nothing but running errands, the assistant assumes the role of a friend, philosopher and guide of the employer. He is a reliable ally of his employer and shoulders the responsibility of helping the employer concentrate on his job.

The personal helper ensures this by taking care of all tasks- from important office tasks to menial chores. With such an important responsibility on the shoulders of the woker, it is but obvious that the person should be reliable and professional.

Duties of the Personal Assistant

The duties of the assistant include:

1. Maintaining the business, household and social calendar of his employer.
2. Maintaining a schedule of business, social and personal appointments of the employer
3. Taking care of all travel arrangements for domestic and international trips.
4. Handling all the events and functions of the employer.
5. Keeping a bird’s eye view on all business, social, office and even home matters of the employer
6. Performing public relation tasks and media related chores for the employer.
7. Being in charge of all mails and correspondences of the employer.
8. Ensure prompt payment of bills, proper bookkeeping, proper maintenance of accounts.
9. Maintaining the personal and business files of the employer.
10. Being in charge of the contact database of the employer
11. Performing other chores like monitoring computer and office supplies and even sending out personal invitations, greeting cards and thank you notes.

Qualifications of a Personal Assistant

To effectively perform all duties, the assistant must:

a. Have an experience of at least two to three years as a personal assistant in an office.
b. Hold a Bachelor’s degree in any stream
c. Be proficient in basic computer programs like MS Office, Internet Explorer, Outlook etc.
d. Have strong communication skills
e. Be good in organizing and handling people.
f. Have extensive knowledge of etiquette. This is a must when serving high profile persons.
g. A professional approach and high ethical standards.
h. Be very reliable and trustworthy.

It is said that an executive would rather give up his wife rather than give up a fully trained personal assistant. While there is no doubt that this statement is an exaggeration, it pretty much sums up the importance of the assistant.

Your business could fly to the skies with a Virtual Business Assistant

Improved modes of communication as the internet have brought about the availability of help of all sorts right to your doorstep. The globalisation of the economy and enhanced modes of communication have brought forth such changes in our society that enable outsourcing of assistance for all kinds. There is always a virtual assistant sitting in virtual space ready to help you out. Even though your business demands greater attention, you could get more time to relax and devote your time to other things as a virtual business assistant takes care of the extra work.

A Virtual business Assistant could always add to the output of your firm. This could only add to the basic reason why you invested in business—to earn profits, and to add to the business, both in terms of the money and also in terms of the business itself. A virtual assistant is usually an assistant in another part of the world. He would be ready to be of help; he could work even while one is unable to work because business hours are closed. For a virtual business assistant, business hours usually begin when they end for you.

You could always imagine an ideal virtual business assistant as someone living in another part of the world with a computer providing his expert service at a skill. Or he could be someone who has a lot of free time, which you, as business owners, cannot afford. He or she could provide all the assistance that you would need in the form of financial management, strategic management or any other form of management. These are specific and technical fields which rely on technical skills and technical knowledge. It is very easy for firms to outsource such assignments as those that require technical skills or even those that require mere assistance in typing out content to virtual business assistants.

Virtual business assistants are always ready to help out business enterprises in tough jobs like accounting. This could be someone skilled in SEO content writing sitting in another part of the world, or he could be a professional web designer who could design the best web sites for your firm. You could outsource data entry work to virtual business assistants in another part of the world, or they could be specialists in a particular field of knowledge or skill. The anonymous nature of the helper adds to the potentials of the business as it gives the helper greater freedom to work.

Virtual assistants have the added advantage that they can choose the environment from which they wish to work. Virtual business assistants could relax in their homes, work on their PCs and yet be a great help to your business. This could be anything ranging from medical transcription to content writing services that are usually outsourced to other countries. There are all kinds of projects too to choose from for those aspiring to be virtual business assistants.