One of the most often asked questions on the subject of virtual assistant staffing is where to find and hire the best employees from the virtual world. As those we’ve talked to since founding Big Outsource back in 2010 admit, this is one aspect they once answered deliberately and carefully.

Picking out of millions of contractors is not only time-consuming and tedious, it also must be recognized that there is a certain amount of uncertainty when hiring someone you don’t know.

Will the chosen staff do a good job? Will this virtual staff or team of virtual employees work and cooperate well together (knowing that conflict can easily arise between and among strangers trying to work on projects and tasks together)?

Here are a few tips that you can follow whether you are searching for a good virtual assistants on the pages of job boards on freelance portals, social media channels and the likes.

Freelance websites. Finding virtual assistants on freelance websites like Freelancer, oDesk and Fiverr, just to name a few, is harder than identifying which tasks to delegate to an outsourced personnel.

What confounds the search is the fact that with millions of independent contractors signing up and posting their professional profiles, there are so much on offer. Millions of profiles is overwhelming and it thus makes pre-selecting just your best five candidates can be painfully hard.

Fine, there are features and tools to help you check the most favorable candidates. Having been in this business for quite a long time, freelance sites have gone a long way to ensuring they give you the best candidates through the tests for languages and computer skillsets these sites give. Check out the scores and competence levels of your candidates but never rely on those tests alone.

Look over the profile of your prospective candidates, their body of works or portfolios and read over the reviews or testimonials former colleagues or clients wrote. Best of all, you can always ask for references form their former employers.

Going through this process is especially helpful when you want to hire professional and skilled assistants for complex and complicated tasks. However, if you need someone who’ll do data entry or simple routine tasks, you can simply test him or her and see if they can do the job you assigned them.

LinkedIn. This popular social media website focused on the professional careerists host groups dedicated for virtual assistants. Pretty sure these groups come with lots of virtual assistants and independent contractors on lookout for job hunters and employers who might be attracted to them. One critical advantage of sites like LinkedIn is that registered members are not anonymous. Unlike with freelancer and job board sites, anonymity trumps transparency immensely.

On LinkedIn, it is quite hard for an independent contractor to build reputation nor manufacture his own credibility. The praises and recommendations coming from colleagues or former employers the contractor has had the chance of working it are manifestation of years of fruitful work. It may also means they’re legitimate.

But never just let these stuffs convince you just as yet. Make sure to double check every claim posted on the contractor’s account. Prepare a test to properly evaluate and assess the contractor to better make the right choice,

Some Warning Before Hiring

We’re not starting to be too pessimist this time. But truth be told that the Internet is a dwelling place of both legitimate and illegitimate people. On the gray side of it, there are plenty of scammers who are out to deceive people like you. There are also low-level contractors that you can spot here and there just so they can earn money from employers like you.

Given this reality, great chances that you won’t find the right virtual employee for your company from any of those channels we’ve mentioned above is alarmingly positive.

O.K. we get it that you’ll soon find some contractors on the web, but it’s no guarantee they’ll be around far too long to satisfy your requirements. How much if you’ve hired a couple of inefficient virtual employees that you’d use to form a team? You can just imagine the headache such might cause you.

Faster and Easier Route Is Just Around the Corner

We could be the answer to your quandary. Big Outsource takes a bunch of the mess out of your worries, such as negotiating virtual staffing pricing, pre-screening qualified candidates, testing contractors to determine their skill level, and finding the best employee management platform.

All you need to worry is figure out what tasks you would like to outsource because we have more than a hundred tasks that you can outsource. Wondering about your outsourcing options? Don’t worry, our virtual assistant staffing services is one of the most flexible and affordable around.

We’ve been around in this sector for more than three years and sure enough our experience in handling virtual assistants, keeping the motivated and morally-boosted are just a sampling of what we can help deliver to help you achieve your business objectives.