Lawyers! Here’s How To Hire Content Writers and Virtual Assistants!
The question:
Can you explain how to hire a VA or a content writer from Upwork?
My answer:
You do not want to hire content writers from Upwork. Go to the Cult of Copy job board on Facebook. Just Google Cult of Copy job board. That’s where we get the majority of our writers.
I like to hire Americans as content writers. When you hire a virtual assistant, what you want to do is pretty simple. You just follow the steps below. But interviewing them is the most important part.
How to interview virtual assistants
Make sure to ask them questions that they cannot Google because you want to make sure that you’re able to communicate with them. Ask them questions like, “What do you do for fun?” or “Tell me about your family,” or, “What are your hobbies?”
You want to have a conversation with them and make sure you can actually communicate with them. The mistake that a lot of people make with hiring virtual assistants is that they hire people they cannot communicate with. And then they also don’t give very good instructions.
If you hire somebody that you can communicate with that’s a big part of it. And then you have to give them really good instructions. If you check both of those boxes, then you should have a really good experience with your virtual assistant.
Give them a test assignment
There’s another thing that I you do with virtual assistants when I hire them from Upwork. A lot of times, we’ll give them a test assignment. This is an assignment where the instructions are not extremely clear.
For example, I would say, “Here’s an Excel document. Make me a list of all the estate planning lawyers in Nashville, Tennessee.” When I actually give them a real assignment I would give them much better instructions.
But I want to see how they do when they get not-so-great instructions. If they can do a good job when I don’t give them great instructions, then they’re going to do a phenomenal job when I actually give them really solid step-by-step instructions.
That’s how you do it. You just make sure you hire them correctly. It’s kind of like they say in real estate: profits are made when you buy not when you sell.
