Should I hire a virtual assistant from Upwork or a managed VA firm?

I had an ops hire from Upwork quit the day after onboarding. That settled it for me.

Why doesn't Upwork work for committed roles?

"Upwork freelancers are gig workers who don't want to commit to one employer. Write off Upwork entirely and only hire from platforms where people are seeking one full-time job."

Nobody strong on my team came from Upwork. The people there are doing what the platform is built for, which is gigs. I used it early on, and later posted twice for an operations manager there. Other than one guy, everybody was a miss.

Where did my good VAs come from?

OnlineJobs.ph, a Philippines-based job board. I think I technically found all of my current team there, including my manager. You can find somebody for about $1,000 a month, potentially less.

Expect a lot of spam, and have a process for weeding people out. When I ask applicants to send a Loom video, if one in 10 does it, that's a lot. Plan to interview about 10 people. Nine will be bad. Then you find the good one.

What I look for in a generalist: someone who isn't amazing at any one thing but can figure out almost anything. Facebook ads, Meta Business Suite, Beehiiv, Notion. Most VAs are good at one of those, not all of them. If you write a lot yourself, hire a writer-researcher and become the editor.

Is a managed VA firm worth the fee?

Sometimes. Know what you're paying for. All they're really doing is dealing with the nine bad candidates for you. They'll take 100 resumes and show you the top five. That's faster, but it costs a lot.

• The markup: firms that promise the best 2% and charge around $3,000 a month are often paying the VA $800 to $1,000. You're paying $1,500 to $2,000 a month on top as a fee.
• Placement fees: one model charged $2,000 to hire one person, but $12,000 to hire six. Great if you need six.
• A structured option: a partner suggested a firm with around 1,200 to 1,400 VAs placed. He said it charges around $2,300 a month on a six-month commitment, owns the equipment, and can wipe a computer overnight.

Firms are mostly sourcing from the same sites you can use. It comes down to time or money. Do the sifting yourself, which is cheap and a pain, or pay someone to do it.

Full time or part time?

Full time, if you can. A part-timer can get distracted, and if they're good, their other employer may want them full time, and then they're gone.

I'd hire one really good person and probably overpay, around $1,500 to $2,000 a month, and offload everything. One rock star should beat two average people, especially as the software gets better. Paying more can mean paying less, because good people get more done faster, at higher quality, and you're not redoing their work.

Small teams have a coverage problem, too. When one of my two VAs lost internet in the Philippines for a day, half my help was down. At scale, others can cover.

What red flags should I catch?

• Negotiating the non-negotiables. The posting said the hours were 8 to 5 Central. The candidate could only work until 2pm. That was there before I hired her. Take it seriously.
• Leading with complaints. One candidate's video opened with the first 30 seconds about leaving a job that overwhelmed him with work. That might be fair. You don't say it in the first 30 seconds.

Is offshore cheaper for editing and content?

Cheaper, yes. Better, not necessarily. I tried cheap offshore editing. Overseas, you can find a video editor for about $700 a month, and that's real value once your business can afford it.

It's not hard to find a cheap person with the technical skill. If they're overseas, the hard part is picking the right material and making it engaging. The work can be high quality and still not good. Offshore falls short on taste and presence, not skill.

Shane, my Local Media HQ co-host, went through three or four overseas VAs and rewrote issues. One pulled news from the wrong Belleville, in another country. He switched to a local writer. She does nine newsletters in about three hours a week. Most VAs would take about three hours per issue.

For on-the-ground filming, it has to be someone here. You can't use overseas talent to create content on the ground in your town.

What should be in place before I hire?

A manager, a system and a clear job. I once hired an operations manager before I knew what she'd manage, and I dropped the ball. Task VAs work fine as writers. A manager who can run other people end to end is a different hire.

Without a manager, I didn't even know who was writing which newsletter. Details in why a VA team underdelivers and how to fix it.