How to hire a virtual assistant.
Most VA hires fail before the interview: the founder cannot say what the VA will own, so they hire "general help" and get general results. The screening starts with you — write the ten recurring tasks you want off your plate, and hire against that list.
After that, the job is mostly async written communication plus judgment about when to ask versus decide. Both are testable in a short structured interview and a small paid trial task.
What to test — and what proof looks like
Decide these before you read a single application. Each requirement below pairs with the evidence that would actually convince you — screening becomes checking claims against a list instead of comparing vibes.
- Has owned your kind of tasks before. Inbox triage, scheduling, research, invoicing, CRM hygiene — verify against your actual task list, not "administrative experience" in the abstract.
- Written communication you enjoy reading. Their application messages are the work sample: clear, brief, and they answer what was actually asked.
- Judgment about asking vs. deciding. Stories of handling ambiguity: what they decided alone, what they escalated, and how they batched questions instead of pinging constantly.
- Reliability across time zones and tools. Concrete overlap hours, response-time expectations, and the tools they have really used — not a logo wall.
Interview questions that test claims
Generic questions get rehearsed answers. These are anchored in the claims candidates in this role typically make — easy to answer if the claim is true, awkward if it isn't. (The method is covered in our interview questions guide.)
- Describe a recurring process you took over completely. What did it look like before and after you?
- You hit a task where my instructions don’t cover the case in front of you. What do you do, concretely?
- What’s an example of a mistake you made in async work, and how did the client find out?
- Which of the tasks in this job post have you done before, and in what tool?
Red flags
- Application message ignores your questions or is clearly a paste-everywhere template.
- Claims every tool and every task — depth nowhere.
- No questions for you — good VAs probe scope before accepting.
Running this at 200-applicant scale
This process works manually for a dozen applicants. At real posting volume, the testing is the bottleneck — which is the part BestHire automates. Publish your role through a JD built as a filter, and every fit applicant takes a 5-minute AI interview probing the claims on their own CV. You get a ranked shortlist where every verdict cites the CV line and the interview quote — you read the evidence and decide. See how it works.
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