Recently, my thoughts have turned towards the feasibility of keeping a virtual assistant on the job, if the economy decides to slow down a bit. If you follow this blog, you may remember that I hired a Virtual Assistant on a monthly basis back in January of 2008. It has now been a few months since then. I want to share some thoughts I have about having a Virtual Personal Assistant during a slower economy.
There are a couple of scenarios that come to mind when thinking about a slowing economy. Your job may be affected by the economy, or not. If you work in government, for example, you probably do not have to worry much about losing your job. In this case, you will not be affected much by economic slowdown and your ability to afford a Virtual Personal Assistant. If, on the other hand, your employment is sensitive to economic conditions, you may have to carefully consider continuing the services of your Virtual Personal Assistant. There are some advantages to having somebody help you when your livelihood may be affected. If you do not have the money to hire an assistant, then the point is moot.
One of the first things you learn, when you go out into the job market, is that it is much better to have a job waiting for you before you quit or get fired from your current job. We have all had that situation in which we seek, or are given, the opportunity to succeed outside the company. When there is no job waiting, you may take the first job offered, especially if you are unemployed long enough. That job offer may not be the best choice for you. The problem is, how do you get or find the good jobs if you are busy working hard at your current job?
This is where a Virtual Assistant comes into play. You can have your VA searching for job opportunities for you and submitting your resume to different companies while you work. In this way, you avoid the issue of job hunting on company time. Using your work hours to look for work tends to create a self-fulfilling prophesy; your work suffers from your job hunt and you become one of the first people to get laid off. This would not be so with a Virtual Assistant; you could focus on your current job and still have a set of eyes looking for opportunities. The only time you would actively participate in the job hunt is the occasional job interview. Like with insurance, you have to have that job waiting before disaster strikes.
If disaster has struck and you have enough savings to float you for a while, it still may not hurt to have a Virtual Assistant in your employ. Another set of eyes in your job search may help you cover more ground than you doing it yourself. You could have somebody filtering through all the opportunities and making phone calls on your behalf while you are out and about interviewing. Realistically, we tend to act like we are on vacation when we are between jobs. Your VA can pick up some of your slack.
Finally, there is another way in which a slow economy would affect your decision to hire a Virtual Personal Assistant, if you are a small business owner. The cost of hiring a full-time, or even part-time employee to perform repetitive, but necessary, tasks can often be a big decision. After all, you are paying wages, taxes, and maybe even some benefits. In an uncertain economy, you may not want the risk of adding an employee to your payroll. Virtual Assistants can add a buffer to your hiring process. You can outsource a few tasks here and there when there is demand, until you reach the point where you can sustain an additional employee.
There are perhaps plenty of other ways in which outsourcing during an economic slowdown is advantageous for individuals. I have only covered outsourcing to help you find work before or after you lose your job, and the flip side where you are the small business owner. I’m curious to learn any other ways in which outsourcing can help out individuals during an economic downturn. Please drop me an email or leave a comment with your ideas.
Shaine 