What does a Virtual Assistant Do?

Not sure what a Virtual Assistant is or what they do?

You might already know more about Virtual Assistants than you realise. Perhaps you just know them by a different name.

To avoid any embarrassing mix-ups, I should start by clarifying that the Virtual Assistants I’m talking about are the human kind. That’s the kind that I am. We’re living, breathing, thinking people. Not to be confused with another sort of virtual assistant, namely the robot kind. It’s that discreet little device you might have at home that responds to your voice commands and does things like tell you the weather or put on some music. Yours might be called Google, Alexa or Siri and these clever bots are also sometimes called a virtual assistant.

What can a Virtual Assistant Do?

When it comes to administration a (human) Virtual Assistant could do just about anything.

Virtual Assistants are skilled professionals experienced in a whole host of admin and business support roles. They use those skills to partner with businesses, organisations or individuals working remotely to manage all or part of your admin workload, solving your knotty problems and saving you time. Like me, many Virtual Assistants are themselves, business owners so understand your business and its challenges as well as you do.

The tasks Virtual Assistants can do are many and varied. They range from traditional secretarial skills like creating documents to specialist skillsets within their area of particular expertise. This short video is jam-packed with other useful examples.

Video credit: Society of Virtual Assistants

What’s in a name?

Given that every Virtual Assistant is offering a unique combination of skills and style there isn’t a single job title that fits us all. You may already have contacts within your professional networks who are working in the Virtual Assistant industry. You may not have twigged, however, if they’re using some other word or phrase to describe what they do.

Virtual Executive Assistant

Virtual PA

Remote Business Support Specialist

Online Executive Assistant

Freelance Secretary

Virtual Administrator

Admin Consultant

Online Administration Manager

Remote Office Coordinator

Recognise any of these? If you do, then you probably already have more of a sense of what we in the Virtual Assistant industry do than you’re giving yourself credit for.