🎥 See a quick walkthrough of the process below!

The challenge? Set up a hiring workflow for the Virtual Assistant of our dreams. At the time, I was helping an environmental nonprofit fill several vacancies in their team, so I decided to think about which responsibilities could fall under a potential VA role.

Essentially, the creation of our monthly newsletter to almost 5,000 supporters and managing our Facebook and Instagram accounts. Our timeline and process from discussing and finalizing the job brief to onboarding the successful candidate is laid out here. For important technical skills, I split up the section into tools that we regularly use and skills to look for. I also listed some important soft skills for this role – this especially will be useful during interviews.

Why are we hiring? What's our goal?

What's the problem we're looking to solve?

What's our timeline and process?

What are some important technical skills?

What are some important soft skills?

How are we going to assess this role?

For the job description, I included a brief about us section and some key messaging to attract the right candidates. Responsibilities are broken down by frequency to provide clarity for the applicant. Requirements include desired experience and skills, what would be nice to have but not necessary, and proficiency in the tools relevant to the position. Lastly, what we can offer the candidate and how to apply.

I included some information at the top of the form, so that they can’t miss it. And then I asked them for their contact information, portfolio, resume, references/testimonials, time zone, about themselves, availability, earliest start date, whether they agree to a paid trial task, and questions related specifically to the tools frequently used in this position. These especially will allow us to filter candidates more easily.

The last question asks them to describe themselves in one word, but it’s actually a trick question to see if they were paying attention while reading the job application – “one word” being the keyword here to jog their memories.

The backend also has some hidden fields, such as status, space for notes for myself and the Marketing Manager, and a formula field that automatically displays a checkmark if the candidate entered the right word.

Back to the hiring workflow, I made sure to have a mix of traditional, behavioural, and situational questions – as well as notes about probing questions, critical skills that the question is addressing, and any other cues.

Lastly, I came up with a list of 3 potential trial tasks that I could have successful candidates do, that would be extremely helpful regardless of whether they’re hired or not. All of these trial tasks also have some questions to ask ourselves when evaluating their work and other notes.