Essential Skills for Virtual Assistants: Unveiled

Updated 12 September 2023

As the need for digital work increases, the demand for skilled and professional virtual assistants also rises. These professionals help their clients with administrative services, depending on the type of business and operate as independent contractors. If you want to work as a virtual assistant, learning about the essential skills that can help enhance your resume and skill set can increase your chances of securing an excellent job. In this article, we discuss some crucial skills for virtual assistants alongside tips on how you can improve upon them to support your job search process.

Why are skills for virtual assistants necessary?

When you can showcase to your employers that you have the required skills for virtual assistants, your chances of getting a good job are higher. Having the correct skill set and expertise in your work area can help show your compatibility and administrative proficiency essential for a virtual assistant role. Learning and improving upon the skills can enhance your prospects of getting hired for many work-from-home positions in your industry. Virtual assistants work across businesses and have transferable skills to apply in several job roles. Many of these professionals also assume marketing and sales positions in different companies.

Essential skills for virtual assistants

Here are some essential skills for virtual assistants to enhance your chances of getting an excellent job:

Dependability

One of the high-in-demand skills for virtual assistants is dependability, also known as reliability. This skill refers to the personal credibility and persona of the employee and if the employer can depend on them to get their daily tasks done. As virtual assistants operate digitally, employers also consider how reliable and digitally accessible a person is during the hiring process. When a professional is dependable, it also means that they complete their duties on time and are responsive and communicative with their colleagues and mentors to ensure they meet the company's objectives.

Communication

Another essential skill for virtual assistants is communication and how effectively they can convey their ideas or issues to their immediate mentors or teammates. Even though the job position is virtual, these professionals can benefit from good verbal and written communication skills, as their job requires them to communicate with other relevant teams constantly. As the job is online, they can benefit from getting active with their responses through email, messaging applications, video calls or other work correspondences. Excellent communication skills can also help them convey their ideas clearly and get feedback on time.

Time management

Knowing how to manage one's time as a virtual assistant is a crucial professional and business skill as it helps them navigate their daily tasks efficiently. Good time management skills also ensure that these professionals do not miss out on important deadlines and can have the time to discuss and engage in other relevant activities. This skill is also essential for virtual assistants because it is typical for them to work with multiple clients and projects simultaneously, so good time management ensures that they manage their tasks accordingly. Managing their time better also allows them to be more productive.

Resourcefulness

Resourcefulness, or the ability to efficiently overcome problems and provide alternative ways of working or navigating a professional issue, is an essential skill for virtual assistants. This skill is also crucial for these professionals because it allows them to perform thorough research and look for solutions to problems their clients or customers face. Many clients work under tight schedules and deadlines, so they delegate tasks like data collection, research, analysis, fact-checking and other administrative tasks to these professionals. So, resourcefulness can help them enhance their overall work performance and skill set to become trusted employees.

Self-motivation

Having the right mindset and self-motivation and getting disciplined to complete their daily tasks effectively is essential for virtual assistants. Because most of these professionals work alone from a home environment and rarely have an active community, it becomes crucial to have self-motivation. This skill ensures that they are productive at work while also staying focused on the company's goals. When these professionals are self-motivated, they can actively engage, respond and attend to time-sensitive requests while managing their routine projects. Self-motivation also allows them to manage their emotions effectively and stay organised at work.

Organisation

Good organisational skills are essential for virtual assistants because they work on multiple projects and with various clients simultaneously. When they can effectively organise their work, they can better prioritise and manage their tasks to achieve organisational objectives. Being organised also helps them maintain and access their clients' and customers' information readily, that further helps them stay on schedule. Many business owners rely on skilled and organised virtual assistants to help them with managing their emails, programs, passwords, birthday lists, appointments and professional reminders. They can use various software programs or applications to keep track of their schedules and activities.

Creativity

Creativity is an essential skill for these professionals as it allows them to suggest innovative ideas to a problem and ideate new ways of work management or client communication. Creativity can help them establish systems and mechanisms to improve their and their workplace's overall productivity and efficiency. It can be a handy skill if you are a virtual assistant who operates in a specific niche, as it can enable you to custom-design and implement new methods.

Typing

Having basic typing skills is an essential requirement if you are looking to succeed as a virtual assistant as their job requires them to perform various operations using the keyboard. Whether responding to an email, setting up calendars for meetings or sending briefs to clients, good typing skills can help you get an excellent job. It can also enable you to perform your daily tasks smoothly. Typing is also the skill that makes online communication possible as most clients expect you to be accessible and responsive digitally. You can also achieve your organisation's objectives quickly when you can type effectively.

Attention-to-detail

Employers look for people with excellent attention to detail or who can focus on the minute aspects of a job and are specific and detail-oriented. This skill helps ensure these professionals do not make mistakes in basic administrative tasks and can work with an enhanced capacity. Having expert attention to detail also means that they can spot errors before they become public and fix them before sending the brief or the final project to a client. As virtual assistants work online and their primary form of communication happens through digital devices, it becomes crucial to be detail-oriented.

Batching

Besides general job skills, batching is an essential technical skill that virtual assistants use to work on similar projects rather than multitask on different projects. This skill allows these professionals to get more creative, authentic and efficient at work, as they can quickly direct their focus to complete all relevant similar tasks. This skill helps improve their overall workplace effectiveness and productivity and helps them achieve organisational objectives. Batching also enables them to manage their time adequately.

Accounting

Virtual assistants can benefit from learning and improving their basic accounting skills as their job requires them to work as independent contractors. Having excellent accounting skills helps ensure they can manage their and the company's primary financial transactions and other accounting and administrative tasks to strengthen their business performance. Accounting skills can also help inform these contractors about which projects and clients can benefit their business and help them recognise the specific expenses that can affect their business' profitability. Having sound knowledge of balance sheets and income statements can help you perform various administrative tasks easily.

Decision making

As most virtual assistants work remotely using digital devices, they require making their own decisions regarding their job's personal and professional aspects. Having good decision-making skills can help ensure they make the best decisions timely and allow them to ideate and implement strategies that support their professional development. These professionals work with multiple clients and companies simultaneously and having this skill enables them to take favourable decisions quickly and better assist their clients' and customers' needs. Good decision-making also positively affects their overall time management, productivity and organisational skills.

Curiosity

Being a curious person and a constant learner can help position you as a skilled and competent employee who can learn and improve themselves to get better at their job. This skill is highly desirable for virtual assistants as it can help them impress their potential employers while also enhancing their skill set. Curiosity also improves your overall creativity and innovative abilities to help you complete your daily tasks effectively. When you work with an open mind, you are more accepting of feedback and use it to strengthen your professional expertise.