Virtual Assistant

[MrsLeclerc]

The company I work for is being restructured. There’s a high chance my job will be impacted negatively.

I’ve been looking at my options and have always toyed with the idea of being a PA. It fits well with my degree, I have a strong admin background and it’s something that genuinely brings me joy (I’m that person who can’t pass a stationary shop without going in to ogle the merch!). I’ve also been trying to widen my skills by doing a course in editing and proofreading.

I have a disability that makes travelling to a workplace difficult so the current move to the virtual world is a complete boon for me. I’ve been researching Virtual Assistants and think this is something I’d excel at. My worry is that there isn’t a market for this type of role, particularly at the moment.

How viable do you think this would be as a business? I’d love to hear from VAs or anyone who uses them to get a general idea.

Our company employs loads of them to assist the senior managers, directors and partners. We hire them though as a full time role rather than contract them through agencies or their own companies.

Small business, we use one, mostly she manages the MD's diary. We'll also ask her to organise internal meetings. Apart from being well organised (she has several clients), she needs to be able to quickly build relationships with internal and external people and find a way to nicely strong arm them into shifting around their very busy diaries to accommodate meetings, she quite direct! She offers bookkeeping and admin services, like expenses claims, travel bookings - but it's the diary management that is most valuable to us.

You mention stationery, editing and proofreading. Do you really know what the job entails?

There are much fewer PA jobs than there were a few years ago and competition is very fierce. It can be very busy and stressful.

I don't have experience of VA work but would imagine you would need to market yourself and network which might be a bit difficult at the moment. It's something that you would probably need to start alongside the day job.

I don't think it is particularly future proof. Most things that haven't already are moving online.

Where I work we still employ people to scan and because it isn't yet completely avoidable print where that is essential.

We also still employ someone to take minutes of some important internal meetings. Everything is typed using speech recognition so there is more of a proof reading element for PAs. However, theirs were the first jobs to go last year.

There are still jobs but I think it is a diminishing area.

There used to be loads of City PA jobs but a lot of them have gone now. Covid has seen a lot of jobs go, even before that, many of the financial services companies were outsourcing their PAs to Eastern Europe or SE Asia.

Where I work (civil service) many PA roles have been rebranded to “business support” and they are only paying around 20k per annum.