Must-Have Virtual Assistant Hard Skills and Soft Skills
Virtual Assistant Skills: What are they?
These days, becoming a virtual assistant (VA) is a cutthroat competition, with thousands of others who just want to work remotely, making the standard for hiring a VA among companies and business owners high.
So, what should you do for your resume to stand out? You see, most aspiring VAs are unaware that there are certain hard and soft skills that employers are looking for in a virtual assistant. Most individuals are unaware that there are important criteria that prospective employers look for when hiring virtual assistants. These hard and soft abilities are crucial for every VA if you want to stand out from the crowd.
Hard skills are the technical abilities needed for a position. These are learned skills that can be developed with experience and education. Hard skills for virtual assistants are crucial to have because it is what recruiters look for. For instance, proficiency in programming, communication, and/or writing, among others, are considered hard skills.
On the other hand, having hard skills alone does not guarantee you a virtual assistant position because employers are also on the lookout for soft skills, as they both have to be present in a candidate. In contrast to hard skills, soft skills are personality qualities and social abilities that are needed in a role.
Soft skills are more closely related to personality traits than knowledge. They constitute personality traits, determining how well a person interacts with others and how driven and committed they are to work.
Virtual assistants who have an excellent blend of both hard and soft skills are higher in demand compared to those who lack either of the two.
Must-Have Virtual Assistant Hard Skills
Computer Skills
Although it should go without saying, there are still people who want to be a VA without even having a rudimentary understanding of computers. It cannot be emphasized enough what a crucial hard skill for a virtual assistant is to have a working knowledge of computers as the work essentially revolves around one.
Communication Skills
If you're a VA, it is expected that all communication takes place online, whether it be through voice, video, text, or email. That is why a hard skill for a virtual assistant is being able to communicate effectively across different mediums in the online platform. Having excellent communication skills necessitates for you to be able to speak clearly and effectively in a professional and polite manner. Also, it is an added bonus if you can understand a broad range of English accents because your client may come from different parts of the globe.
Planning and Scheduling Skills
Clients often seek the help of virtual assistants because they are swamped with tasks and meetings, and organizing their daily duties overwhelms them. Thus, having a strong sense of organization is a hard skill a virtual assistant must have. As a VA, you should be able to plan and organize your client's day without having to overlap their activities together. This hard skill involves being aware of your client's immediate and upcoming urgent tasks so you can easily communicate how their day will look like.
English Proficiency
The ability to speak and write English fluently is perhaps the most crucial hard skill for a virtual assistant. To be a successful VA, you should be proficient in writing and speaking English because most clients are searching for VAs who can create grammatically correct work. However, you need not worry because there are numerous tools online that could help you if you ever need to improve your English proficiency skills.
Project Management Tools Skills
Knowing the most widely used productivity tools on the market is a hard skill for virtual assistants to know as it is definitely advantageous since most clients do not have the time to train you about the productivity tools they use.
Basic Research Skills
When we refer to basic research, we don't necessarily mean the kind of study that involves reading through stacks of volumes at the library; rather, we mean the kind of simple online research that every VA should be able to conduct. This means that you should be able to conduct basic online research and assemble those facts into a clear and comprehensive synthesis when issues arise or if your client requires you to know about a particular topic.
Social Media Skills
Most small business owners or start-up companies do not necessarily have an in-house social media manager. That is why basic social media tasks of uploading materials, responding to comments, and monitoring social media analytics are hard skills for a virtual assistant that you have to learn. Being knowledgeable about how major social media platforms function surely makes a good impression on a client.
Must-Have Virtual Assistant Soft Skills
Honesty
Honesty is something that your client would really appreciate. Although it may seem that you can get away with a lie, you must know that nothing can be kept a secret for a long time, and lying to your client will just foster an untrusting and terrible working relationship. It is best for you as a VA to simply avoid lying and just speak the truth from the get-go, whether it is a tiny or significant topic. By doing so, your client will trust you more.
Detail-oriented
Everyone makes errors while at work, but paying close attention to the little things really reduces your chance of doing so. If you are not inherently good at it, you may still build the soft skill by keeping it a practice to review everything you do carefully.
Resourcefulness
Your client might not constantly be able to assist you with issues that arise at work. You should develop the soft skill of resourcefulness and come up with your own solutions so that you don't appear overly dependent. For instance, if you happen to have a problem with your productivity software, you can be resourceful by searching troubleshooting tutorials online, and if your efforts still didn't fix the issue, then that is the time you seek help from your client.
Responsiveness and Reliability
Most clients often complain about how their virtual assistants go off the radar without prior notice or take a long while to reply to important messages. Because of this, many clients place a high value on VAs who are promptly responsive and those they can consistently rely on at work.
Kindness
The majority of the soft skills that are on this list are intended to enhance the quality of work. However, most often than not, VAs are also expected to work with a team. Thus, it is important for a VA to exhibit kindness and openness toward other team members.
How To Improve Your Virtual Assistant Skills
Step 1: Consider your current skill set
Listed above are the most in-demand soft and hard skills for virtual assistants. Now, think about the skills that you do and don't possess from that list. And then conduct a self-evaluation process. Determine your strengths, areas of improvement, and skills that you have yet to master or lack. These can then be divided into hard skills and soft skills.
Step 2: Enroll in courses
Once you have finally considered your current skills and the ones you lack, your next step is to improve those skills and learn the ones you lack. You don't have to worry about where to upgrade your skills as there are a lot of in-person and online courses available — many of those are completely free or at a very minimal cost.
Step 3: Practice your skills
As a VA, practice is one of the simplest approaches to getting better at a skill. To learn new skills, taking courses might be a smart option, and doing practice exercises can help you remember what you've learned.
Conclusion
As mentioned above, there are a lot of hard and soft skills that are needed to be a virtual assistant. Although the list does not completely encompass all the skills a virtual assistant should have, these hard and soft skills aforementioned are certainly the most in demand.
If you think you have the skills to be a virtual assistant, you can join our team! Click here to apply.