How do you scout VA/employees? What to do when one is causing problems

I hired a VA a few weeks ago for social media management. Taking on more clients and needed someone to help me. This VA was perfect and had good English speaking skills. Creative and all. Paying her a % of the monthly price (never told her full price, but honestly wasn’t a huge margin anyways). Things were going good. I taught her how to use the platforms which took a few days for her to get the hang of. I got 5 clients signed up for her and she was doing good.

Out of no where, she just stops responding for a few weekdays, then finally responded. Still slow responses and I have more clients ready for her to work on. I ask her how many clients can she handle? She says only 6. But before I hired her I told her 20 would be where I’d like to be.

Note: due to the service, it’s entirely possible to manage 25-30 clients per employee. I was a manager for a similar operation where they hired people living in the U.S.


I paid her good (ratio was her like 60-70%, to me 30-40%). I currently have 8 clients ready to sign on and get started, but because of this issue I have to start looking for a new VA and hold off on these clients.

Everything seemed perfect before hand, but now having issues. What can I be on the look out for before hiring another VA? Have you ever had a trouble VA? I hired her from Upwork. Any better places out there?

It’s stressful as I was dealing with some other problems for another business prior to this. Just when I was ready to scale.

Why didn't you hire one of us here? Could have been better because it would be like an in-house employee.

You hired the VA directly or went through an agency?

I've used an agency from BHW for a couple months and the VA they gave me was great. They also switch your VA if you're not pleased

The Seer said:

Why didn't you hire one of us here? Could have been better because it would be like an in-house employee.

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710fla said:

You hired the VA directly or went through an agency?

I've used an agency from BHW for a couple months and the VA they gave me was great. They also switch your VA if you're not pleased

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I will look into hiring from an agency on BHW. My problem was I found more SEO VA/technical VA. Whereas I’m looking for someone creative and has good English.

I'm not sure what happened with her but seems like she either found a better or high-paying client or is busy in personal life.

Unless you hire a VA from an agency, these sorts of problems keep coming around. You got to be very lucky to find a reliable VA which doesn't leave when they're needed the most.

Since you already have clients in place, it'd be best to let her go and find someone else. Maybe this time try to sign some agreement or hire someone from BHW.

Use upwork, and only choose profile with 100% rating.
So you will not gonna get any problem. They will try harder to protect their ranting by providing better service.

shafi432 said:

I'm not sure what happened with her but seems like she either found a better or high-paying client or is busy in personal life.

Unless you hire a VA from an agency, these sorts of problems keep coming around. You got to be very lucky to find a reliable VA which doesn't leave when they're needed the most.
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100% agree. I've had the same experience. That's how it works when you work with freelancers directly. You just need to keep trying until you find a reliable person.

Pay them less overall and give them bonuses for reaching milestones instead.

BONUS pay this week for managing two extra customers for the first time etc

They won't appreciate the pay if the work is tough. However when you are generous with bonuses it makes work harder and stay more motivated.

Thanks for all the tips. I will be checking with members from BHW for a VA instead of going through sites like Upwork.

Have you tried taskbullet? I heard that they have skilled VA there

If the payment is low they will work for you until they find a better job and once they lose their better job, they will return to you
Thats usually how it works, Some one with brain will copy your work and method, You are looking for a dumb and at the same time to be a smart person which is impossible.
You should find a VA with a long time of being a VA, A veteran VA is what you are looking for, They are not smart enough to steal your method but smart enough to do the tasks.

I have found about 6 VAs in Vietnam and they are working for me about 10 years , 2 of them can speak English. If your tasks are not very complicated I may be able to help you.

Another problem, even with a VA office from BHW. Just when things were going good and had good response time. When it was time to hire, he stopped responding. Haven’t heard from him in 5 days, even though we had appointment scheduled Monday, which was originally supposed to be on Friday.

Reading my messages and not responding...