Many businesses today offer up the opportunity for employees to telecommute.
Another term for this is working from home via an online portal or just by
physically working from home. Allowing employees to telecommute can save
businesses thousands, even millions of dollars per year in overhead costs. It is
much more cost effective for companies to hire people to work from home rather
than rent out space for an office, pay the electric bill, offer benefits, etc.
Because of this fact, more and more companies are hiring people to act as a
virtual assistant. Essentially, virtual assistants are available to remotely help
people with things like paperwork, typing up letters, spreadsheets, and even
answering the phone and taking messages. They may never even meet their
boss in person, but they still communicate with their employer either through
email or chat.
Some small business owners or larger online companies will choose to contract
people out as virtual assistants. Then, when they find they are in need of help,
they enlist the company to hire a virtual assistant to complete some of the work
for them. Lawyers and doctors’ offices are common clients that utilize virtual
assistants as well. It is a sort of temp agency, but the work is performed from
home and mostly online.
As a virtual assistant, you can be paid by the hour at a set hourly rate, or you can
get paid per assignment such as a flat rate per spreadsheet completed, or letter
written. The type of assignment and depth of what you must do is usually up to
you, however you will probably have to pass certain tests such as Excel or Word
accuracy tests so that the company knows you’re a capable candidate. Once you
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are hired, you can work long term for one particular client, or “hop around” from
assignment to assignment, depending on the need.
You can get started by looking for jobs on sites like www.elance.com and www.odesk.com