As a bilingual Virtual assistant or in any type of career from home that we choose, there are a lot of things that we need to keep in mind so we can achieve our goals, be successful, and of course, exceed the expectations of our Bosses or clients. Here is some advice you can incorporate into your routine
First and foremost, since we are working from home, we need to make sure that our top priority is being someone with integrity. Even though our Bosses or clients are not physically present, or even if they are not watching us, working with transparency and honesty makes them feel confident that we are someone they can trust and rely on. Imagine that they are trusting their business to someone they dont physically know, someone who can live in another country, even though in another continent. We need to make an effort to build this relationship with integrity, honesty, and transparency every day
I will add here, that trying to have a meaningful relationship with your boss and clients is really important, even though we are talking about a virtual one. Feeling that you are not working alone will make your daily tasks lighter. With my virtual assistant´s team, we incorporate a weekly team huddle, this gives us space to talk about things not related to work, and gives us the chance to start knowing each other.
One thing that our clients expect from us is to be resourceful and have initiative. It is more about finding ways to overcome something, and being proactive and creative than being a robot that only completes its tasks and deadlines. As long as we have that mindset and do not forget that communication is always essential, I am 100% sure that everything is possible, and you just need to believe in yourself.
When working with clients, keep in mind that they hire you because they believe in your experiences or the services you can provide them, as well as your capabilities. They believe in your potential and that you will be a problem solver and their second hand and brain in their daily tasks. By being someone that can help them improve or make their business successful, you also need to be strategic and organized, which means you have to carefully plan everything, think about the possible outcomes or results of your decisions, and know how you will lessen the obstacles that you might experience in the future.
Additional skills that we can consider are being open to any changes and being versatile. Virtual assistants are characterized because they are versatile workers, they can develop many areas at the same time, attending to their client´s requests. Not all the time we will get the same tasks as a virtual assistant; there are some instances where they will give us different tasks or projects that are new to us or that we are not familiar with. We must also learn to adjust and adapt to everything so that we can have the mindset that it is not the only thing we can do and not limit ourselves to what we have already done or accomplished.
Last on my list is the willingness to learn. If you think you know everything already, let me tell you, you are wrong my friend. This world is always changing, and every day there are new things to learn. There are a lot of things that you still need to explore so we can reach our goals and be successful as individuals. Though there are times that we feel overwhelmed with all the information that we are gaining, I am positive that we can use all of it, maybe not today but in the future. We should be thankful that it is a great opportunity for us and gives us the advantage of having advanced knowledge and skills.
There you have this advice, not just as a Virtual Assistant, but for any position that requires skills and capabilities and not a career or a degree. I hope it gives you an idea of what is expected of you and how you will achieve your goals.