Lesson 3 of 4

How To Hire

Where to find virtual assistants, how to trial them, and what the work is usually paid.

You have a list of tasks to hand over. This lesson covers where to find someone, and a selection process designed to find out quickly whether they are suitable.

Local or remote

Some work has to be done by someone physically present, and some does not.

Local help suits anything involving the stock itself: prepping and packing, if you have space someone can work in; retail arbitrage, if you trust them; and warehouse staff if you reach the point of renting one. Students and people you already know are the usual first hires.

Remote assistants suit everything done on a screen. Most first hires are remote, commonly from the Philippines or Pakistan, where wages are lower. Suitable work includes online arbitrage sourcing, account management, wholesaler research and correspondence, and eventually managing your other assistants.

The general rule: anything that is instructions and a screen can be remote. Anything that is a box cannot.

Where to look

Facebook groups. Amazon seller groups you are already in. Free and immediate, with one important warning below.
OnlineJobs.ph. Described as the most successful route. It charges monthly, and the practical approach is to subscribe for one month, hire, and cancel.
Craigslist, including regional versions in the country you are hiring from.
Upwork. Broad, with escrow and payment protection built in, at the cost of a percentage. Reasonable for a first hire, and many people move the relationship off it once trust is established, which lets you pay less or the assistant earn more.
Specialist services such as FreeUp, which supply assistants already trained for Amazon work, and managed account services charging a monthly fee.

The warning about experienced assistants

This is the most valuable point in the lesson and it is not obvious.

An assistant already working for other Amazon sellers may send the same deals to all of them. They are paid by several people for the same research, which is more profitable for them. The result for you is that every product you buy is bought simultaneously by three other sellers, the listing floods, and the price collapses before your stock arrives.

You have paid for research and received a product that is worse than useless.

The counter-intuitive conclusion: hiring someone with no Amazon experience is often better. You train them, and their work is yours alone. That is why Craigslist and general job sites are named specifically as places to find people unfamiliar with Amazon.

Write the advertisement carefully

Following from that: do not say you are looking for someone to find products to resell on Amazon. That wording attracts exactly the assistants who already do it for others.

Advertise something generic instead, such as help with online research. Once you have candidates you like, explain the actual work and continue the conversation privately.

The exception is hiring someone to manage your Amazon account. There you need existing experience, so say so plainly.

The instruction test

Put a small instruction in the advertisement. The example used: when applying, put "AH position" as the first line of your response. Applications without it are discarded.

It seems trivial and it is one of the most effective filters available. Somebody who does not read an advertisement carefully enough to follow a one-line instruction will not follow your sourcing criteria either, and you will spend the working relationship repeating yourself.

It costs nothing and removes a large share of applicants before you have read a word of their experience.

The task test

For the shortlist, set a small real task. For a sourcing role: take a product you already know is profitable and available cheaper somewhere, and ask them to find the lowest price for it and where to buy it.

What makes this a good test is that it needs no training and you already know the answer. You are not assessing Amazon knowledge; you are assessing whether they can search properly, and how thorough they are. Someone who finds a better source than you did is worth talking to further.

Agree the terms before starting

Two things, both settled in advance:

A trial period. One week is described as more than enough. Say at the outset that it is a trial and that either side can walk away at the end without difficulty. That conversation is easy before the work starts and awkward afterwards.
The payment schedule. How much and how often. Weekly is the stated preference. Disagreements here are almost always the result of assumptions nobody spoke about, and an assistant expecting weekly payment who is paid monthly will leave.

State everything clearly at the start. Surprises later cost you a person you have already trained.

The sequence

Take the outsource list from the previous lesson and pick one task.
Write instructions for it. If you cannot, you are not ready to delegate it.
Advertise generically, with a one-line instruction test.
Discard anyone who ignores the instruction.
Set a small real task with a known answer.
Agree a one-week trial and a payment schedule.
Start with one task, not the whole list.

Handing over one task well is worth more than handing over five badly, and the first hire teaches you how to make the second one easier.