How I Became a Virtual Assistant (job history, where to apply, tools)

I actually booked a job with no experience I had no portfolio nothing to show for I got resourceful the pay was incredibly small it just helps make you look more legit [Music] when hey guys welcome back to my channel in this video I'm going to be talking about how I became a virtual assistant how I started my online and remote career so basically going through the whole timeline of all of the jobs that I went through how I apply at these jobs with no experience from scratch then I'm also going to be talking about some tools that I find helpful in starting your career and last but not least some platforms that I recommend where you can start your digital career I am working with Edge Shor in this video so I'll talk about them more towards the end of this video so first let's go through my whole timeline it all started in 2019 at this point I was a seconde college student just for some context my college course is called the executive Resources management program and I graduated from the University of St Carlos my program is basically an elevated version of office management the goal that my University had for my program was that at the end of the course we could apply to the different departments in a company which is like HR marketing operations Etc so when I was still studying a lot of our teachers refer to it as the Jack of all trades so that's my background it's mostly in office management also just to let you know I feel like this is an important detail as part of my journey my first choice for college was something in the Arts either graphic design or film school but I felt like it was a bad decision I because number one the job pool for these courses aren't that big in the Philippines I just feel like after graduating I might not have that many job options and number two it was very expensive so it didn't seem worth it so as much as I wanted to study in the creative programs I decided against it seeing that it was such a risky course and with not a very promising outcome so I went the Practical weight and I went to the business office management course at that time I was convincing myself that if the Arts if the creative industry is for me it will find its way into my life but for right now I'm making the practical decision I wanted to include that little detail because I feel like it's important as part of my journey in 2019 when I was a second year college student I was so bored of my classes we were making reports and essays and working on all these projects that I found so so boring and at that time one of my friends sister actually works as a freelancer and she mentioned that one of the websites her sister use is online jobs. pH so I went through onlinejobs.ph made an account and started applying to all of these different jobs openings I was specifically looking for jobs that had the keywords virtual assistant social media manager or graphic designer I had no experience whatsoever in any of these jobs but because I was very much interested in graphic design I decided to have at it take a risk and start applying to these jobs so the first job that I ever landed was as a social media manager for a skincare brand having no experience whatsoever I specifically looked for jobs that required unpaid outputs or unpaid trials for somebody with no experience nothing to show for this was the the only way that I could showcase my talent showcase my skills there's no way for any of these recruiters to gauge what your skills are to gauge what you can bring to the table so one of the tips I have is that even though you don't have an experience try to make something out of it in these jobl listings you're really trying to sell your skills trying to sell what you can provide and so how are you going to do that without any proof and it actually did work because for my first job I was working for a skincare brand right and so one of the unpaid outputs was for us to design or edit a photo that we wanted to include in their social media platform so I looked up a stock image I created a caption with some hashtags seemed like they really liked it and after multiple trials I did end up booking the job and at that time I was so excited because I actually booked a job with no experience from scratch so I actually only lasted at this job for a month but it was a good experience and I just continued being a college student fast forward to 2020 when the pandemic hit during the pandemic a lot of companies were letting go of their employee so in my mind there was that crippling fear that after I graduated college if I didn't build any experience no company would hire me so I was kind of acting out of boredom and also acting out of fear that I needed to put something in my resume and so that was when I started job hunting again at first I was applying to a lot of virtual assistant roles but after applying to so many job listings I really did not get a call back I didn't get an email back I did not receive any feedback from any of the job listings that I applied for so I decided to take a Twist on things and instead of applying for virtual assistant rules I tried applying to video editor rules at that time as an aspiring video editor I had no portfolio nothing to show for and so what I did was I got resourceful and again that's one of the tips that I have is if you don't have anything to show for you don't have a portfolio you have no experience you need to make something up think of something that can showcase your talent because that's the only way for these recruiters to gauge what your skills are I actually took a bunch of random people's videos on YouTube and I made my own introo logo I added some graphics some music even though they weren't my previous clients I got resourceful I tried to look for other people's feature videos that weren't that heavily edited and I edited them in my style with just one trial video they could already see what kind of editing skills or what my editing style is like and so luckily I got to book this job I think with this job I only lasted for 3 weeks I think the pay was incredibly small I was willing to work for free at that point as long as I was building experience so my first two jobs were very short term I kind of see them as my trial jobs I actually don't even put them in my resume because they kind of seem irrelevant and so that same year I actually got my first real job I got my first real job as a Creative Design specialist AKA like a graphic designer so with this job I actually still work for them it's been 3 years at this point again I had no experience nothing to show for but I really wanted the job so I made a portfolio out of thin air out of some of the school projects that I made like the slide Decks that I used for school I actually put them in my portfolio I also put in some graphics that I edited in my free time things that I made for fun I made mockups mockup posters basically I wanted this job so bad that I really wanted to show them what I was capable of doing what I was capable of Designing and so I made a portfolio from scratch thankfully I booked the job so I started out as a graphic designer for this company the company that I work for is a business consultancy firm and so I'm the graphic designer for it I design all the work books all the posters that we need to host sessions with clients I also designed some websites for the company any design collaterals that we needed for posters emails websites anything like that I did thankfully with the company that I work for even though I wasn't familiar with designing websites and some of the tools that they use they were willing to teach me and then over time I started learning for myself I got comfortable using the tools and so that was how it all started I feel like because of how bored and uninterested I was with my college program it gave me all the the time and the energy to be creative in my work so that was how it kind of built up I have no decree I have no credibility with graphic design I started honing my craft from scratch and that is the biggest tip that I have if you have no experience no portfolio nothing to show for try to make something from scratch find a way where you can showcase your talent showcase your skills showcase what you're capable of and then in 2021 I joined a recruitment company as an HR Personnel at this point I was working two jobs so at this job I was supporting two departments I was working for human resources and recruitment as well at this point I was third year college going on to fourth year I was really trying to rack up all of the job experiences and like shove them into my resume so that by the time that I graduated and the pandemic was over at least I had job histories that my future employers could refer to rather than graduating with really nothing to show for I was really trying to keep myself prepared I was really trying to Kickstart My Career early on and earn money at the same time so I lasted at this company for about 9 months and then I just went back to working my one job which is is the graphic design job in 2022 I graduated college and a few months after that I realized that everything was so expensive I needed a second job to fund the lifestyle that I was giving myself so again I was applying for virtual assistant jobs part-time jobs anything to fill my extra time so at first I was applying for virtual assistant jobs again but I wasn't really receiving any luck or feedback with that specific job and so instead I decided to apply for video editing jobs again I think at that point the virtual assist pool was very oversaturated and a lot of employers are actually looking for video editors based from my experience these employers can be entrepreneurs aspiring YouTube creators business owners they're looking for video editors to kind of showcase their industry showcase their s so out of all of the job listings that I applied for I think I only got two emails back one of it fell through and the other one was from an entrepreneur who was an aspiring YouTube Creator and he was looking for a full-time editor with this role this was actually the first time that I started creating legit YouTube videos for another Creator it was in the AI technology Niche and what's interesting about this job was that I was the first full-time editor that was hired a lot of The Branding from the channel the color scheme the fonts the graphics used I kind of kickstarted kind of paved the way for The Branding for the rest of the videos during my time there they hired more editors about like three or four more editors after 8 or 9 months they actually came up with a new rule for me instead of being a video editor they offered to have me as a channel manager which requires more research with trending topics analyzing the analytics reports coming up with content scheduling it with the team just more of a project manager role and at that point when I was in a meeting with my boss I was so curious just like taking a back with the jobs that I'm getting myself into I don't know anyone who's a channel manager or a project manager it's not something that you go to school for it's a relatively new rule and I just didn't have any mentors I didn't have anyone else that I could consult with these like job offers and so I had to figure it out and navigate this whole career on my own because again it's in the digital remote world and so a lot of these roles are relatively new you don't really know what to do you just kind of have to figure it out on your own and navigate accordingly but yeah it was an interesting experience and at the end of the day I actually didn't accept the rule because around the same time another Creator reached out to me and they were looking for a full-time editor a Creator found one of my editing videos on Tik Tok and she reached out because she was looking for a video editor and it was just really funny that one of the videos she saw of me editing was from one or 2 years ago like way back during the pandemic but somehow in 2023 someone still saw that and managed to reach out so at that time that was kind of like my first time having a go at like this freelancing thing because at first we were discussing a package of four videos over the course of a month and that was the first time that I had to negotiate something like that because all the previous drops that I had they were full-time like like stable monthly thing and so at that time I was doing my own research of how much should I charge this person how much money was worth this amount of time for me to edit a video every week etc etc so again it was the first time for me there was really no one that I could consult so I was just doing my own research trying to think critically trying to make the best decision for my time the money that I would be earning and just like my career overall so we finally got that package done and at that point that was when I left the previous company and I transitioned as a full-time video editor for a lifestyle Creator on YouTube and so that brings us to this point is now January 20124 I work two jobs I work as a creative and client support specialist which I refer to as my VA job and then I also work as a full-time video editor for a lifestyle Creator that's where I'm at right now anytime someone asks me what my job is I just kind of say that I'm a virtual assistant my Niche is specific with admin graphic design and video editing so those are like the top three skills that I kind of honed and crafted these are are the three niches three skills three categories that I have experienced in and I'm confident in my skills in so next let's go through all of the tools that I use to create my resume and my portfolio so number one I use canva I use canva to create my resume so back when I was applying to the different roles as a virtual assistant social media manager video editor I had a resume specifically for each of those roles because when applying to these job listings you want to be specific and cater your resume to that specific job listing so for example if I'm applying as a video editor I only want to keep the relevant experiences for example if I used to work at McDonald's I'm going to include that for my video editing resume that's irrelevant that's not part of the story that you're trying to sell instead you could even put in that you used to work as a social media manager so that when the recruiter sees my resume they see that I had previous experience editing videos for a corporate company for a freelancing gig anything that involves video editing or graphic design anything Visual and I also use canva to create the scratch portfolio that I started with canva is a really useful tool to help you create your resume and your portfolio from scratch even if you didn't have any experience canva has a lot of templates that you can use at your will so another tool that I used to host my portfolio now my video editing portfolio is Adobe portfolio I recently just came up with this a few months ago especially now that I've started to build my client base I started to put them in my online portfolio it just helps make you look more legit when clients or people are reaching out to ask for your rates reaching out to ask for any video samples that you have you can just iMed medely send them your online portfolio Adobe portfolio they have a free version and a paid version I'm using the free version and I think it's already very helpful just like having the free one they also have a lot of design templates that you can choose from and then just kind of design them at your will the third tool that I use is for email signatures now that you have a resume now that you have a portfolio you want to have an email that is specifically strictly for business it's for clients to reach out to you and discuss business matters only and so I have my own business email that I use specifically for like like the freelancing video editing aspect of my job and one of the things that make me look more legit is having an email signature and so in my email signature I have my image the title job position that I gave myself I have my email and then just some of my social media handles instead of the address you can actually put in your contact info like your Viber or Whatsapp account I think instead of having my address I'm actually just going to end up changing this to my contact details so that clients curious people can reach out to discuss business matters so that's a third tool that I use that I find helpful last but not least let's discuss some websites that you can use to build your online and remote career I get a lot of questions on what websites I use to book clients or book jobs and this is based from experience I used to job hunt on onlinejobs.ph but I don't recommend the website to you guys because they don't have the safest measures when it comes to employment scams and so you have to be hyper aware and Vigilant of what jobs you're applying for because not every job listing in there is legit and you have to use your critical thinking skills so whenever I mention onlinejobs.ph I always tell you guys to proceed with caution because again there's a lot of scam listings on there scam employers so you just need to be like hyper Vigilant on what job listings you're applying for again take it with a grain of salt proceed with caution be that as it me I'm always on the lookout for opportunities that are reliable and safe especially for those of you who are aspiring to start your digital and remote career and so in this video I'm happy to be working with Edge chor Edge chor provides Global opportunity to Filipino tutors by sourcing screening training and retaining highly qualified Educators they're basically hiring online tutors so if you haven't considered it yet you may want to start your career in online tutoring they operate in 20 countries across the Americas Europe and Asia Pacific based on the stats that they provided Edge tutors experience a significant two to five times increase in income versus traditional teachers their mission revolves around empowering Filipino teachers and Global Learners through online tutoring what's even more impressive is Edge tutor's commitment to accessibility teachers from different provinces in the Philippines are part of this initiative showcasing their dedication to providing opportunities to Educators Across the Nation they have a pool of predominantly female teachers and a targeted focus on the lower middle- income class which goes back to their mission of providing Global opportunities and careers to Filipino citizens they will interview you screen you train you and once you're hired help you get paid so when it comes to starting your online and remote career I highly recommend Edge tutors here's a list of some of the positions that are open at the moment but the list always changes so if you want to keep updated click the link in my description below to start applying and keep updated so that's the end of the video I hope this was a helpful breakdown of my timeline I hope some of the tips and tools that I mentioned were insightful I hope you learned something new today and if you have any questions please leave a comment below I'll make sure to respond to them otherwise don't forget to check out Edge tutor the link will be in the description below don't forget to like And subscribe leave a comment and I'll see you next time bye iic B me all

Channel: Isle Lee

Views: 7,928

Keywords: virtual assistant, virtual assistant philippines, work from home, work from home job, remote career, online career, virtual assistant job, virtual assistant job from home, virtual assistant no experience, how i became a virtual assistant, edge tutor, edge tutor international, online tutor, online tutor career

Id: JDQKuI1DFGA

Length: 17min 1sec (1021 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 09 2024