How to Interview a Virtual Assistant | Live Interviews with VAs | Part 1

okay hi guys today what i'm going to do is quite simply i'm going to live record some interviews and i'm talking this is six hours worth of interviewing i'm doing back-to-back or 30-minute interviews i'll share top parts of that with you so you can see how i interview what i do and also as well hopefully it's going to help you learn about maybe the process that we go through in the va academy but maybe if you're looking to hire maybe some questions that i ask and how i structure my interviews hopefully it's going to help you in your amazon business stay tuned [Music] okay so today i am basically going to record a series of videos of me doing interviews live interviews of candidates who have applied for sourcing roles as part of the va academy now we have a quite a good process down we have a really good track record of finding good candidates and one of the things we do kind of before this they get to this stage is we ask them to apply and they ask them to complete a test now the reason why we do this is basically we want to know are they able to do the job and once they get to do the job i.e they score well in our test then we want to know are they the right kind of person we want to hire are they going to be right for our clients and then finally we want to know is the job going to be right for them so today during these interviews what i'm going to do is i'm literally going to be having the interview with the candidate you're going to watch that i'll trim out a couple of points or maybe hide some information that might be a bit sensitive but then you'll be able to see a quick summary of my thoughts afterwards which is going to give you a bit of an insight into a very quick and i mean a very quick rough analysis of these candidates that i'm interviewing now if i put in perspective these videos these these interviews they have been recorded literally in a six-hour window i have done back-to-back 30-minute interviews non-stop no breaks nothing one interview next interview next interview next interview next interview and i've recorded them all for you now and done a quick summary afterwards and i do this every single week with all of my clients who are looking to hire a va from the fast track fba academy and this is the real value that i can bring to the hiring process you know we are looking for the right candidates once we get the right candidate we can then train them and they're going to deliver but the first things first is get the right candidate and this is where i add real value in finding who i like and hey who maybe might be good but just not right so we'll talk through that process now and hopefully you're going to learn something from these interviews let's get started okay so just want to start off and just say look first things first thank you very much for um applying for the role um and hey taking the time to do the test really good of you and hey look well done for getting this far and it's great to have a conversation with you today so what i want to go through today is very much about getting to know you who you are as a person i'll also take some time to talk a little bit about the business and then also we'll talk a little bit about the the role and the job that you'll be doing as well obviously if you're successful and if you just give me two seconds what i'm going to do is just load up uh my notes and just make sure that i've got i can actually take some notes down while we're doing it so double check i've got a copy of your cv i think you sent that through on the link yes and i think the first question i'll just ask is uh tell me a little bit about yourself and who you are for my work experience i have been in the call center industry here in the philippines for nine years four years as a customer service representative and technical support representative and then five years as a communications and product specific trainer for two different companies and then i've also had virtual assistants um experience as a freelancer or a part-time that's for amazon and ebay so we technically do process orders process rmas or refunds and then would filter negative feedbacks but for customers and then would also do data scraping and data scrubbing and as well as um submitting emails to different customers so if i just clarify and i want to make sure i'm clear my understanding of the work you were doing for him as a freelancer in the amazon world and the ebay world was looking for orders which had been purchased from their store and then fulfilling them through a third-party warehouse you know like a warehouse in the uk and then also just feeding back customer messages and customer complaints is that right yes and then i also have he also asked me to answer chats through talk okay so if there are any questions there then i'll have to answer so that's the reason why within 24 hours i have to at least log in two hours a day to check if there are any unanswered questions okay fine so let's just kind of move back on to your last work which is operations trainer project information and business development so was that uh where are you based are you davao city yes um so was that work at home was that on site how did that work office space office space okay fine um and you said you how did that work with managing your children you said you've got two kids and you're a single mom at the moment um i really don't know how did i manage it it's just that i really have to do to do two jobs in a day that's the reason why i'm even also shocked that i was able to do that so after my office job i would um log in first and check if there are any questions or unanswered inquiries and then if there are any orders of fulfilled and then after that they'll have to be on mommy mode okay okay and how old are your children my ass eldest is nine years old um my youngest is turning two years old congratulations lovely um and for you uh how what happened to your nine year old can kind of gather they might look after themselves but a two-year-old do they get looked after by the nine-year-old while you're at work um i'm actually i'm actually living with my um parents that's the reason why it was also kind of helpful because they would also help me look after them especially for my youngest child okay so let me just ask how did you find the test um since there is already like a video tutorial i just follow the instruction and it's actually just okay it's just really easy if we base it on the video tutorial that i watched and if i put it in perspective the test is very very representative of the work you'd be doing so if i put it in perspective is that 98 of the work you'd be doing is exactly the same as a test and if i make it even clearer is to say you are literally going to a store finding a product going to amazon finding the same product yeah working out the profit and the the margin and if it meets certain criteria great put it forward if it doesn't then carry on there's a little bit more to it than that but that basic concept of copy paste check copy paste check what you'd be doing 98 of your time eight hours a day five days a week and i'm gonna be honest it's boring like it's not the most exciting how would you be with that um i really didn't find it boring because um with that type of task it's actually interesting because you have to um it's really challenging especially that you really have to make sure that the item that you're looking at is the same as the item that you're you're trying to find in amazon because there are uh what you call this there are products wherein the picture is the same but it's um the quantity and then um the quality is different especially with the um palmolive shampoo that you had during the test i was quite confused because the the picture is actually different from the ones in the amazon website but when i checked the product description it actually stayed at the same then that's the reason why i chose that so for me it's really not kind of boring it's still challenging because you have to make sure it's the same item okay okay and if you want to know the test we put some challenging products in there to see how you react because if they're all easy you wouldn't get you'd be like how do we differentiate the people you can deal with challenging without us telling them about it and those who can't so um i think if you're going to ask if the question is how well did you do it well you did well enough that you got here so that's that's the answer you need to know okay fine the the work is very representative of the test i copy and paste there is more to it and i won't deny it's about how we speed you up and do the analysis and what we teach is the analysis that's it but that general method of you know copy paste find review a deal that is what you are doing 98 of the time and then some analysis off the top end of that i think look from from my perspective i've got a number of interviews to get through so um what i'll do is i will get back to you monday or tuesday next week and we'll let you know if you're successful or if you're unsuccessful um and then from there obviously we'll let you know the next steps initial thoughts on her really yeah i liked her i thought she's good um i've got no problem with her the fact that she my only one concern would come for the fact that she is dumb she she wants well she had 28 000 per month she was getting five dollars an hour in a part-time job and now we're going to be offering her less that's a concern because it basically means she might be looking for another job but i'd just say something to be careful of but on the flip side to say that she was working on site and she'd have travelling costs and now she's going to be at home and have flexi time so there's an element there but she's aware of the amazon process not saying she's done amazon sourcing she's she's had two contracts ended quite recently but she's had long-term jobs with him so i like stability and that she's stay at home mum if we can give her flexi time that's really going to work and she talked about the test not being boring and even talked about the differences in like the labels which was quite nice to see so she picked up on that so generally nice person seems to be right interesting enough on our time test she did really well so definitely happy to put it forward quite later that's my season confessing first i've got your cb uh thank you very much and i'd probably just say you know tell me a little bit about yourself and uh and who you are i'm already married it's been i've been in a marriage for about almost three years now so i have two kids and of course i'm a working full-time mom so at the same time as a virtual assistant before i was working before as a customer service representative in one of the bpo industry here in the philippines which is more dealing with professors and students so i was humbling about their online courses so helping them to especially the students walk them through and how to do some online registration and for the professors as well helping so you're helping them as well and how to create their courses or if they need any help or assistance with the uh online courses that they're creating for their students and after that i resign and then i try to work in a in this online job so my first thing my first online job is i work as a virtual assistant in a real estate industry which is my past employer was based in the usa so i was helping her about all the properties that she has like for example listing properties to their database and as well as doing some data entry and aside from that also helping her or providing some technical support and then as a virtual assistant i worked for her for about i think almost a year 10 months i think that was 10 months and after that i also worked as a virtual assistant in an amazon drop shipping so the in the resume or in the city that you've seen the amazon drop shipping and eb drop shipping i work in the same client or the same employer so so i work in amazon drop shipping for about september that was september to june so probably that was nine months or ten months i think uh i'm not really sure so yeah as in the amazon drop shipping i do some order fulfillment and product listing and processing refunds uh what else and doing as well as a uh email customer support in the what you call that central amazon central uh i forgot amazon central yeah that's the thing and yeah doing some customer support and since then the there was a problem in the store though the store was very progressing it was working real really well but then i think there was i'm not sure it was all about the intellectual property something like that that has a problem so my past employer uh created a new store which is ebay and he wants to work with me in an ebay drop shipping so i was working with him for about that was june to november yeah june july august september for about five months in that evening storm and the store was really good very progressing so my work as a navy drop shipping it was still the same working in an amazon in a store so i was doing the email customer support as well and doing product listing and processing refunds and order fulfillment so in the amazon and ebay drop shipping we source uh products from walmart and in the ebay we both uh ebay store resource products from walmart and amazon so yeah that's what we where we source the products and what else i can add to that i was thinking uh yeah i think that's all and oh yeah i forgot the software we are using in the amazon it was the arbitrage suit or how how will you pronounce that at arbitrage suite or rbg arbitrage suit in the amazon yeah and in the ebay for the product listing or product research we use the software zig analytics and aside from physic analytics we uh use for in the product listing we use the software which is the sku grid or sq fetch how was the test my ass do you remember doing the test actually i just want to be honest i forgot which test because since i applied too many jobs so since there are a lot of tests so i forgot which one of those so if i put it in perspective you would have watched a small video of me and you'd had three sample questions and you've done 10 questions afterwards it'd be google form and most likely you would have gone to like walmart looked at a couple of products and then gone to amazon and then you used the amazon calculator to work out the profit and the margin on it do you remember doing that okay i remember doing that thing okay and how was it for you for me it's it's fine it's a nice i you know that since i was i already have that background about the amazon and walmart doing some outsourcing so it's quite it's not really confusing for me because i already have that idea and for me it's not technically easy but then it's far more easier for me to do that kind of of task okay okay fine and look if if i had to put it in perspective your the test is very representative of the work i if you are going you know if you're going to be successful that work that you'd be doing is very you know go to walmart for example the uk store find a product find the same product in amazon and then copy and paste and it's literally if i put it in perspective that copy paste find it in amazon is 98 of what you're going to be doing like 98 of what you're doing it's a lot a lot of work um how would you feel doing that every day well it's okay since since i'm used to it in working in a repetitive task well i'm used to it so well it's fine with you working in that job every day okay question for you quickly you when you were doing your amazon ebay you worked flexi time that seems quite valuable to you you quite like that especially the mum i can really understand that um you worked about 25 hours a week why didn't you work anymore uh so why why didn't you work any more hours per week oh okay because you know i also at the same time i was you know at that time during that period my husband we started just a small business small business like while my husband is working in this online job at the same time he also work as a computer technician so we had a small business and working in that we have a printing you know printing so students are coming in and then we also have a small computer shop before like internet cafe but not really internet cafes so part-time at the same time helping him with with that small business but then we we stopped doing that business again so why aside one reason is the one that we are renting before is quite expensive for us and at the same time for those computers we're also renting it so we're not the owners of it so you know we're paying for that one and for the electricity it's the power is you know expensive it's quite high so you cannot deal on it and we can see that this is not really working for us so we stop it okay that's cool it's good hey welcome to you for trying like generally you mean you well done you've got to take a risk in life you don't you don't understand unless you try that's cool okay um any questions you want to ask me oh okay so for one question yeah i was thinking about because earlier i forgot i was thinking about where did i uh applied for this job so i was thinking about the fast track is it the one which is based in the in the uk right yeah yeah okay so how will i know if uh i'm hired are you going or are you going to i've got a lot of interviews today but i really know whether you're successful or not on monday or tuesday next week yes because a lot of the things that i applied they told me that okay i'll let you know but then after that there is no signal you know that's fine have you got you got a notepad on your computer oh yes i have can you do me three things so i'm just going to ask you to write these down quickly okay sure number one can you um number one can you oh i don't know what i'm doing number one can you go onto your computer and take the i want you to send all three of these in the email by the way to me okay so uh number one can you um send me a copy of your computer specs okay uh number two can you go online speed test okay and then number three i don't know what your home working environment looks like i don't know what that is i don't live where you are right now so can you get your phone take a couple of photos of your working environment you know i want to see the desk the chair what it looks like and um and then put that you know like three or four maybe from different angles in the room um and then send me a copy of that in the email as well oh okay sure fantastic any final questions before we finish uh i think that's all that i've asked you before hold on all right well look thank you very much and i'll be in contact next week okay thank you okay bye thank you so yeah generally okay i'm happy that i was a bit my initial thoughts were a bit worried about why she was only working 25 hours a week when she needed the money but it turned out that she'd had she'd set up another business which kind of answered that some experience in amazon but she's got awareness so you know i wouldn't call that experience without she's aware of the ecosystem doesn't really mean anything interesting enough i probably didn't delve into it i would question very much around some of her previous work and how long she'd worked in them she's got you know one or two quite short dates um but you know she's a new mum she's got two kids she looks at a family at home hudson's just got a job and it seems quite stable seems to work quite hard and then i would just base it solely on the test results you know i've got nothing wrong with her and i think you know nice person can get on with her and she seems to take it on uh probably talks a little bit but i can see that by the time but hey that's that's my only thoughts generally good no problem there and just some of the feedback i've got a copy of your cv and i'd say that first things first tell me a little bit about yourself i am 29 years old and i am married with two children one is three years old and one is three months old i just got yeah i just gave birth congratulations thank you tell me about your work experience itam well before switching to home base i have worked for four years in two various construction companies as an admin secretary uh admin an admin clerk and then one of my uh my duties were keeping our files um up to date and organized like construction materials files expense like payrolls and our miscellaneous expense and then our our legal documents like taxes and certificates i am responsible for keeping them up to date and well organized and then site visits and then data entry and that's all and then when i when i was pregnant with my first child i have to give up my career to to be a full-time mom and then i realized being a stay-at-home mom is it's not um well it's not enough for me because i have been working uh ever since i finished my college i have been working so while while taking care of my baby i decided to switch to freelancing and that's that was when i first landed my very very first job which was a data entry work in an e-commerce company called lms sales and consulting i was i was hired as a part-time during the time two to three hours per day i do prada product research and sorting out uh products from amazon that was sourced from another va well i i sort out those amazon products using the tools kipa and jungle scout and then after that i do product repricing and product inventory using the inventory that will be cool and while doing that job um i have i landed my second job which was a full-time that was an internet research assistant that that was basically pretty much the same with the other one but yeah i do product product search also but it was different um if it was all about books second had books my clients that was my clients business she will then give me instructions and criteria criterias for me to find out profitable products for her and then but i was pregnant with my second child so i have to let go of my two jobs and then after giving birth i retained my my third job actually i retained my third job i am currently working as a va again but i retained my my job they're paying me quite good enough for me to yes help my husband sustain our needs and then but that was a part but i am working for them for part time that's what that's why i am looking for a full time today and how many hours a week you doing with them i am working two to three hours a day for them um five days a week okay are you looking to take on a full-time job to replace that or are you looking to take a full-time job in addition to that well i am looking for a full-time job to replace that and then have my younger brother take over my job as a va this job that you've applied for how many hours a day is it eight hours a day okay and you have two children how old is your youngest child about the three months old cool so quick question for you your current situation is exactly the same as what it was back then oh is it different it was a slightly different because i have nani now you have an alley yeah yeah oh my god you've got such an easy life no you haven't it's hard i am i have prepared myself before i'm looking for a job because i don't want to be i i i don't want to to be fired or something because i don't have enough to take care of my children that's why before before applying to jobs on online jobs website i have to take care of few things for me to be able to work okay okay how was the test oh the test is pretty easy for me because there's an instruction there's a via video on youtube yeah and it's it's quite easy for me to because i i've been as i've said a while ago i've been working here i've been working a repetitive task i've been working with instructions given to me so i am quite my understanding to instructions is quite high i get to easily i get to easily understand understand those instructions and you know if if my if my test task went well then i guess that shows well you're here today so that speaks volumes about how well you're tested because if you didn't do well you wouldn't be here having a conversation with relax um okay i i think look um the reason why i ask about the test is the test is very very very representative of the work so go to a store now i think in the test we might say walmart but in in the you know in the actual in the real life it'll be uk-based stores um go to walmart find a product go find the same product in amazon work out the profit in the margin and then if it meets the criteria great do some more checks but if not carry on now you are doing that all the time you know like i don't know 60 times an hour 120 times an hour um eight hours a day five days a week forever and ever and ever they might change in like a year's time but if i just say that is all you are going to be doing 98 of the time it's boring it's it's not the most exciting thing in the world how would you feel about doing that it's okay for me it's all right okay so interesting interview there with jen and you know like she's got amazon experience before and i'm always wary of people with amazon experience i'm like why what's going on um you know hey the question i always ask is if you've got previous experience in doing this why are you looking for a job because my god you find deals which make you profit and that works so you kind of went through talk through a little bit about her experience i just want to bring up a cv because obviously it's going to reference to me now um she had kind of like overlapping jobs she had something going on at present and you know a couple of red flags or not red flags warning flags should be safe popping up especially when they currently got a job like why are you looking for another one she dealt with the current job really well she's got her brother she wants her brother to take over it's only part-time and actually interesting the brother's already done it and the brother's being paid already so really good response there really liked that um you know she's like she wants to work she's she's a stay-at-home mom interesting enough she had to quit her last job because she had to take care of her child but interestingly enough she her last child sorry um but now she's got a new child and she's already aware of this and she's got a living nanny so or not living and she's got a nanny to help take care of it which is really good i also know the client in regards to the clients we're looking to hire for and i know there's a lot of flexibility in the working arrangement so that's going to be quite good for her and that's going to work quite well um and then also as well just kind of delving into her background what she's done the work i can kind of get a feel for the work that she's done like she's she's been reviewing drop shipping products on amazon using some tools i'm aware of and then she's had to do some keeper reviewing on you know on books again that's drop shipping so that was super interesting just to kind of have a feel for that and then finally it's it's like for us to say you know what's the reason for leaving and hey she's quite honest i just found it too much i had to do a thousand days a day and hey yes we want our va's to work fast and hard but we're not safe drivers and i think sometimes is to say that it's very much when you're doing like arbitrage isn't about it isn't about sheer brute force i do this one thousand done done done a lot of it is about actually we want you to be smart we want you to look at the stores we've got sales on we want you to plan your time efficiently so it's not just about brute force it's about being intelligent so the question comes for me was you know she talked through all the concerns that i had what was going on she just seemed like a really nice genuine person got on got experience um the hourly rates you know what she's looking for or what she'd done in the past are comparable to what her offering um and hey i was quite happier than i thought she was quite you know very together with it and hey we had to kind of you know there's a couple of areas that we dig down into especially around like you know having a child the book sourcing what was going on why she left or didn't continue on and she dealt with them really really well so you know i've got no flags she's got good experience and she's she's basically ready now to take on a full-time job but she's getting bored um and it looks like it could be a good match so she can do it she scored really well on her test and she seems like a great person wants to learn and would probably be an asset so for us say yeah hey so first things first thank you very much for applying for the role and taking the test okay well done you got this far so fantastic now what i just want to go through is that i'm sorry because i applied for a lot of online jobs is that the one where i was um doing the fba for amazon is that the one what which test did i or did you give i'm sorry so this is this is for the amazon roll yes yeah okay yeah okay cool if you had a lot of interviews a lot of tests yeah i actually applied for a lot of online jobs and there were a lot of tests that i got through so like yesterday i had five tests like that so that i was just going to clarify it yeah are they all amazon related tests not actually others were just like um data scraping like that and others more on data entry transcription like that okay cool okay and i just want to clarify because obviously you're you're questioning which job you're currently interviewing for this is for the amazon product saucer and i just want to ask do you still want to go ahead because you might say oh no i hated that one i don't want to do it yeah it's okay yeah i like it actually i enjoyed it it's just yesterday that i found out about how that fba is actually how fba runs actually so that's right it's quite interesting because um e-commerce nowadays is very you know booming okay okay so look i've got i've got your cv i think you know just tell me a little bit about yourself and the work that you've done yeah um actually i'm before my first job i i didn't actually graduate from college because due to what you call this money constraints i just had i was until fourth year college level then after that i worked in a coffee shop for around two years as a supervisor and then after that i came back here because i was working in cebu i came here back here in my hometown which is in new orleans city and then i work as an accounting clerk and then because i got pregnant got married a lot of things happened so um there i actually studied uh like you know baking so i could have i do spend more time with my kids while having a business on the side there then sometimes uh business is not that you know not stable because of the baking this is a lot of competition so that's why i was um looking into online and an online career that's why yeah okay okay so you're if i just clarify your last job was office of the city yes and that was finished 2017 is that right yeah and then you left there why um actually it's just a contractual job like if you're just six months and they'll stop you and then back again six months like that yeah it depends on the me or if he will renew you i understand very normal very normal yeah okay and then you left there and then what's been the situation since 2017 yeah yeah i was in the i was making me baking business at home i was just in the house taking care of her kids during that time actually had two kids uh two babies now yeah now they're actually four turning four this march and the other one is one okay so you've got a four-year-old and a one-year-old yeah okay cool and how how's the bakery business going by the way um as what i said earlier um sometimes it's okay but there are times that's it's not that busy so that's why i prefer to look for online jobs so i can at least there's something that i can do that's like stable like every day i'll do something because there are times that i'm just like i'm waiting for a customer's order or make some cookies but it's not that the income is not that stable and sometimes um cookies and i leave cookies in other stores but sometimes you know it won't like sell yeah okay five um okay uh and how long have you been searching for a job my ass um actually before um i tried online jobs just a little freelancing jobs but no i didn't work out i just stopped for a while then fell back again but now for starting january actually i was very persistent and looking for an online job starting january okay yeah how's it going how's it been not good actually because i haven't found any job yet yeah that's what i found a little like uh project-based jobs like this there was one client i have that will just uh let me check his like schedule if he's on on time with his schedule like a va actually but it didn't work out so he didn't pay me so okay i have to stop the job because no because sometimes i that's the difference it's very hard to look for an online job especially what you call this it's it's very far so it's very hard to look for a job that you know someone will really pay you what's what you deserve there one why not expand the bakery business actually it's it's a plan a long-term plan to actually make uh for myself like have an actual bakery but for now it doesn't um it's not yet possible but hopefully why um um due to money constraints money i mean it's not yet i'm not yet that i'm a lot of bills to pay first and after that when all it settles like we're i am i have three kids actually i have three kids i just mentioned the two and three kids and i'm still like for an educational plan like that i'm just still preparing those things where they're young while still cheaper their yeah well they're young so when it's all paid i think that's the time that i'm gonna start with that one i'm guessing they're not gonna be paid for another how old your children you've got three which one's missing um 11 years old i have an 11 years old okay so interestingly enough you've got one that's one year old you're gonna have to keep paying for the next 18 years yeah um actually there are like one insurer i've paid one insurance i get like um three years or oh no fourth year fourth year i'm just what do you call it i'm starting to pay that one but maybe when i'm ready a little bit ready not just fully paid it maybe when i'm a little bit ready then maybe i can start this business is like it's pointers and i'm not married i'm not that risky person to put on that big of money while i have three kids to like provide for like that quick question for you when you're doing the peak months of your bakery how many hours a day do you have to work in it um that's very tiring a very tiring work actually i have to like in december i don't get enough sleep like i have to work at 10 to 12 hours or more than 12 hours because there are a lot of especially if it's customized cakes my hands are a little bit dirty because i just made some details for a cake so there i get to get but during december i don't get enough sleep like three hours four hours because i have to prepare this one that one that order is like every day i have an order so are there any any questions you want to ask me um actually i'm just like curious about the fba because that's what i mentioned it's my first time when i took the test it's my first time that i think art encountered about the whole like uh process that one so are there any i mean i know if ever there will be like trainings and everything but um is there like other i heard about amazon i haven't researched it about other if there are still the same like same what they call this process or system with that point as fba of the amazon fba is amazon i mean i mean the i mean the the system but is there uh a competition or what do you call that other aside from amazon is there another like not amazon like i don't know yeah i like that i'm not familiar with other there you have also i do sorry i don't understand your question is um fba is fulfillment by amazon so there's is there other competition for fba that's using like uh the same system [Music] it's not so much competition it's more about a different way of doing it it's called fulfillment by merchant i.e you for the merchant fulfill themselves but it isn't so relevant for what you need to know we teach you all that in the academy okay any other questions um no questions no other questions over that's cool um okay so look um i've got a couple more interviews to do so what i'll say is i'll take the weekend to kind of think about it all and go through and i'll get back to you on monday or tuesday whether you've been successful or not does that make sense oh yeah perfect fantastic well look thank you so much for your time i'll let you get back to baking monday tuesday next week okay thank you bye bye so another interesting interview and look oh my god like where do we start so admittedly she hasn't worked for a while 2017 was the last job and i'm not against people who have not worked for a while by her own admission she'd been raising children that's fine i'm really not against that i think that one of my big questions whenever we meet these kind of people is what's your motivation what are you trying to do and it's just quite interesting in regards to like just asking them you know i i there's a big role in interviewing the interviewer should be talking 10 of the time and the interviewee should be talking 90 time and hopefully you kind of see that and why do i just ask really open probing questions and just get them to talk so what was really interesting and just reading my notes is uh number one she forgot she had the child she said two children initially and then she had three that was quite funny it might be like a half child i don't know also as well we kind of talked about money like what's the reason you're doing it and that was a big sticking point her pay expectations were way above what we're paying um and that's immediately for me like hey are we on the same page here because that's red flags i.e i'm going to hire you tomorrow i'm going to put this job forward to you i'm going to train you up and then all of a sudden it's not going to be all of a sudden you're going to accept this job and then you're going to look for another job because you need more money and she gave me a pay expectation or a salary what she needs way above what we're offering and that's going to cause problems so i know that as well interesting she talked about her business long term plans she wants to grow that business but right now she's got bills and i'm just thinking hey i'm gonna ask you to work eight hours a day why do you put eight hours a day into your business surely that's gonna have more value you're already getting 30k out of it in a peak month admit you're not getting that much in your quiet months but build it up you'll get there and it'll be worse more worthwhile but what was really interesting was you know just the fact that we asked the probing question hey during your peak months how many hours do you have to work her own admission 10 12 hours a day on top of that she's only getting three hours sleep then the question comes is my god if i hire her she's now going to work 12 hours a day in a bakery because that's her priority over this job second of all she's going to work eight hours for me and she's only getting three hours sleep at the moment when she's not working a job that doesn't work it doesn't work at all and also as well in those eight hours she's working for me is it going to be viable is it going to be that she can get quality work done and produce the results or is she literally going to be there for eight hours half asleep not getting results well i just don't think i don't feel it myself and so because it's not a yes it's a no but hey another interesting interview let's go next one let's get started so tell me about yourself and who you are i am a father of two and my wife is uh working as a software um consultant and i've been in i've been working for over 20 years so you can imagine how old i am i'm already 41 and i've been through a lot of uh work uh um different type of types of work manual office uh outdoors um my last job was another manager for alarica with chandler's atmp accounts and i love to i love to cook i cook every day breakfast lunch dinner and i play the guitar in my free time i love to read especially mystery books like stephen king horror stories anything like that i also write horror stories short stories but in my native uh tagalog do you know tagalog yeah it's in manila the north yeah uh that's it i i bike every day actually i just came from my workout this morning um and that's it um if you'd like to know and you're just talking through so i'm quite interested in your uh seo specialist home base work your was that full-time part-time i used to be full-time but uh since i was getting good at it it became part-time for me so i can do side jobs aside from that work well and they would consider that a full time is that right he considers it full-time but it's a part-time job for me because it's easy uh i think it became easier because i got the master of the tools that the client was letting me use so uh finding keywords is become you know it's a pc and then before that you're a community manager um full-time assuming facebook uh facebook instagram and twitter and the full time was it part time also because i was working in a uh i was a project manager for that company before before the work that i do in community management community manager i was still a project manager in a lead company the one supplies led lighting i was there for about maybe seven years i was working uh full-time there and then on my free time i do the community management work you were doing full-time project manager and then you went to community manager as well at the same time for facebook instagram and twitter is that right yeah why i was getting bored you know my work there was a project based so at the latter part of the years we got a lot of competition and projects were uh one or two projects in a year but you it's a huge project you know sometimes it's a shopping mall or a warehouse that sometimes if one two three projects per year that's not enough for me because uh i easily get bored but i'm not doing anything so my friend from grade school uh we we had a reunion one time and then she asked me to hey can you do social media work uh i said what do i do there you know put on some weird things and paste will post it okay let me try so i was there for pogba so you left project managing and then you went to do you were doing facebook and seo specialist amazon at the same time or how did it work because obviously you don't have months you're just giving me years on your cv it's quite hard to understand what's going on i stopped uh being a project manager in 2017 in september so i did give my boss a enough time that i i told him that uh i'm leaving the company there's not nothing enough project so he's okay with it because he's getting a few people coming in and then he let me go so while i was doing the project management i was doing uh the community facebook community manager on my free time and i'm at home so after that i went full time into no not really full time because i have some consultation projects on the side because i i used to be a project manager for a construction company so some this is an electrical construction company so sometimes a client will give me a call and can you take a look at my wiring my plans i go to i do consultation so that's what that's what i did for a few years i don't know maybe one year and then after i left the community management i went to seo especially why did you leave being a project manager again there's not much to do i'm i'm bored and you know uh sometimes when you're doing the same thing and it's not happening like you've seen it you've imagined it and then your boss tells you no it must it must be done this way and he's uh you know he gets out the little misunderstanding because other things are getting worse at the office and i told him maybe you should get another person to do this job and do that job because i'm doing a lot of job but as the years went by my my you know my satisfaction uh getting lower and lower going down so you left that and then you went to doing facebook and then you left and then you you were probably consulting on the side whilst working full-time ish at facebook you know not facebook but obviously community manager and then you quit all that and then went into seo specialist is that right uh i quit because they have to let me go they can't pay me anymore why what happened some of the clients pulled out because it's not it's not it's not my account the other accounts uh they pulled out and then the owner i thought told me that she's gonna do the things uh the the work all by yourself uh starting at that time so they have to let go because uh they have to cut costs okay uh how was the test how did you find the test yeah it's easy you have to do is copy paste yeah then click click the button that's it 98 of what you are going to be doing if you get accepted for the job will be the same as the test ie go to a store copy into amazon work out the profit that's it 120 times an hour uh eight eight hours a day 45 days a week and your point is i'm i'm gonna get bored yes no i don't think so because that's a lot of work to do sometimes uh you have to lower down your expectation and your pride and your uh some kind of self-esteem for the self-esteem and take on another job which uh entails you to do something that you think is easy for you but uh i'm not you know i know what you're going through i i know what you're driving at you're thinking thinking that i after two months three months i'll i leave because i get bored if you're gonna give me another type of job i'm i would be interested too so if i be honest this job i.e copy and paste will be what you would do 40 hours a week five days a week 40 hours a day four years a week five days a week for at least the next year you know and if i were to say you were to do something else in addition to that possibly but i couldn't i couldn't guarantee that it's it's very likely the fact that this is going to be what you will do for the next year every day of the week um and you know you said it not me that could be very boring yeah it could be but if it tastes good why not i have no problem with that you don't need the money i need money for myself and you know for the kids too you know my money goes into utilities and you know everyday everyday expenses and my watch money goes to school mortgages some other bigger things savings just like that so if i don't earn at least 10 000 a month uh she will shoulder the utilities in the house every day expenses food and other things that should be spent inside the house so that's my participation in our relationship i do the money i earn the money for the house change the money for everything else any question to me a question is what products are are you focused on anything that makes money okay um another thing is uh working hours is night shift no no generally speaking they're like nine to five nine till six a lot of the clients will have flexible time so you you can work the hours that are gonna work for you so long as the deals are found and they're in at the right time that's it so if you wanna you know get them done that's that's the majority of it is flexible if that makes sense or nine till six so that would be great uh about payment uh through bank paypal most likely bank it could be paypal but most likely bank okay i've got a lot of interviews to go through today but what i'll say is leave that with me and i'll be back in contact monday or tuesday and i'll let you know whether you've been successful or if you haven't makes sense okay cool all right thank you very much thanks for being here yeah thank you bye okay interesting conversation there with that va now um what are my thoughts so quite simply i mean if i put it in perspective i was drilling the one thing is is we know they can do the job to a certain extent we've tested them already so i'm not so concerned about going into too much detail but what i'm interesting is about understanding their why i'm really interviewing about their why who are they what do they do and why do they want to work this job like i'm not saying they don't want a job but i'm going to say is this job right for them so i'm delving very much around his work experience what he's done um his cv is written by years not by month and years which is really frustrating and if you ever see some of that i hate it i have to kind of go into details and one thing you'll probably notice about a lot of my questioning is i will ask very obvious questions like oh okay so like oh you had this job when did you leave and i'm kind of trying to see what they say like do they say what their cv tells me are they saying something different and if they tell me something different then i'm gonna dig into more of that because interesting enough people hide things as cvs they don't tell exact responses so it's like the cv says on march 2018 and they said i left in 2017 something's not right there there's something that they've left earlier and i'm like why what's going on now it might be they just treat the dates but i'm looking for inconsistencies anomalies because generally those little white lies they're trying to hide something and i'm trying to get into what they are um but for him it was very much about he was in a in a project manager position what seemed to be quite a senior position and i can see a cv and there's like whoa quite a lot of position there um and then he went into like doing facebook online i can kind of understand but it was at the same time um and then we kind of touched on this before but he was doing like amazon seo tools which was great i didn't really go into the amazon too much but i was quite interested because his salary was so low in that relative everything else hence was like why are you after a job if you're looking at that i don't i don't understand and when he talked about his salary expectations what he's learning as a project manager versus when he went into the online world massive difference um i think look he kind of hit it a bit on the head in the fact that we're doing copy and paste in this job and this guy is he's had a lot of senior positions i'm not denying that um he's worked remotely he's on remote work which is fine but i've always seen that he's gone and got other jobs and my concern would be that he would come into this he'd get bored it probably might not be what he's looking for he didn't get another job and he wouldn't stay and i'm not saying he's he's a bad guy he's not going to you're not going to try hard i would never deny that it's not my place to say that but my question is to say is this person going to be right for the job we're hiring and my thought process right now is that actually you know what i'm it doesn't it doesn't scream to me to say yes this is going to be a really good fear i'm really happy that it's kind of like it seems okay like it might work it might not and you know what i don't do it might work or okay i do it's a good fit that's it if i don't think it's a good fit and i don't like the look of them and i don't like say i don't think i don't like the look of them i don't like it doesn't it doesn't scream to me this is going to be something that's really going to work for them and their life i'm not so much about me i already know that hey if you can talk to me quite well you've already proven yourself you can do it i'm quite happy i'm now more interested are you going to work well with us is this gonna be right for you if that works then cool let's do it but if it doesn't and i'm not forgetting that feeling for him you know we had issues at the very beginning where it was like oh i think i sent my cv or don't know how to do it et cetera et cetera i'm just sitting there going something like sending your cv on dropbox is causing a real problem um i'm just not really feeling this is going to be like the right thing you might have a lot of errors so yeah let's i think for me it's a no um only for the fact that i just don't think this is gonna be the right word for him i don't think it's gonna work and i'm not saying i could be wrong he could be really good but i've got a good gut feeling and i can only hire one person and my gut's telling me no so there you go that's my thoughts hopefully you have found that interesting now let's just put it in perspective i will pretty much do that every single week that is i probably produce six hours a week of interviewing and you know the big part of it is we can all look at a cv we can all kind of have a conversation with someone but the big part of it is really trying to understand who are these people what are they about what's their life story where are they now what's their why what is their why and and i talked about it during a couple of these interviews is saying it's as much about me interviewing them to say can they do the job is to say do i believe the job is right for them and do they know it or do they not so hopefully you've seen some of the interviewing that i've done some of the questions that i've done and also just how i conduct them i'm very relaxed i'm very chilled i want to put them at ease i want to get the most out of them i'm not here to tell them if they're going to be right or wrong for my job there is no right or wrong it's just my interpretation and that's what i do every single week i will be sitting here i will interview numerous candidates i'll learn about the market but also as well i'm trying to find those diamonds in the rough i'm trying to find those great people who who are going to work for my clients now there are some cvs who or some candidates who i've hired for one client that i'd never hire for another client just because they're in different places and actually it's about not only finding a va who can work for the client who can say source efficiently but also as well is going to work for that business they're going to get on with that client we're about as much finding good sources are we are as about making matches for the people who are asking us to find them va's so that is a super important skill set that i can bring to any process now look hopefully you have found that information useful give a thumbs up if you do it just means you like this content and hey if you're maybe looking at hiring a va have a look down below i'll drop a couple of links like online jobs that's where we do the hiring a lot of these candidates all these candidates have come from and then also as well maybe you've got some questions maybe you've got trouble va or maybe like hey tom i don't understand why you didn't hire this va or something drop it down below and obviously i'll get back to you but for me thomas parkinson at fasttrack fba thank you very much

Channel: FastTrackFBA

Views: 44,464

Keywords: virtual assistant, how to hire a virtual assistant, virtual assistant training, online jobs philippines, hire virtual assistant, hiring a virtual assistant, outsourcing to the philippines, interview questions and answers, interview questions and answers tell me about yourself, How to Interview a VA, How to Interview, Virtual Assistant interviews, onlinejobs.ph, onlinejobs.ph interview, live interview examples, watch me interview, philippines, Live Interviews with VAs, questions

Id: ifHp4kUF9xU

Length: 65min 37sec (3937 seconds)

Published: Fri May 22 2020