Archive for June, 2013

Barbara Mitchell’s Experiences with a VA

I have used Virtual Assistants with two different companies with very different requirements, and in both cases working with a Virtual Assistant has really worked for me!  The first time I worked with a VA was as co-owner of The Millennium Group International, LLC. (TMG). TMG was a management consulting firm providing leadership development, management development, executive coaching, training, and human resources consulting to a wide variety of clients in the for-profit, not-for-profit, and governmental sectors.

When we started TMG in 1998, our goal was to not have any employees and we were successful in making that happen. We used independent consultants to work with our clients so having a virtual assistant made perfect sense to us.  We needed assistance to polish presentations and handouts for client work and to work with our outside vendors.  We worked with several people and were eventually delighted to connect with a VA who provided us with a level of service we hadn’t experienced previously!

Not only did our VA do all we asked but was timely and pro-active.  It was great to work with someone who asked good questions and gave suggestions to us as to how we might improve what we were providing our clients.

After selling TMG in 2008, I began a new phase in my career and have written two HR books.  I worked with a VA on both books. She formatted the books to meet the publisher’s requirements and, for one book, provided excellent editing services as well as formatting
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I am working on another book and intend to use the same VA to edit and format!  As part of my current consulting practice and to publicize The Big Book of HR, we do a monthly newsletter on Constant Contact that our VA edits and publishes. She also maintains our email list and updates it as needed.

I have nothing but good things to say about my current VA and look forward to a continuing relationship with her as long as she will have me.

The Mitchell Group works with small and medium size businesses to do HR related projects. We also mentor HR professionals to help them achieve great things in the human resources profession. Barbara Mitchell is the co-author of The Essential HR Handbook and The Big Book of HR which are both available from Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble and the SHRM bookstore.  More information can be found at www.BigBookofHR.com.

Experiences with Virtual Assistants

Our past blog postings have followed a progression from defining a virtual assistant to determining the type of assistance that is needed to engaging an assistant and, finally, to working with a VA.  It’s all been pretty dry, text-book stuff actually – a lot what to do, what not to do, and how to do it.  Real life experiences are often the best teachers of what works and what doesn’t.  In that vein, I have contacted several business owners who work with VAs and asked them to provide a synopsis of their experiences.  Stay tuned to see what they had to say.