Admin & executive support
Hire a Filipino general virtual assistant
A general virtual assistant takes the steady stream of admin off your team: data entry, research, scheduling, documents and customer follow-ups.
What they take off your plate
- Data entry and cleanup in your CRM, spreadsheets and systems
- Web research, lead lists and competitor notes
- Scheduling for the team and managing shared calendars
- Preparing documents, proposals and reports from templates
- Customer admin like order updates, confirmations and reminders
- Organizing shared drives and keeping files findable
- Posting and updating listings or directory profiles
The steady stream of small tasks
Every business has a layer of work that isn’t anyone’s real job. Contacts need updating, files need renaming, proposals need formatting, customers need reminders. Each task takes minutes, but together they eat hours from people who should be selling, serving clients or running operations.
A general virtual assistant takes over that layer. It’s often the easiest role to start with, because the tasks are already clear and easy to check.
How to keep a general VA effective
The most common failure isn’t the VA. It’s requests scattered across email, chat and hallway conversations with no priorities. Put every request on one task board, give each task an owner and a due date, and review the board weekly. That single habit turns a general VA from a helper into someone who runs a function.
Our What to Delegate First checklist lists the admin tasks that are usually the easiest to hand over, grouped by department.
How we vet for this role
The skills test
The skills test mixes three short tasks from a real admin week: cleaning a messy spreadsheet of 100 contacts, researching and summarizing five companies against a brief, and formatting a document from a template. We check accuracy first, then speed, then how clearly they report what they did.
It is one of eight checks, alongside a portfolio review, a past employment check, a live English interview, a paid trial task, a background check and an NDA. You interview the shortlist at the end.
See all eight checksGetting started
What the first 30 days look like
- Week 1
Tool access and a list of recurring tasks with SOPs or short screen recordings. Your VA starts on the simplest, highest-volume task.
- Week 2
Two or three more recurring tasks move over. A shared task board shows what's in progress and what's done.
- Week 3
Your VA works through the task board with less direction and suggests fixes to steps that waste time.
- Week 4
Review the first month, retire tasks that turned out unnecessary, and add the next batch.
Measuring it
Numbers worth watching
Agree on these in week one so you both know what good looks like.
- Tasks completed per week against the task board
- Error rate on data entry, checked on a sample
- Turnaround time on requests from the team
- Hours per week handed back to the team
Industries
Where this role often works
- Real estateLead follow-up, transaction coordination and listing admin for agents and teams.
- E-commerceCustomer support, order management and product listings for Shopify and Amazon stores.
- Agencies, coaches & SaaSClient onboarding, operations and customer support, so the founder stops doing every job.
FAQ
Questions about hiring a general virtual assistant
What's the best first task for a general VA?
Something frequent, rule-based and easy to check, like updating the CRM after sales calls or processing order confirmations. Early wins build trust on both sides.
Can a general VA support several people on my team?
Yes, as long as requests go through one task board instead of scattered messages. Without a single queue, a shared VA ends up serving whoever shouts loudest.
Do I need SOPs before hiring a VA?
It helps, but it isn't required. A short screen recording of you doing the task works as a first SOP, and a good VA will turn it into written steps. Our business solutions work can also write them for you.
When should a general VA become a specialist hire?
When one area grows into most of their week, like bookkeeping or customer support. At that point a specialist does it better, and your general VA goes back to everything else.
Related roles
Often hired alongside
- Executive assistantAn executive assistant runs your inbox, calendar and follow-ups so your hours go to the work only you can do. We place Filipino EAs who have supported busy leaders before.
- Customer service representativeA customer service rep answers your customers quickly and clearly across email, chat and phone, and knows when an issue needs you.
- Automation specialistAn automation specialist connects your tools so data moves on its own: leads routed, records synced, reminders sent and reports built without anyone copying and pasting.
Tell us what your general virtual assistant should own.
Book a 30-minute discovery call. Bring your task list and a budget range, and we'll show you what to delegate first.
Book a discovery call