Most bad VA hires are decided before anyone is interviewed. The role was never defined, so the screening had nothing to test against, so the decision came down to who seemed nicest on a video call.
Step one: define one job, not a list of leftovers
The most common mistake is hiring a VA to do everything you dislike. That produces a role with no measurable output and no way to tell whether it is going well.
Pick the single highest-value function and hire for that. In real estate that is usually one of: cold calling, data and list management, lead follow-up, or transaction coordination. These require genuinely different people, and the person who is excellent at patient CRM hygiene is frequently poor on the phone.
Step two: write down what good looks like
Before posting, write the numbers you would want after ninety days. Dials per day, or lists cleaned per week, or response time on new leads. If you cannot write them, the role is not defined yet and no amount of interviewing will fix that.
Step three: screen for the specific skill
- For calling roles: a live call exercise, not a conversation about calling
- For data roles: a real list with real problems in it, and see what they hand back
- For follow-up roles: a written response to an awkward seller email
- For all roles: how fast they reply and whether they ask clarifying questions before starting
The last one is the most predictive and the most ignored. A candidate who asks two sensible questions before attempting the task is showing you the behaviour that determines whether they will be low-maintenance.
Step four: trial on real work, paid
A short paid trial on actual work tells you more than any number of interviews. Interviews test presentation; the work tests the job. Pay for it, unpaid trials select for desperation rather than quality, and the best candidates decline.
Judge the trial on what you would judge month three on: did they do the thing, did they do it consistently across several days, and did the quality hold when you were not watching.
Step five: the first two weeks decide the hire
This is where most VA relationships are won or lost, and where most investors disengage because the hire is "done".
- Daily contact for the first week, short and specific
- A written process for the recurring parts of the job, not because they cannot learn, but because a written process is the only way to correct drift later
- Review actual output, not status updates. Listen to calls, open the CRM, look at the list
- Correct small things immediately in week one: habits set fast and are expensive to change in month three
What to pay attention to at ninety days
Compare against the numbers written down in step two. If they were never written, this review will become a conversation about feelings and will resolve nothing.
Also look at whether you are still managing them daily. A VA who needs the same level of direction at ninety days as at week two is either mis-hired or was never given a written process, and both are fixable but not by waiting.
When to use a service instead
Direct hiring makes sense when you have the time to recruit, train and manage, and when the role is stable enough to be worth building around one person. A managed service makes sense when you need calling capacity now, cannot absorb the ramp, or do not have anybody whose job is to manage a caller.
The honest test is whether you will still be reviewing calls in month four. Most investors know the answer.