What to Look for When Hiring Your First Virtual Assistant or Social Media Manager
Hiring your first virtual assistant (VA) or social media manager (SMM) can be the moment your business finally starts to breathe.
It’s a signal that you’re stepping out of the do-it-all-yourself phase and into the era of delegation and growth.
But, how do you make the right first hire?
Spoiler alert: It’s not just about finding someone “affordable” or with a good-looking Instagram grid.
Instead, it’s about finding someone aligned with your workflow, values, and business stage. Here’s what to look for.
6 Things to Look for When Hiring Your 1st VA or Social Media Manager
1. Know what you actually need help with
Before you even open up that job description template, you need clarity. Are you drowning in your inbox and admin tasks? Or are you struggling to post consistently on social media? The clearer you are, the better fit you’ll hire.
Here’s a quick way to figure it out:
List out everything you do in a typical week
Circle the things that drain your time or energy the most
Identify which of those can be done by someone else without your direct input
If most of your pain points are operational (inbox management, scheduling, data entry), you likely need a VA. A social media manager is your person if they’re brand-visibility related (content planning, posting, engagement).
It’s tempting to find one person to do it all, but in our experience, that rarely works out—those people are very few and far between. Instead, pick one need, fill it with fractional support, and plan to iterate and add later.
2. Prioritize communication & responsiveness when hiring
You can teach someone how to schedule a post, but you cannot teach someone how to be communicative, proactive, and emotionally intelligent.
Look for:
Prompt, clear replies during your hiring process, with proper grammar and formatting
Candidates who ask smart follow-up questions
People who confirm details and timelines without being asked
If someone is slow to reply, doesn’t clarify instructions, applies strange judgment calls, or doesn’t show attention to detail when communicating with you during the application process, run. That behavior doesn’t improve over time.
3. Ask for relevant work samples (not just resumes)
Resumes won’t tell you if someone can write a caption that sounds like you or manage your inbox without missing deadlines. Ask for:
Writing samples for social media managers (captions, calendars, graphics they’ve designed)
Examples of inbox workflows or SOPs for VAs
Screenshots of before-and-after analytics (if relevant to your role)
If they’re legit, they’ll have plenty of this to go around.
4. Get clear on tools & time zones
Especially in remote teams, time zones and tools matter more than people think.
If you need someone to manage DMs at specific hours or respond to emails the same day, ensure your candidate can work in your time zone or is otherwise set up to accommodate those needs. The same goes for platforms—if you live and die by Slack, and your VA has only worked out of email, that’s going to create friction.
Your onboarding will go more smoothly if there’s already some overlap in tech skills and availability expectations. At the same time, the VA doesn’t have to have used every platform you use. Look for the big ones and again, don’t expect perfection.
5. Start with a test project
Before signing a multi-month contract, offer a short-term paid test project. This could be:
A two-week trial of inbox management
A single week of planned and published posts
A mini research or administrative task
This lets you see how someone communicates, delivers work, and navigates questions in real time, without committing long-term.
6. Don't expect a unicorn (hire your support team 1 role at a time)
It’s tempting to look for someone who can do everything: customer service, calendar management, social media, copywriting, graphic design, email marketing...
The truth is that this approach rarely works long-term.
A person who excels at client communication is probably not the same person who thrives at content strategy or systems documentation.
So start lean: hire one person, for one key area, and expand from there.
The right hire won’t just give you hours back. They’ll give you confidence and free up your time to start building the infrastructure your business actually needs.
Read More: How to Avoid Wasting Money When You Hire a Virtual AssistantNeed help making your first VA & Social Media Manager hire?
At The Boutique COO, we specialize in helping founders like you find the right-fit support.
Whether you’re hiring a virtual assistant, a social media manager, or both, we’ll help you build the hiring systems and team structure to set them up for success.
