If you’re wondering how to hire a virtual assistant for an insurance agency, you’re in good company. This role demands a very specific skill set — and figuring out whether someone has what it takes can be tough.
With our process, we generate a 90% employee retention rate. This means that 90% of the virtual assistants we place with companies stay with them for five years or more. So, clients aren’t constantly having to replace the talent we find for them. Instead, they build long-term relationships with their VAs, who quickly become a trusted part of the team.
Recently, I was invited along with leaders from 19 other businesses from around the world to attend a hackathon in New York City. Here, I met several people who provide virtual staffing services in different parts of the world. But they struggle with retention, with rates ranging from 50–70%, I learned. Keeping staff on board is a real struggle.
Now, I don’t want to be that guy — the one who smugly says, “I don’t have that problem.” I know this is a real struggle for a lot of businesses — probably the majority. But the conversations we had at that event led me to connect the dots about why our retention is so high.
Now, I’m going to share the main components of our process that make it so successful.
Key Elements of Our Process
Hiring a virtual assistant for an insurance agency or an executive assistant requires careful planning. This boils down to choosing someone with the right combination of skills, experience, and values — and then setting them up for success.
- Understanding the Client’s Needs
We work hard to understand our clients’ needs inside and out. The VAs we hire have expertise in various dimensions of the industry, from business to personal insurance.
Our process starts with getting to know our clients. In talking with them, we gain a sense of who they are and what personal qualities would be a good fit in a VA. We ask about their pain points, pinpointing the challenges that a virtual insurance assistant can help solve.
For instance, clients working in commercial lines might be dealing with an extremely slow quoting process. Or they might be experiencing utter chaos with their renewal prep. In personal insurance lines, they might have an inconsistent renewal process because staff are completely swamped.
We map out the distinct set of challenges a client is facing. Then, we share these insights with the hiring team to make sure they get it right.
- Matching the Right Person with the Client
Whatever issues the client is facing, we’ll look for a VA who can handle them expertly. Here’s how we do that.
Evaluating Role Fit
During this stage, a candidate completes a role-specific assessment of their skills and aptitudes. Assuming all looks good, they’ll undergo an email interview, answering questions on their background and interests. We consider their experience as a virtual assistance for insurance companies within a specific area of focus, like commercial or personal lines.
We have a detailed playbook for each VA role, outlining key tasks, which informs this assessment. It also clarifies expectations for both clients and VAs. For example, an executive assistant would handle travel bookings while a VA for commercial insurance lines would assist with preparing quote comparisons, among other tasks.
Assessing Culture Fit
Next, we conduct a second email interview, delving into deeper questions on communication, values, and working style. This gives us a better sense of a candidate’s personality as well. Our skilled hiring team knows the right questions to ask when hiring a virtual assistant to assess culture fit.
We also get to know recruits better through live virtual interviews with our team. At this stage, we’ll ask about how they’ve handled different scenarios and challenges in the past. We’ll also learn more about their working style, communication preferences, and personal ethics.
Confirming Overall Needs Alignment
After the above steps, we compare our assessment of a candidate against the agency’s needs. We look at whether their past performance, personality, and skills align with the agency’s pain points, culture, and systems.
If they look like an ideal fit, we present the candidate’s profile to the client, sharing our recommendation. When we introduce new recruits, 85% of clients choose the very first hire we’ve handpicked for them.
Toward the end of the process, we perform a background check to ensure recruits’ trustworthiness. We then get payroll set up through Payoneer, ensuring a smooth onboarding process.
3. Integrating Virtual Assistants Into the Team
We help companies foster a supportive culture that makes VAs immediately feel like a valued part of the team. Early on, we realized this was a key element that many of our competitors and other companies overlooked.
When a company hires a virtual employee, they’re often the only team member working remotely. A manager gives them a list of tasks and then forgets about them. So, they don’t really have a chance to become integrated into the team. In fact, people might only reach out to ask, “Where’s this?” or “When will you have that done?” This creates stress for the virtual employee. They feel undervalued and unrecognized. No one comments on their skills and contributions.
This is a big problem across our industry. Countless companies don’t know what they’re doing wrong.
But in our early days, our staff member Hannah began consistently holding check-ins with all of the virtual employees we’d hired to make sure they felt supported instead of forgotten. This was something she just intuitively did, and her check-ins changed the game. Now, we’re all following her lead. Using the best practices she was already modeling, we also coach our clients on how to integrate VAs onto a team.
This all contributes to a great onboarding process for a virtual insurance assistant, but it’s more than just onboarding. It’s a set of cultural practices that shapes how a team works for years to come.
For my own part, I never give my assistant Xie a chance to feel forgotten. She’s a core part of the business; she helps instill our values throughout the organization, establishing a strong culture. And we talk about how we can bring this culture into all of our interactions with clients. She brings vital insights to these conversations that make us stronger as a company.
High Retention = Highly Satisfied Clients
Client satisfaction has catalyzed the majority of our growth. A full 90% of our expansion has stemmed from referrals by clients who love their virtual employees. We’re not hearing clients say, “Our VA isn’t checking in or completing tasks.” Instead, they talk about how their VA has enhanced their business. One client recently reached out to say, “Bella has been such a blessing to our team. Client retention has increased by 8% since she joined us. She just jumped in and took ownership of that part of our business, and it’s made such a difference!”
With our high success rate, we don’t often lose clients. But once, a client left because he wanted a VA to provide a service that a virtual assistant couldn’t offer. We’re clear and upfront about the duties our virtual assistants can handle, and he wanted something that didn’t fall within this fairly broad skill set. Then, three months later, he wanted to talk. He was on his third VA with the company he’d switched to, and he asked if the original assistant we’d found for him was still available. (She wasn’t.)
The results of this intentional process speak for themselves. By considering an assistant’s particular skill set, experience, personality, and culture fit, we ensure the best possible match. The strong culture we have fostered at IA Blueprint guides all of our efforts, helping our staff work together seamlessly. The long-term partnerships emerging from this process bring mutual success for clients and VAs, supporting companies as they scale and assistants as they build rewarding careers.
Imagine having a dedicated staff member to handle many of the core tasks that your employees find challenging and time-consuming. And imagine hiring someone who sticks around for years, contributing as a valued team member as your company scales. If you’re considering how to hire your first virtual assistant, let’s set up a conversation to get the ball rolling. As we get to know who you are and what you need, we’ll be able to find exactly the right person for your company.