by Anita Campbell
July 10, 2008 at 2:31 am
· Filed under Distributed Work, Web 2.0
I still remember the days when no self-respecting corporate executive or manager would be caught dead without a secretary.
Sometimes it felt as if your status as an executive depended on having someone to assist you by taking/transcribing dictation; typing and copying documents; handling the phones; making travel arrangements; scheduling meetings; and other support. Of course, that was back before executives used personal computers and user-friendly software.
Later the secretary’s job evolved. There came to be less emphasis on clerical duties such as typing, and more on administrative responsibilities such as completing reports. The title evolved, too, and increasingly came to be called “administrative assistant” or by other titles.
While their roles have evolved, secretaries and administrative assistants have not gone the way of the blacksmith or buggy maker. They are still around and will be for a long time to come. It’s just that their jobs look a lot different today. Over the years their responsibilities have increased, as has the respect for all they do.
In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Outlook for secretaries and admins speaks specifically to the evolution of the role.
But like most government statistics, it’s dreadfully behind the times.
It doesn’t address the new kid in town — the virtual assistant.
A virtual assistant frequently does work that is similar to an administrative assistant, only working “virtually” — i.e., at a distance and not at your premises. The role reflects the distributed way so many of us work today, from “anywhere.” The virtual assistant is self-employed and works as an independent contractor typically making $30/hour or more. Home Office Warrior has a 4-part series that lists 100 duties/tasks you can outsource to a virtual assistant (start at part 1)
By all accounts the role of virtual assistant seems to be flourishing. Here’s one fun fact — the following Google Trends chart shows the growth of searches for the term “virtual assistant” over the past 4 years:
There are now industry associations for virtual assistants; agencies that specialize in placing virtual assistants (I had the head of Team DoubleClick on my radio show not long ago); online job boards and marketplaces to hire virtual assistants; and community forums where virtual assistants share tips and advice and give one another emotional support.
In the future, I see the need for virtual assistants only continuing to grow. One of the many factors I see driving that growth, interestingly enough, will be the growth of social media. Stay with me while I explain.
The Web is now viewed as a necessity by business, including small businesses (ignore all that stuff you hear about fewer than half of small businesses having websites — it’s outdated bunk). Business people in small and midsize businesses are looking for help with their online visibility. Online visibility increasingly relies on social media activities. Social media entails a certain amount of hands-on work that has to get done for an effective social media strategy. While social media consultants may help you craft a strategy and tell you WHAT to do, at some point you still need someone to actually carry it out. That’s where virtual assistants come in.
Virtual assistants are now being hired to write/proofread blog posts; update MySpace and Facebook pages; comment on forums; perform social bookmarking; compose Twitter tweets to publicize new blog posts; and a variety of other social-media activities.
You can already find virtual assistants who specialize by industry, including real estate, law, and retail. As the field of virtual assistants grows, look for it to organize into specialties by functional expertise, too — bookkeeping, admin, online marketing, etc. Look for one of those specialties to be the social media VA.
Do you use virtual assistants? Have you used a VA for social media? What’s your experience been like? And you VAs out there, how many of you are doing online marketing /social media work?
Permalink
Your post conjured a perspective I suspect you never imagined. It took me back to the early 90’s at PRODIGY, the IBM Sears online service that was a pioneer in providing consumers reasons to come online. We had a team of close to 200 virtual board leaders and chat hosts. And I know some of the busiest used virtual assistants.
More than that, your post reminded me of Jon Husband’s latest contirbution here about the “Future of Work” that opens:
“I initially wrote the piece below a little more than five years ago.
At the time I had been running around trying to get people to look at the ways that information technology and the Internet would have major impact on the ways we work, and the on the structures and dynamics of the workplace of the (relatively) near future. Most of the time it felt like being a butcher at a vegetarians’ convention … especially given that it wasn’t so long after the dot.com bust and 9/11/01.”
I’m fascinated to read that virtual assistants have arrived as a profession with industry associations and talent agencies. But I also see it’s instructive to also focus, as Jon’s post encourage, on the time it takes for change to happen, especially in organizations.
Hi Jenny, yes, I read Jon’s article and liked it.
The virtual assistant industry appears to be booming.
It seems largely an SMB (small and midsize business) phenomenon, since so many VAs serve small businesses. But some progressive larger companies are adopting the concept of a VA in their distributed workforces, too — probably as an employee “virtual assistant”– rather than an independent contractor as most small businesses use.
Anita
Interesting numbers and especially your observation that virtual assistants tend to support small businesses. I don’t know how the role of small businesses in economies globally plays out but as I understand it small businesses fuel the US economy. So this sounds like a promising trend, no?
Anita you’re so right about the out of date stats. Tools like Google Trends really gives us a more current snapshot of what’s going on. Searches are not only for the term virtual assistants, but there’s a good number of “chatter” about virtual assistants taking place on Twitter, as I found out from using Summize.com.
It looks like “going virtual” may be the way a lot of people will be going to grow their small business.
Brent,
What’s even more interesting is if you do a Google Trends query for the phrases “secretary” and “administrative assistant.” You see that the word “secretary” has a declining number of searches, while the phrase “administrative assistant” is roughly flat (except for a spike in April of each year when you have Administrative Professionals Week). Admittedly, Google Trends is indirect evidence at best, but it is still interesting to see.
– Anita
It is interesting to see how carer fields and paths are developing when a paradigm shift has arrived. The technology progress is moving fast and my guess is that home based business will get a real important role in the economy in the near future.
I studied an advanced vocational education during 2002 – 2005 called international project coordinator. The education started out as a course for secretaries and assistants after the fact that many of these had to learn new stuff like management of administrative data, learning computerized systems, etc. The education has later on evolved into how you could take care of a whole project and coordinate tasks, milestones, and so on.
Virtual assistants are becoming an indispensabe part of our lives nowadays. An interesting article on virtual assistants at http://outsorcerer.com/blog/?p=22
In fairness, virtual assistants are in today. They are all capable in doing their work and can do multitasks. Need VA? http://www.epvirtualassistants.com will be a great help for you.
[...] http://www.theappgap.com/virtual-assistants-social-media.html [...]
Kelly wrote @ September 30th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
Did someone say social network for virtual assistants? lol
We’ve created one over at http://www.findvirtual.com/ and it has really been growing fast. We encourage readers of this post to check us out when they have time. 
-Kel
[...] the Bureau of Labor Statistics is far behind the trend, this article written by Anita Campbell indicates that the Virtual Assistant field will continue to grow and [...]
HTML-Tags:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
Additional comments powered by BackType
