If you are a virtual assistant who wants more customers but does not like having to implement a marketing plan to get a new customer then this blog post is for you.
One of the easiest ways for virtual assistants to reach a new customer is through the various job boards you will find online Where it is easy to look for work from the comfort of your own home. That means you do not have to spend hours learning how to market your business.
Today there are thousands of different job boards like independent websites, Facebook groups, job searches on LinkedIn, Indeed, Craigslist or network organizations.
You can even choose to pay to get access to high quality Virtual Assistant Jobs In our private companies specifically for VAs and get the jobs presented to you on a silver platter. 😉
Wherever you choose to look for a job as a virtual assistant, you need to be aware of online job scams and how to spot them.
According to the latest Flexjobs annual survey, it found that more than 80% of job seekers report that they are vigilant or very concerned about scams on other job boards. According to the same survey, nearly 20% of job seekers were victims of job fraud (up from 13% in 2016), with 22% of job seekers knowing someone who has been a victim of job fraud.
So what does this mean? This means that like 3% of all work records from home are legitimate. Only 3%. The rest are scams. So that’s why I want to talk to you about these scams here today so you can know what the red flags are and how to spot them.
here is the Red flags You need to pay attention to…
- The potential customer Requests your financial or personal information (Credit card, SSN / SIN, date of birth, bank details, etc.). Never give this kind of information to anyone because it is private to you only.
- Job posting Want you to pay or invest your money $$$ To start working with them. Examples are: pay a training fee to get started, send you a check / check for deposit or cash and transfer to another account, become a mysterious buyer, have you bought software, equipment or things related to work, etc.). You will never have to spend your money for any job posting. run!
- are you Offer the job immediately Without the potential customer knowing you better. For example, the prospect will send you a message or email saying “You have the job!” But they have not even examined you yet. I mean they did not test you and did not know anything about you. Always enter a zoom call to help eliminate anyone who may be trying to hide their identity because they are a fraudulent host. Today everyone uses zoom as a means of communication. When you work virtual trust can be a problem because you do not know who you are working with online, but zoom can help each party see each other visually and instill credibility between the parties. You can also know through manners and the way a person speaks (near your stomach) whether this is a legitimate opportunity or one that you need to pass on.
- There are tempting money words in the job registration Like unlimited profits, investment opportunities, quick money, make money without doing anything and so on. When it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. 😉
- The customer There is no way to pay you in advance through your respondents or packages On your website. The virtual assistants I coach all get paid in advance before starting work, so if that potential client does not want to do this, move on, there will always be another client around the next corner.
- they Will not pay you through regular places Like PayPal, Stripe, Western Union, Interac (email forwarding) etc. If someone says I’ll pay you in bitcoin, come on? run!
- If the potential customer has Unprofessional email address (yahoo.com, hotmail.com, gmail.com, etc.) This is one of the first red flags you will see. Make sure their email address (name@domain.com) is there so you can go check out their site and learn more about them through their site. If they do not yet have a website (maybe because you are building one for them) then at least take links to their social networks To smooth them out a bit and make sure they are legal.
- Grammatical / sloppy errors in job registration. This is a big sign for me that it is a scam at work as professionals take pride in the way they present themselves. Besides if anyone can even spell simple words correctly in his job list, this is not the prestigious client I want to work for.
- Beware of MLMs, network marketing companies, And some new start-ups as these are usually not the revenue stream that most virtual assistants are looking for even if not necessarily scams. You can identify them because they will want to pay you a commission or a percentage of sales. Typically, network marketing companies want to send you a private message to tell you more about the opportunity that is not a job listing after all.
- and Do not fall for these sad emails or messages from an online prince Who needs your help or something bad is about to happen … watch out!
- Oh, and when the pay is just amazing for a little effort on your part? Apparently this is a scam. For example, they want to pay you $ 5,000 a month to do nothing but answer the phone or do an easy task that anyone can do that takes a short time if at all, it’s a scam. If this sounds too good to be true, it is!
- Last but not least...Discover everything about your prospect by investigating and learning about him as much as you can. Crawl them online without it being scary tracking. 😉 And if your investigation does not work out. Well, red flag! For example, if they do not have an online presence like a website or the profiles on their social networks are vague or have been created during the last month / two months, it is most likely a scam. Google is your friend even when you are conducting your investigation just type in “scam, person / company name / email” and if anyone else has had issues with that person, it sometimes appears in Google.
In the end, please listen to your instincts as you do, and only you hold your business in hand. If you have any gut feeling about registering jobs to hire a virtual assistant then you need to go through this checklist I gave you and see if red flags come up. And if so, it’s probably a scam.
Do not be so desperate to land this first customer that you become vulnerable to scams!
Check out our busy Virtual Assistant Job Board. Being a cohesive community, you will find less competition in our network, so this is a great place to get that first customer.
