Hire an Offshore Virtual Assistant for Your Australian Business

1. 1

   List the jobs and hours

   Write down the recurring jobs you want off your desk and roughly how long each takes. That list becomes the brief we recruit against.

2. 2

   Choose a country and who employs them

   In a free 30-minute consultation we recommend Sri Lanka or the Philippines and a setup: you employ them, we employ them (EOR), or we employ and manage them.

3. 3

   Interview a tested shortlist

   We run a fresh job ad, phone and video interviews and a skills test set for your jobs. You interview the shortlist and choose.

4. 4

   Onboard in week one

   Give access to your tools on accounts your business owns, and a short handover list. Most VAs start within 3–4 weeks of sign-up.

What a full-time virtual assistant takes off your desk

A virtual assistant is most valuable when they own a set of recurring jobs, not a random list of favours. Before we search, we map the hours you lose each week. Then we hire for those tasks specifically.

• Inbox triage. Sort incoming email into "needs you", "handled" and "waiting", and draft replies for your approval.
• Calendar and bookings. Book meetings across time zones, confirm appointments the day before, and protect your focus blocks.
• Lead and customer follow-up. Log enquiries in your CRM, send quotes and chase replies on a set schedule.
• Supplier and booking admin. Order supplies, book travel and venues, and keep a record of every confirmation.
• Documents and SOPs. Format proposals and reports, and turn your voice notes into written procedures your team can follow.
• Research and data entry. Build prospect lists, compare suppliers and clean up spreadsheets and CRM records.
• Social and content scheduling. Load approved posts into a scheduler and keep the content calendar up to date.

How a VA plus AI tools does more for less

AI writing and automation tools have changed what one assistant can get through in a day. The model that works best is AI drafts, your VA checks and sends. A VA using an approved business AI tool can draft a week of follow-up emails, summarise a long meeting recording, or tidy a 2,000-row contact list in minutes. They then do what AI can't: check facts against your systems, match your tone and spot the email that needs a phone call.

So when you brief us, ask for AI-assisted work to be part of the skills assessment. For example, the candidate gets a messy brief and an AI tool, and is judged on the accuracy and judgement of what they hand back. You get more output from one full-time hire, instead of adding a second person or paying for several point solutions.

Set guardrails from day one. Use business-tier AI accounts your company controls, keep client personal information out of public tools, and write down which tasks AI may draft and which it must not. If your business is covered by the Privacy Act, Australian Privacy Principle 8 applies to personal information handled overseas. Read more in how AI virtual assistants do more with less.

Tools your VA will already know

We screen for hands-on use of the tools you run, not just familiarity with the names. Common stacks for Australian small businesses:

• Workspace: Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Outlook, Teams, Slack, Zoom
• Scheduling and CRM: Calendly, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Zoho, Salesforce
• Projects: Asana, ClickUp, Trello, Monday.com, Notion
• Content and design: Canva, Meta Business Suite, Later, Buffer
• AI and automation: ChatGPT Team, Claude, Microsoft Copilot, Zapier, Make
• Light finance admin: drafting invoices in Xero or MYOB, receipt capture with Dext or Hubdoc

What we screen for

A VA role has no licence or formal qualification attached, so screening focuses on proof of skill. Every candidate goes through phone and video interviews and a skills assessment before reaching you. For a VA, the assessment can cover:

• Written English, and spoken English in the interviews
• A timed task using your tools, or the closest equivalent
• An AI-assisted task, judged on accuracy and judgement, not speed alone
• Their home setup, internet speed and backup power plan

In the Philippines, many strong VA candidates come from customer-service or BPO backgrounds and are used to Australian and US clients. In Sri Lanka, VA candidates often hold business or management degrees and suit document-heavy and research-heavy admin.

Sri Lanka vs the Philippines for a virtual assistant

Sri Lanka (UTC+5:30) is 4.5 hours behind AEST and 5.5 hours behind AEDT. Sri Lankan VAs usually work an early local shift so most of their day overlaps with yours. For example, 6:00am–3:00pm in Colombo is 10:30am–7:30pm AEST. Sri Lanka suits VAs who write and research: drafting documents, building reports, maintaining CRMs and preparing information for your team the next morning.

The Philippines (UTC+8) is 2 hours behind AEST and 3 hours behind AEDT. A normal 7:00am–4:00pm Manila day covers 9:00am–6:00pm AEST, almost a full overlap. The Philippines suits VAs who handle live tasks: answering customer emails and chat in real time, phone-based follow-up, and calendar work for clients who expect same-hour replies.

Plan options for a virtual assistant

For a founder hiring a first VA, Ready for You is usually the right fit. You know the jobs you want handed over, you'll manage the VA directly, and employing them yourself keeps ongoing fees at $0. Have us employ them (EOR) at $350/month if you'd rather not set up overseas payroll yourself. If you've never managed remote staff and want help with onboarding, performance check-ins and HR questions in the first year, Managed for You spreads the cost and extends the replacement guarantee.

Team member wages are paid on top of either plan. Multi-hire savings are available.

IT options (pick any, with any plan): Self-managed, where you or your team member supply the equipment. Hardware coordination, where we buy and configure a laptop that you own. IT management, where we handle devices, setup and security, with leasing available. See IT security.

Frequently asked questions