Things VAs Do To Have Their Applications Eliminated Instantly
1. Sending out a bunch of canned applications.
While sending out more applications would appear to generate more interviews, this is not true. Choose just a few job postings that you REALLY like and personalize your response, so they know you wrote a note just for them and have studied their requirements. Though this takes you an extra 30 minutes, it will get you past the 90% of applications that are immediately discarded for being a canned response.
2. Likewise, make sure your profile is tuned to that type of job.
If you’re a designer, get more specific about what kind of designs you specialize in. If you build websites, what verticals do you have a lot of experience in, so you can do more of the same thing? If you try to say you do everything for everyone, you’ll attract bad clients who think a VA can do everything. Clients pay for specialization.
3. Having negative reviews on onlinejobs.ph.
Even if the customer is wrong, you’ll not want to avoid having them leave negative feedback (yes, this is hard). And you don’t want to badmouth a former employer, since the employer considering you will be concerned you’ll say the same about them.
4. Having unprofessional profiles on any channel.
The employer may look at your photos on social media, so be careful. Assume anything that you post is public. Avoid screen names that are too clever. One promising applicant that we were considering for a designer position had a great portfolio, but his username had “devil” and “666” in it. Rather than risk it, we moved on to hire from the hundreds of other strong designers that didn’t have such a risk.
5. Not smiling.
They’re more likely to hire you if you’re smiling--it’s that simple. After all, someone you’re spending a few hours a day should be pleasant to work with, right?
6. Skim Reading.
Use a test in your posting. For example you might ask them to reply using a certain word in the subject line, “use rabbit or facebook ads in the subject line to show you pay attention to details.” If they miss, they’re out.
7. Being too proud.
8. Impatience.
9. Incomplete Submissions.