You Don’t Need Experience To Get Paid as a New Virtual Assistant

When you’re just starting out as a virtual assistant, you’ll see a lot of advice that you should offer your services for free. After all, if you don’t have any experience or testimonials or case studies to point to the only way you’ll get hired is by offering to do work for free or in exchange for a testimonial, right?

Wrong. 

There are many ways you can build your credibility without working for free or having previous paid client experience. All it takes is a little lateral thinking and some solid communication as to the skills you have and how your potential client can benefit from them.

Starting a Virtual Assistant Business in a Field That You Don’t Have Prior Experience In

If you’re working in an industry that you don’t have previous job experience in you might find it hard to convince a potential client to sign on. But, I bet if you think about it you have plenty of skills and past experience that’s transferable to the new industry you’re in?

For example, if you worked as the manager of a retail store and you’re starting your VA business in general admin, you already have loads of experience that can benefit your clients:

• You already know how to manage a team of employees and how to delegate duties.
• You know how to manage a calendar and do appropriate scheduling.
• You know a lot about customer service (retail customer service is HARD!)
• You know how to deal with inventory, which might come into play depending on your ideal client.
• You have at least a basic understanding of marketing, even if you don’t have a full grasp of online marketing yet.
• You have general admin skills and likely know how to manage your time and stay organized!

Heck. This post about how to include Dungeons & Dragons in your resume is meant as a joke but honestly, the first and last points are completely valid.

When highlighting your skills, sprinkle stories about them and your working style throughout your About page, Homepage, and Services page. 

You can even include testimonials from past supervisors and colleagues. 

Pro tip: Focus on the benefits of your skills. Don’t simply say that you know excel, tell them how you can use excel to improve their situation. How will your transferable skills make your client’s life better? Don’t simply say, “I know how to do A, B, and C.” Specifically tell them, “The fact that I know how to do this means that you get this major benefit.”

Does School Count As Experience?

School absolutely counts as experience! Even if you haven’t yet applied what you’ve learned, you still have the knowledge, and that’s worth something (and you have the tuition receipts to prove it 😉).

Work You’ve Done For Yourself Is Demonstrable Experience

Many entrepreneurs I’ve worked with start out by learning and honing their skills for their own businesses. I even know a lawyer who started out by selling contracts for online businesses, discovered his knack for copywriting and pivoted into a bada$$ online business coach. (I’m told it’s a long way from Harvard Law School and a lot more fun.) He grew his business by sharing what he learned by doing it himself.

Say you want to offer social media services, including copy. You can highlight your own copy in your own social media as examples of work that you’ve done. If you’re a web designer, you can showcase your own website in your portfolio. And if you’re growing a general admin virtual assistant business, you can share screenshots of your squeaky clean and highly organized Google Drive, complete with SOPs as an example of your highly desirable (and sometimes misunderstood) work.

Mockup Projects Demonstrate Virtual Assistant Experience

Pretend projects also count as experience…just be sure to notate that the project is one that you’ve made up for demonstrative purposes.

For example, if you’re a general admin VA and you see an email go out with a mistake for a widely known and loved online marketer. Most likely, the accidental email will be followed by an apology email, but this is an opportunity for you to demonstrate your expertise and highlight how your processes would prevent this type of mistake from happening. You can do this in a blog post, a vlog, a Facebook live, or even a short form Instagram reel or TikTok.

If you’re a calendar protector, you could create a mockup based on a real person or made-up person who is your ideal client. Outline your ideal client and their scheduling criteria, and how you’d handle their schedule, including a helpful tip that anyone can implement (but they’d rather have you do!).

Mockups can also be great opportunities for content marketing. For inspiration, check out Val Geisler’s email teardown blogs.

Get Paid and Feel Confident In Your Services…Without Previous Job Experience!

At its core, Virtual Assistance is about helping people. You’ve been doing that for years! Turning that into a successful virtual assistant business, especially when you’re starting out, is all about communicating your relevant experience so that clients understand how you can help them. 

Take a step back, choose your ideal client or first core offer, then think critically about your previous experience and reimagine it in a way that is helpful to others. 

Your entire life can be an asset. It’s just a matter of finding ways to market it successfully.

Find your first virtual assistant clients

Find your first clients (who will pay for your experience!) inside my mini-course, The Epic VA’s Guide To Finding And Signing Dream Clients. You’ll learn:

• How to identify your ideal clients (in real life)
• Where to find your next dream client
• How to get that full-bodied yes from your next client

Get instant access for $0.00 here.