Frequently Asked Questions

Below is a collection of various questions that we hear all the time in relation to our service and working with virtual staff. Please be sure to read through all of these questions and answers before signing up for our service, so that you can really understand the benefits of using the service to save you valuable time when searching for virtual staff.

If after reading through them, you have any further questions, don’t hesitate to contact us directly.

Our recruitment process is usually 7-14 days. However, it can sometimes be a little longer, depending on the experience level you need, our current pool of candidates and how quickly we receive important information back from you, such as your Job
Description, etc.

We’re sure you’ll agree that sometimes it’s best to spend a few extra days to find the BEST person for the job!

We don’t directly train the VA for you. However, please do understand that all the VAs selected by the Virtual Staff Finder service to be on our database will already have had a certain amount of experience in the roles you need them to fulfill for you – that you can be assured of. However, as all relationships are different and every entrepreneur has different ways they want things to be done, you will no doubt have to spend some kind of time training them at first, especially on any specific tasks to you or your business. Once they learn how you like things done, they’ll be off to the races!

No. The VA you select using our service is your direct employee. They don’t work for us, they work for you – it is between the two of you how much, when and any other details surrounding their pay.

This should certainly not happen on a regular basis. Except for the odd occasion when your VA might ask for simple clarifications on things, your Philippine-based virtual assistant found through the Virtual Staff Finder service will be fluent in English with very good communication skills, both written and verbal. They will also have experience in their respective roles for you, too.

This doesn’t happen very often. However, should you not select your VA from the first batch of final candidates that we provide you, we will, as part of our 10-day guarantee, present you with another three candidates, free of charge. Following this, if you still cannot decide on hiring a VA from the second batch of candidates and want us to continue to look for you, you will need to sign-up for the service again.

If for whatever reason you do not want to continue with the VA that you select, within 10 days of the day that you hire them, we will select another three candidates for you to meet with, so you can choose another – completely free of charge. If you make this decision, however, after the 10 day period, you will need to sign-up for the service again, should you want to utilize our service to find another virtual staff member. Please note we do not offer a money-back guarantee.

Since we aim to provide you with VA’s who will have a long lasting working relationship with you, we do not suggest that you pay on per hour basis. You should offer your VA’s a fixed monthly rate depending on the skills, tasks and experiences required on your Job description. For more updated info on salary guidelines and tips, please download our free guide on the subject.

For now, we are only sourcing for WordPress Developers. Other types of developers are very in demand in the market and are becoming very difficult to find since they also demand higher rates.

We currently do not have a pool for bilingual VA’s at the moment so we are not able to accommodate jobs that require VAs to speak a specific foreign language aside from English.

We have a discounted rate for our returning clients. If you plan to sign-up more than once, please inform our team so we can send you the discounted link.

One sign-up is good for one role. One sign-up entitles you to a selection of three candidates which you can hire.

Most VA’s prefer to work during normal Philippine office hours which are 8am to 5pm.

We sure do. You can signup and start earning commissions by clicking here.

We do provide part time VAs but many candidates are more interested in full-time and long term positions. You can later move your VA to a full-time position in the future and this must be specified in your job description.

Hiring a virtual employee is not normally as easy as most people think it is. There is a lot that should go into the process, such as searching job boards and other freelancing websites, short-listing applicants, interviewing, background checks, collecting references, testing, etc. While we do offer a discount for our returning clients, we do not offer a discount for hiring multiple VA’s.

You can pay your VA in a number of ways. The most popular with Filipino VA’s is Paypal. Most home based General VA’s will accept $300-$400 a month for part-time work and between $700-$900 per month for a full-time position, you can find more info on salary guidelines by downloading our free salary guide at the bottom of this page.

Here in the Philippines, all employees must be paid a pro-rata amount, in December, which is known as ’13th Month’. Its basically a government mandated end-of-year bonus. As an overseas employer, and due to the fact that your VA is most probably not paying taxes on their earnings from working for you, you are not ‘required’ to pay it. However, if you feel an employee has done well, and is seen as part of your company’s family of staff, then pay it.

The bottom line on this one is that offering the 13th Month pay to your home-based VA will certainly make them a happier, more long-term type of employee, for sure.

Working with virtual staff does need to be done in the right way. Especially in the beginning – but, this can also be said if you were to work with somebody in the same office, in a similar close professional relationship. We suggest you build up trust slowly, but surely over a certain amount of time, before giving any overly sensitive information (such as copies of passports of credit card statements, etc.) to your VA. Common sense is required in all aspects of business, right? Virtual, or not.

Yes, you can. However, because a lot of local resources, time and a certain amount of money goes into sourcing for your virtual staff, if our sourcing procedure has indeed begun, and you want to change your mind on the type of virtual worker you need (following submitting your Job Description document), we will class this as utilizing our 10-day guarantee promise, and will present to you just three finalized candidates, based on your second choice only. This then completes our service to you.

Yes. We can source for VA’s who are willing to work depending on the work schedule you have specified. However, if the schedule is during an evening shift in the Philippines then we suggest that you provide a minimal night difference. This is usually an additional amount of at least $50/month.

We strongly advise that you do not pay your VA in advance. You should pay your VA once the work has been done. In the Philippines, most employees are paid bi-monthly which is usually every 15th and 30th of the month.

This is an option for employers to provide. However, we recommend that you discuss this with your VA preferably on the 6th month of employment. Health insurance costs vary but you can ask your VA to research on possible options.

General VA’s usually handle administrative tasks. To give you a better idea on what a GVA can do for your business, you can check out our blog post here.

GVAs can definitely handle calls however; we do not recommend that you delegate heavy number of calls since the country’s internet connection speed in general is incomparable to what you might have in your area.

This will depend on your agreement with your VA as to which holidays to follow. You can agree on whether your VA follows the Philippine holidays or your preferred holidays. In the Philippines, employees receive double pay when they are asked to work on Public holidays. You can refer to the list of holidays here.

This will depend on when you would conduct your first performance evaluation with your VA. Most employers provide an increase after 3 months of employment and usually another evaluation is done on the 6th month. This could also vary depending on the company policy you have in place.

Featured in

If there are any other questions that you may have in relation to our service, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our Customer Service team – they will get back to you within a 24-hour period (except on weekends), most of the time. You can email them here.

Privacy Policy

Last Updated: August 2018

1. INTRODUCTION

This privacy notice provides you with details of how we collect and process your personal data through your use of our site www.virtualstafffinder.com, a trading portal of 4C Media Limited.

By providing us with your data, you warrant to us that you are over 13 years of age.

4C Media Limited is the data controller and we are responsible for your personal data (referred to as “we”, “us” or “our” in this privacy notice).

Contact Details

Our full details are:

Full name of legal entity: 4C Media Limited

Email address: support@youpreneur.com

Billing email and support: billing@4cmedialimited.com

Postal address: 4C Media Limited, Milton Hall, Ely Rd, Milton, Cambridge, CB24 6WZ, United Kingdom.

It is very important that the information we hold about you is accurate and up to date. Please let us know if at any time your personal information changes by emailing us at support@youpreneur.com.

2. WHAT DATA DO WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU, FOR WHAT PURPOSE AND ON WHAT GROUND WE PROCESS IT

Personal data means any information capable of identifying an individual. It does not include anonymised data.

We may process the following categories of personal data about you:

* Communication Data that includes any communication that you send to us whether that be through the contact form on our website, through email, text, social media messaging, social media posting or any other communication that you send us. We process this data for the purposes of communicating with you, for record keeping and for the establishment, pursuance or defence of legal claims. Our lawful ground for this processing is our legitimate interests which in this case are to reply to communications sent to us, to keep records and to establish, pursue or defend legal claims.

* Customer Data that includes data relating to any purchases of goods and/or services such as your name, title, billing address, delivery address email address, phone number, contact details, purchase details and your card details. We process this data to supply the goods and/or services you have purchased and to keep records of such transactions. Our lawful ground for this processing is the performance of a contract between you and us and/or taking steps at your request to enter into such a contract.

* User Data that includes data about how you use our website and any online services together with any data that you post for publication on our website or through other online services. We process this data to operate our website and ensure relevant content is provided to you, to ensure the security of our website, to maintain back-ups of our website and/or databases and to enable publication and administration of our website, other online services and business. Our lawful ground for this processing is our legitimate interests which in this case are to enable us to properly administer our website and our business.

* Technical Data that includes data about your use of our website and online services such as your IP address, your login data, details about your browser, length of visit to pages on our website, page views and navigation paths, details about the number of times you use our website, time zone settings and other technology on the devices you use to access our website. The source of this data is from our analytics tracking system. We process this data to analyse your use of our website and other online services, to administer and protect our business and website, to deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you and to understand the effectiveness of our advertising. Our lawful ground for this processing is our legitimate interests which in this case are to enable us to properly administer our website and our business and to grow our business and to decide our marketing strategy.

* Marketing Data that includes data about your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences. We process this data to enable you to partake in our promotions such as competitions, prize draws and free give-aways, to deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you and measure or understand the effectiveness of this advertising. Our lawful ground for this processing is our legitimate interests which in this case are to study how customers use our products/services, to develop them, to grow our business and to decide our marketing strategy.

We may use Customer Data, User Data, Technical Data and Marketing Data to deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you (including Facebook adverts or other display advertisements) and to measure or understand the effectiveness of the advertising we serve you. Our lawful ground for this processing is legitimate interests which is to grow our business. We may also use such data to send other marketing communications to you. Our lawful ground for this processing is either consent or legitimate interests (namely to grow our business).

Sensitive Data

We do not collect any Sensitive Data about you. Sensitive data refers to data that includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health and genetic and biometric data. We do not collect any information about criminal convictions and offences.

Where we are required to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of the contract between us and you do not provide us with that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract (for example, to deliver goods or services to you). If you don’t provide us with the requested data, we may have to cancel a product or service you have ordered but if we do, we will notify you at the time.

We will only use your personal data for a purpose it was collected for or a reasonably compatible purpose if necessary. For more information on this please email us at support@youpreneur.com. In case we need to use your details for an unrelated new purpose we will let you know and explain the legal grounds for processing.

We may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent where this is required or permitted by law.

We do not carry out automated decision making or any type of automated profiling.

3. HOW WE COLLECT YOUR PERSONAL DATA

We may collect data about you by you providing the data directly to us (for example by filling in forms on our site or by sending us emails). We may automatically collect certain data from you as you use our website by using cookies and similar technologies. Please see our cookie policy for more details about this.

We may receive data from third parties such as analytics providers such as Google based outside the EU, advertising networks such as Facebook based outside the EU, such as search information providers such as Google based outside the EU, providers of technical, payment and delivery services, such as data brokers or aggregators.

We may also receive data from publicly available sources such as Companies House and the Electoral Register based inside the EU.

4. MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS

Our lawful ground of processing your personal data to send you marketing communications is either your consent or our legitimate interests (namely to grow our business).

Under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, we may send you marketing communications from us if (i) you made a purchase or asked for information from us about our goods or services or (ii) you agreed to receive marketing communications and in each case you have not opted out of receiving such communications since. Under these regulations, if you are a limited company, we may send you marketing emails without your consent. However you can still opt out of receiving marketing emails from us at any time.

Before we share your personal data with any third party for their own marketing purposes we will get your express consent.

You can ask us or third parties to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by following the opt-out links on any marketing message sent to you OR by emailing us at support@youpreneur.com at any time.

If you opt out of receiving marketing communications this opt-out does not apply to personal data provided as a result of other transactions, such as purchases, warranty registrations etc.

5. DISCLOSURES OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA

We may have to share your personal data with the parties set out below:

* Service providers who provide IT and system administration services.

* Professional advisers including lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers

* Government bodies that require us to report processing activities.

* Third parties to whom we sell, transfer, or merge parts of our business or our assets.

We require all third parties to whom we transfer your data to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We only allow such third parties to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

6. INTERNATIONAL TRANSFERS

Countries outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) do not always offer the same levels of protection to your personal data, so European law has prohibited transfers of personal data outside of the EEA unless the transfer meets certain criteria.

Many of our third parties service providers are based outside the European Economic Area (EEA) so their processing of your personal data will involve a transfer of data outside the EEA.

Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the EEA, we do our best to ensure a similar degree of security of data by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is in place:

* We will only transfer your personal data to countries that the European Commission have approved as providing an adequate level of protection for personal data by; or

* Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts or codes of conduct or certification mechanisms approved by the European Commission which give personal data the same protection it has in Europe; or

* If we use US-based providers that are part of EU-US Privacy Shield, we may transfer data to them, as they have equivalent safeguards in place.

If none of the above safeguards is available, we may request your explicit consent to the specific transfer. You will have the right to withdraw this consent at any time.

7. DATA SECURITY

We have put in place security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used, altered, disclosed, or accessed without authorisation. We also allow access to your personal data only to those employees and partners who have a business need to know such data. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they must keep it confidential.

We have procedures in place to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach if we are legally required to.

8. DATA RETENTION

We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

When deciding what the correct time is to keep the data for we look at its amount, nature and sensitivity, potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure, the processing purposes, if these can be achieved by other means and legal requirements.

For tax purposes the law requires us to keep basic information about our customers (including Contact, Identity, Financial and Transaction Data) for six years after they stop being customers.

In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal data for research or statistical purposes in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

9. YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS

Under data protection laws you have rights in relation to your personal data that include the right to request access, correction, erasure, restriction, transfer, to object to processing, to portability of data and (where the lawful ground of processing is consent) to withdraw consent.

You can see more about these rights at: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/individual-rights/

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please email us at support@youpreneur.com

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive or refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you.

If you are not happy with any aspect of how we collect and use your data, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We should be grateful if you would contact us first if you do have a complaint so that we can try to resolve it for you.

10. THIRD-PARTY LINKS

This website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy notice of every website you visit.

11. COOKIES

You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this website may become inaccessible or not function properly. For more information about the cookies we use, please see our cookie policy.

Download your FREE copy of the ULTIMATE Virtual Assistant Salary Guide

We will collect, use and protect your data in
accordance with our privacy policy.