STRUGGLING TO GROW BECAUSE OF LACK OF RESOURCES? CONSIDER INTERNS JUSTIN LEE
They aren’t experts and they also generally don’t work 9-5, five days a week.
You can plan on them working for you anywhere from 3 months to one year, so you must assume some attrition
and turnover when assigning tasks.
Here’s our list of three questions to ask yourself in order to determine if you need an employee/virtual assistant
or an intern. The answers to these questions will also help you determine the tasks that are appropriate for an
intern vs. an assistant as you begin to grow your company.
Q.1. What are my needs in my business that would require either an intern and/or assistant/employee?
A.1. If you answer with tasks like: customer support; customer service; data entry; scheduling; day-to-day
database/CRM maintenance; bookkeeping; travel arrangements; managing company calendar; maintaining
autoresponders/lists; or transcription services, then you probably want to hire an assistant or virtual assistant.
These are more day-to-day tasks to “maintain” your business which are more suited for an assistant.
If you answer with tasks like: video marketing & making videos of properties; press release marketing; social
media marketing; website analytics; research and writing; competitor research; blogging & submitting deals and
properties onto a blog or website; new product/service development; search engine optimization (SEO); and/or
copywriting, then you want to hire an intern or virtual intern. These tasks are going to help you grow your
business and are great tasks for an intern.
Q.2. How many hours/days a week do you need help?
A.2.
If you need someone more than 10-15 hours per
week and more than 2-3 days per week, and that they
MUST report to work, then you probably need an assistant
or virtual assistant, contractor, or employee. If you don’t
HELP!!!
need the person to be available for more than 10-15 hours
a week and they can work all of their hours in 1-3 days, if
needed, then you are probably want to hire an intern.
Q.3. Do you need regular ongoing help or just project based?
A.3. If you have projects and tasks that are ongoing and daily repetitive that you’ll need help with for the
foreseeable future then you should hire a virtual assistant, assistant or employee. Interns typically work for 36 months so projects that have a defined beginning and end are best suited for interns; or projects that could
easily be transferred to a newly incoming intern.