How do you find a trustworthy virtual assistant?

• Find someone who has a VA that they would recommend.
• Get referrals from the VA and talk with them.
• Try to arrange a meeting in person.
• Verify that their contact information is accurate.
• Google the person and their work. Look for warning signs.
• Find someone in the same legal jurisdiction as you.
• Gradually ramp up your level of trust by assigning smaller tasks at first.
• Limit the amount of damage they can do by creating new accounts with a fixed amounts.
• Spot check their work and your finances. Not just once.
• Make sure that they aren't delegating the work to someone else that you don't know or aren't comfortable with.

It's impossible to know until you have worked with him/her for a while.

So you will have to test many to find the one.

The same rule apply with every employee you will have.

Check your virtual assistants online reputation that you can based if he/she can be trusted. Another thing is you can also ask his/her for past referrals regarding confidentiality of the clients. Then, you can ask them how the virtual assistant handle this tasks.

Joseph,

I have worked as a Virtual Assistant for several Entrepreneurs/Internet Marketers. It is important to set clear expectations up front and for you to have full access to their Skype, E-Mail and any others service provider accounts they are utilizing on your behalf. This way you are able to monitor their activites and make whatever corrections necessary to ensure your business continues to grow and that your clients and/or directives are being followed up on in the same manner that you personally would.

Aim for Filipinos, they tend to be more reliable. Build a relationship with them, don't give away your credit card number straight away.

After a few weeks/months, you will know if you can trust them.

As a provider of Virtual Assistants myself, I think the best way to go is to ask for referrals and speak to their current clients for feedback on their services. Once you have a done that and your gut still says you should still proceed (notice, you have to listen to your gut), I suggest you start small; build the relationship gradually and enhance your trust for them over time.

On my blog I interview successful Entrepreneurs on How they make use of Virtual Assistants in their businesses to free their time to focus on why they love their businesses. Please check out my blog and hopefully, you will be able to learn from their successes and challenges with the entire process of outsourcing and making use of VAs.