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Managing · 8 min read
The first 30 days: onboarding a VA so they stick
Placements that fail almost always fail in the first quarter, and almost always for reasons somebody could have fixed in week one.
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You have hired someone eight time zones away who cannot read the room, cannot overhear the context, and cannot tell from your face that they have got it wrong. Everything below exists to compensate for that.
Before day one
Set up in advance
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Week one: watch, then do
Give them your recordings and ask them to turn each one into a written process document. This does three things at once: it is real work from day one, it proves they understood, and you end up with the documentation you were never going to write yourself. Their version will contain questions. Answer those, that is the actual onboarding.
Weeks two to four: narrow then widen
- Week two. They run one task fully, you check every output before it leaves
- Week three. They run three or four tasks, you spot-check
- Week four. They run the full first-20-hours list, you review weekly
- Do not add new responsibilities until the current ones are clean. Widening too early is the single most common way this goes wrong.
Things that quietly kill a placement
| Symptom | What is usually behind it |
|---|---|
| They ask a lot of questions | Good sign in week one, a documentation gap by week four. |
| They ask no questions at all | Almost never means everything is clear. Ask them to show you the work. |
| Work is technically right but wrong in spirit | They have the process and not the reason. Explain why the task exists. |
| Output drops after month two | Usually isolation, unclear priorities, or an unspoken problem with a colleague. |
| They go quiet near a public holiday | Check the Philippine holiday calendar. There are more than you expect, and they are usually in the contract. |