How tohire a virtual assistantin the UK: the complete guide

"Virtual assistant" covers four different jobs. The brief, the skills and the price all depend on which one you mean, so this decision comes before any search.

Admin and personal-assistant support

The inbox, the diary, travel, expenses, documents and supplier chasing: the work that runs a person's week or a small company's back office. This is the most common first hire and the easiest to define, because the tasks already exist and are already being done badly by someone senior. The virtual admin assistant service is built for it; the spoke How to hire a VA for admin covers the specifics.

Customer support and live chat

Tickets, live chat, inbound calls, refunds and returns, help articles, post-purchase follow-up. The hire is judged on response times and tone, so the brief must include your service standards and escalation rules. The customer service virtual assistant service is the fit; see How to hire a VA for customer support.

Lead generation and appointment setting

Prospect research, list building, cold email and LinkedIn outreach, CRM hygiene, discovery-call booking and nurturing. The hire is judged on qualified conversations booked, so the brief needs your ideal customer profile and your CRM. The lead generation virtual assistant service covers it; see How to hire a VA for lead generation.

E-commerce operations

Product listings, order processing, inventory monitoring, reviews and messages, returns and exchanges, supplier coordination, across Shopify, Amazon and the other platforms you sell on. The hire is judged on the store running without you. The e-commerce virtual assistant service is built for it; see How to hire a VA for e-commerce.

If your list spans two of these, hire for the one that costs you the most time today and add the second once the first is running. One person doing two jobs badly is the commonest way a first VA hire fails.

There are three ways to hire, and the difference is who does the recruiting, the supervising and the replacing.

A freelancer is one person you find, vet, brief and manage yourself. It is the cheapest hourly rate on paper and the most expensive in your own time: you are the recruiter, the manager and the backup plan. When the freelancer is ill, on holiday or takes a better client, the work stops until you hire again. It suits a short, well-defined project with a clear end.

A UK agency places a UK-based assistant with you, often on a retainer of hours per month. You get UK hours, UK context and someone else's recruitment. The trade-off is price: UK salaries set the floor, and the hours are usually shared across several clients, so the assistant is rarely dedicated to you.

A managed VA is a dedicated assistant employed, trained and supervised by the provider, working for your business alone, with the provider responsible for quality and for replacement if the fit is wrong. It removes the three jobs that the other routes leave with you: finding the person, managing the person, and replacing the person. That is the model Ant Assist runs: every VA is recruited, managed and supervised from our own in-house office in Cairo, works your UK hours, and is dedicated to one client. It is not a freelancer platform and not an AI product.

The honest rule: if you want the lowest possible rate and are happy to be the manager, hire a freelancer. If you need a UK-based person in a UK-only role, use a UK agency. If you want the work owned by one person you do not have to recruit, supervise or replace, hire a managed VA.

The price depends on the model more than on the task.

A UK-based assistant, whether employed or through a UK agency, costs what a UK salary costs, plus employer National Insurance, pension, holiday, a desk and the management time to run them. A freelancer's hourly rate looks low until you add the hours you spend recruiting, briefing and covering gaps.

A managed VA from Ant Assist starts at £5 per hour on the entry rate: the first 6 months on the Entry tier, 3 months on Mid, 1 month on Expert. After the promotion the rate card applies per service: an admin VA from £6.30 per hour full time (160 hours a month, £1,008), a customer service VA from £5.95, a lead generation VA from £5.50, an e-commerce VA from £6.50, with Mid and Expert tiers above each for longer experience. Part-time, at 80 hours a month, runs from £6.50 to £6.80 per hour on the Entry tier depending on the service. Every rate includes the assistant's time, our office facilities, supervision and management; there are no platform fees on top.

For the full comparison against a UK employee, with the salary, overhead and management lines itemised, read how much a virtual assistant costs in the UK or put your own hours into the calculator.

What the £5/hour entry rate includes

• Dedicated VA, never shared
• UK-hour aligned support
• Management and supervision included
• Recruitment and onboarding included
• Office infrastructure included
• VA replacement available
• No NI, pension, or holiday costs
• No long-term contract, rolling monthly

Job boards list people looking for a role. You get applicants, not a shortlist, and you inherit the whole hiring process: screening, interviewing, references, contracts and, in the UK, employment obligations. What the listing hides is the weeks of your time before anyone does a task.

Freelancer marketplaces give you profiles and reviews. What they hide is that the reviews are for other people's work, the freelancer's availability is shared across everyone who hires them, and the platform takes a cut on top of the rate you see.

Recruiters find you a UK candidate for a fee. What the fee hides is that the recruiter's job ends at placement; managing, retaining and replacing the person is yours.

Directories and networks of self-employed VAs give you names and specialisms. What they hide is the same thing a freelancer hides: no one stands behind the work but the individual.

A managed provider gives you a dedicated assistant already recruited, trained and supervised. What to check is who the provider is, where the assistants sit, whether the assistant is dedicated or shared, and what happens when it goes wrong. Ask those four questions of any provider, including us.

Most hiring mistakes happen before the first interview, in a brief that describes a person rather than the work.

The one-page brief

Write down the tasks as they actually happen, not as a job title. For each: the tool it happens in, how often, what "done" looks like, and who checks it. Add the hours you need, the time window they must fall in, the things the assistant may decide alone and the things that always come to you. A brief that fits on one page can be handed to a candidate, a provider or a trial task without translation.

Ten questions to ask

1. Which of the tasks on this brief have you done before, and in which tools?
2. Walk me through how you would handle the first hour of my inbox.
3. What do you do when you are not sure whether to reply or escalate?
4. How do you keep track of what you have promised to whom?
5. What hours can you commit to, and who covers when you are away?
6. How do you handle a password, a client's data and a document you should not have seen?
7. Show me something you produced for someone else that looks like my work.
8. What did the last person you worked for get wrong in how they briefed you?
9. If I gave you three tasks and no order, what would you do first and why?
10. What would make you leave this arrangement?

For a managed provider, ask the same questions of the provider about their process, and one more: how the assistant is supervised day to day and by whom.

A paid trial task that predicts the job

Pick one real task from the brief, pay for it, and give the same instructions you would give on day one. Judge three things: whether the assistant asked the right questions before starting, whether the result matches "done" as you defined it, and how they reported back. A trial that predicts the job is boring and specific: clear this inbox to these rules; book these three meetings across these calendars; process these ten orders. A trial that tests personality predicts nothing.

Tools. The assistant works inside your accounts, not a system of theirs. Make the list before day one: email, calendar, CRM, helpdesk, store admin, file storage, the task tool you will use to hand work over.

Access. Give access through a password manager, never in plain text. Every Ant Assist VA signs an NDA and a data-processing agreement, works through password managers, and you can revoke access at any time. Whatever route you hire by, insist on the same.

Rhythm. Agree how tasks arrive (a daily list, a shared board, messages through the day), when you review, and what a weekly summary looks like. Most clients settle this in the first week.

The first 30 days. Week one is the brief made real: the assistant learns your tone, your rules and your tools on live work with you checking everything. Week two, the checking narrows to exceptions. By the end of the month the assistant owns the tasks on the brief and you are reviewing outcomes, not steps. With Ant Assist, most clients have their VA active within 5 to 7 working days of signing up, and a UK team supervises quality from the first day.

Some placements do not fit. The question to ask before you hire is what happens then.

With a freelancer, it is over: you are back at the start, recruiting again, with the work stopped in between. With a recruiter, a replacement usually means a new fee or a rebate window that has already closed. With a managed provider the answer should be written down before you sign.

At Ant Assist, if the fit is wrong we replace the VA. We take responsibility for quality and match you with a more suitable candidate rather than leaving you stuck with an underperforming arrangement: no re-recruitment, no restart from zero, and we carry the cost and the continuity of the handover. Contracts are rolling monthly, with 30 days' notice, so the arrangement can also simply end.

Whatever route you choose, hire on the answer to this question, not on the rate.