Hiring your first overseas VA: the mistakes owners make

Hiring before you know what the job is

The first mistake happens before anybody is hired. The owner is overwhelmed, advertises for "help with admin", and hopes the right person will work out what needs doing. They rarely do, because nobody has decided.

Before you advertise, write one page: the tasks in the order you will hand them over, the hours you need covered in UK time, the tools they will work in, and what a good month looks like after three months. That page decides who you look for, what you test them on and how you judge them later. Without it, every one of those is a guess.

Nothing written down

The second mistake follows from the first. The owner explains a task on a video call, the VA nods, and a week later it is done differently. Neither of them is wrong; the task only ever existed in the owner's head.

Write each task down before you hand it over: what it is for, what triggers it, the steps, the limits, and when to stop and ask. A screen recording helps, but the written version is the one you both go back to. Our guide at /guides/how-to-hand-work-to-a-virtual-assistant shows how to write one in under an hour.

Hours nobody wrote down in both time zones

Manila is seven hours ahead of the UK during British Summer Time and eight hours ahead in winter, because the UK changes its clocks and the Philippines does not. The UK clocks go back on 25 October 2026, so a 9am UK start moves from 4pm to 5pm in Manila overnight.

Owners who say "the usual hours" or "UK hours" without writing them down end up with a VA who logs on at the wrong time twice a year, or who is still waiting for a reply long after their own evening has started. Agree the shift in UK time, write the Manila time beside it for both summer and winter, and say which days it covers. Our planner at /uk-philippines-time does the conversion.

Think about how late the shift runs, too. A UK afternoon is a Philippine evening, and a shift that finishes at 6pm in London finishes at 1am or 2am in Manila. The guide at /guides/hire-a-virtual-assistant-from-the-philippines covers night work and what to agree about it.

Handing over your own passwords

It is the quickest way to get started and the hardest thing to undo. If your VA signs in as you, everything they do looks like you did it, you cannot tell their changes from yours, and when they leave you have to change every password you ever shared.

Give your VA their own login wherever the software allows. Where it does not, share access through a password manager, so it can be removed in one step without anybody seeing the password itself. Turn on two-step verification, and decide before day one what they need to see, not what is easiest to give.

No plan for power cuts, internet drops and storms

Your VA works from home, on the local electricity grid and a home internet connection. In the Philippines both can fail, and it pays to know that before you agree anything.

The Philippine weather service, PAGASA, says an average of 20 tropical cyclones enter the Philippine area of responsibility each year, with about eight or nine of them crossing the country, and that the peak of the typhoon season runs from July to October. A bad storm can cut power and internet connections.

So ask, before you hire, and write the answers down:

• What happens if the power goes? A battery back-up for the router and a laptop that holds a charge will cover a short cut.
• Is there a second way online, such as mobile data on a different network, that they can work on?
• Is there a second device if the main one fails?
• How will they tell you, if their connection is down? Agree a phone number or a messaging app that works on mobile data.
• What happens to the hours? Decide whether time lost can be made up later in the week, and who decides which work waits.

Forgetting Philippine public holidays

Philippine public holidays do not line up with UK bank holidays, and they are set each year by presidential proclamation. The list for 2026 is Proclamation No. 1006, signed in September 2025. It has regular holidays and special non-working days, and some dates are fixed separately each year, including the two Eid holidays.

These are the dates left in 2026 from that proclamation, beside the UK bank holidays for England and Wales:

Plan the holidays before they arrive

The mistake is not the holidays themselves; it is finding out about them the day before. Agree at the start which Philippine holidays your VA takes, whether they are paid, and who covers the work while they are off. Put them in your shared calendar for the year. The 2027 list is Proclamation No. 1427, signed on 8 September 2026, and it starts with New Year's Day on Friday 1 January.

Late December is the one to plan hardest. In 2026, 24, 25, 30 and 31 December are all holidays or special days in the Philippines, and the UK has its own two days on 25 and 28 December. If your busiest week falls there, sort the cover now.

Paying late, or in a currency nobody agreed

Late pay is the fastest way to lose a good VA. Your invoice run may be flexible; their rent is not. Pick a pay day, put it in the contract and keep to it.

Agree the currency at the start as well. If the rate was agreed in US dollars and you then pay in pounds, or let the exchange rate decide what arrives, you have quietly changed the pay. Agree the rate, the currency, the transfer service and who pays the transfer fees, so the amount your VA receives is the amount you agreed. Our guide at /guides/filipino-virtual-assistant-cost-uk sets out what a Filipino VA costs and how the pay usually works.

Judging them by the interview

An interview shows you how somebody talks about work. It does not show you whether they read instructions, write clearly to an annoyed customer or follow a procedure when nobody is watching. Confident talkers do well on video calls, and careful people often do worse than they would in the job.

Set a short, paid task drawn from the real job instead, score it against criteria you decided first, and then talk to them about the work they did. Our guide at /guides/test-tasks-to-hire-a-virtual-assistant has five tasks worth setting and a way to score them fairly.

Managing by screenshots

When you cannot see somebody working, it is tempting to buy software that proves they are: screenshots every few minutes, keystroke counts, webcam photos. It measures activity, not work. It also costs you the time to look at it, and it tells a good VA that you do not trust them.

Track the work instead. Agree what done looks like for each task, have your VA record the hours they work, ask for a short update at the end of each day, and check a sample of the work itself every week.

How we avoid these

At Mango & Co., the strongest applicants do a timed exercise built from your role's real work, and we interview the best of them before you meet your shortlist. When people apply to work with us, we ask about their computer, their connection speed, and whether they have back-up internet and a back-up computer.

Every role we advertise states the shift in UK time and in Manila time, for British summer and winter. Our workspace takes no screenshots, logs no keystrokes and never uses a webcam: your VA clocks in and out and posts daily and weekly updates. We pay our assistants in US dollars, and your monthly price includes cover for their holiday and sickness.

A short checklist before you hire

• One page describing the job, the hours in UK time and the tools.
• The first three tasks written down as procedures.
• The shift in both time zones, for summer and winter.
• Their own logins, or a password manager, ready for day one.
• Answers on back-up power, a second connection and a spare device.
• The Philippine holidays in your calendar, with cover agreed.
• A pay day, a currency and a transfer service, in writing.
• A paid test task, not just an interview.

Where to go next

If you are still deciding whether an overseas VA suits your business, our guide at /guides/hire-a-virtual-assistant-from-the-philippines walks through the whole road, from the job description to the first month. And if you would like to know which jobs you would hand over first, the free plan at /fit takes about three minutes.