The 2022 minimum wage in the Netherlands is 1635 EUR, 1593 EUR in Belgium, and 1584 EUR in Germany. Seeing the inflation in 2022, the governments are about to announce a significant minimum wage increase. Germany has already announced the hike of the minimum wage to 12 eur/h (link here). On the top of 12 eur/h employers have to calculate additional taxes, social security, holidays, sick leaves and few other components of a compensation cost. How to protect your agency from inflation? One of the ways could be to automate some of your tasks or hire virtual assistants from the Philippines.
How can recruitment agency agency benefit from a VA (Virtual Assistant) ?
Maryd Consulting has introduced the virtual assistant service back in 2020 and since then have successful tested a variety of tasks that can be easily outsourced to English-speaking employees in the Philippines. Most agencies hire people in Polish, Romanian and other eastern European languages so how can an English speaking person be of any help?
The below tasks are based on the simple fact that an assistant earns 33-50% of what recruiters/office staff make in western Europe. One of our goals is to help to reorganize the agency in the way that recruiters only do things that generate income for the agency – calling candidates. People paid 15-20 eur/h should do different tasks than people earning 5 eur/h.
| # | Virtual Assistant @Maryd Consulting | Onsite Worker @Agency |
|---|---|---|
| Recruitment time | 7 business days | 30-90 days |
| Base salary | 1200 EUR / month | ~ 1600 + eur minimum wage |
| Holidays | Replacement included in the fee | Extra paid cost / reduced labor force |
| Sick Leaves | Replacement included in the fee | Extra paid cost / reduced labor force |
| Employer taxes | No extra charge | Around 25-33% extra (400-600 EUR / month) |
| Bonus / Commission | Included in the fee | Extra paid |
| Office lease | No additional cost | Additional cost |
| Equipment cost | No additional cost | Additional cost |
| Total cost | 1200 eur / month | 2500 – 3000 eur /month |
Getting recruiters / administrative staff in the Netherlands/Germany/Belgium to do the below tasks is can be named a waste of resources. They should be doing things only they can do and that requires specific skills (eg. Dutch knowledge, certain certificates etc.)
Here’s a list of tasks our clients give to their assistants:
- Emailing candidates after they apply
This is one of the easiest tasks to do. Every candidate that applies and provides his email address, will receive a brochure, basic information about the position and next steps information.
All it takes is to prepare email templates in proper languages (i.e Polish, Romanian, English) and VA is able to send those emails early in the morning.
Due to timezone difference, those emails will be sent around 4 – 5 am CET so when recruiters get to the office, they know that all candidates already received proper documents and when they call them, they can just refer to email sent.
- Uploading candidates to internal ATS
This is one of the most popular tasks for our VAs. Considering timezone difference, they start working around 3 – 4 am CET and their first task is always to collect all applicants that applies via Facebook / Google forms, job boards, Facebook groups etc.
They download all candidates, and upload directly to ATS. Some ATS are connected with job boards so this is done automatically, but in most cases this has to be done manually.
When recruiters come to work at 9:00 am local time, they already have all leads uploaded to the ATS, candidates received all emails regarding the job so all they have to do is to start calling on candidates trying to fill in vacancies.
They do not have to upload leads, they do not have to email anyone, they just have to start calling and making placements. It really speeds up recruiters’ work and allows agencies to use their time in a much better way.
- Calling on candidates
If you are hiring English speaking folks, you might want to consider hiring virtual recruiters from the Philippines. Our virtual assistants can call on candidates that are looking for a job and do a basic pre-screening of a candidate.
We’re able to provide VA with a local phone number (Skype number) and they’ll be able to make calls using that, unless the customer is able to provide access to their internal resources. Nevertheless, we’re able to outsource the service without sharing any confidential information.
You can hire someone to work only for few months a year, it does not have to be an all-year-round contract.
- Designing marketing materials
All of our virtual assistants are very familiar with Canva and are able to prepare social media content and all other marketing materials your agency will need. Usually agencies either use sub-contractors to perform marketing materials or use internal resources. In both ways, it can be done at a lower rate in the Philippines. Our assistants will be more than happy to demonstrate their work.
- Admin tasks
Every agency has a backlog of tasks that must be done. Sometimes it might be to prepare a new procedure, segregate documents, invoices or just to archive some data. Utilizing your virtual assistants is time and cost efficient.
- Payroll management
Are you struggling to hire staff to manage payroll? Why not to use some help coming from a virtual assistant. As soon as she is has some basic training, she can immediately start workin on payroll activities.
- Chat support
Are you using a chat tool on your website and you get messages from people? Why not to get someone from the Philippines to answer questions in English? They can provide a wider coverage than your EU based stuff. They can instruct people on how to apply for a job, tell them more about compensation, position details etc.
- Posting job offers on free job boards
We’re not fans of posting jobs on job boards since it takes a lot of time and usually does not provide us with well pre-screened candidates, but if you want to utilize someone’s time, you can always use this option as a back up. If a VA still has some spare time, she can post job offers on various job boards, in many languages. Each of them uses a Google Translate chrome extention that allows them easily post these jobs. We also have our internal step by step procedures for non-polish/romanian speakers so she can always do these things for your agency.
You know what is the best thing? 1 VA can do multiple tasks within a 8h shift!
We also allow to place a part time assistant so you can get into outsourcing slowly and learn how much your agency can benefit from this process.
If you would like to discuss how a VA can help you agency to reduce cost and increase efficiency, feel free to reach out to mateusz@marydconsulting.eu or book an online call here https://calendly.com/maryd-consulting/
