Doing this job from home suits me and my family." I know my clients, and we do have a good working relationship, even though we are based miles apart. She says: "If there is a downside, it is that the workflow and therefore your pay does fluctuate, but when it does dip I simply bid for more projects. Part of the challenge was that at that time, business people were still sceptical about the idea of their personal assistant working remotely, but more and more companies are now realising that you don't have to be physically present to provide your service." Her clients hail from a variety of sectors and countries, including France, Luxembourg and the Middle East. She says: "It took me a good year, with very little income, but eventually I started getting the type of work that I wanted. Her solution was to take a more strategic approach, promoting her specialist skills - research and foreign languages (she speaks Arabic) and targeting startups, consultancies and small-business owners, who needed those skills on a flexible basis. "I realised I was competing against a lot of other people with similar skills and experience, and because there was a bidding process against VAs in countries like India, who were bidding at incredibly low rates," she says. Although there was plenty of work available, the competition was fierce. I joined a couple of webinars on how to start and where to start, and also took a management training course so that my skills would be absolutely up to date."īarker then began exploring the various online freelance websites where she could find work, eventually registering with People Per Hour where freelancers can search and bid for projects across a wide range of professions and business sectors. She says: "I did a lot of research into becoming a virtual assistant, which at that time was quite a new concept in the UK. But after having her son in 2007, she decided that she would like to make her work fit around family life, instead of the other way around, and began exploring her options for working from home. She spent six years commuting to London from Tonbridge in Kent to work in a number of support roles in the financial sector. The move from PA to VA is one that has paid off for 38-year-old Zeina Barker.
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