Outsourcing is an exploding industry online. But, many people confuse the job descriptions of some of the outsourcers that will be working for them such as a project manager and a virtual assistants. This is very common and it is easy to overlap these duties. Read on to distinguish between the two and to decide which one best fits your business needs.

Project Manager Duties

Basically, the role of a project manager is to oversee all the goals, milestones, and processes of the project to ensure its timely and cost-effective completion. As the facilitator of the project, you can expect a project manager to wear many hats.

Duties of a project manager include setting up and running meetings, planning and execution, preparing reports and presenting it to the management, determining required resources, assigning tasks, and interviewing candidates. From these tasks, it is quite obvious to see that a project manager needs to communicate all the time in different forms.

But a project manager's duties go beyond doing. A project manager has many duties, not the least of which is that he must be able to think and motivate others to complete their jobs. Apart from this, he must have an open mind so he can learn new things that will help improve their business processes and maximize their human resources.

Virtual Assistant Duties

A virtual assistant, on the other hand, is considered as an independent contractor that offers specific services to your business. Often, a virtual assistant functions just like your secretary, but they carry out the tasks you assign from a home office, using their own computer, phone, and internet connection.

A VA's duties may include managing customer and contact lists, taking care of the billing and accounting issues, creating and sending out e-newsletters, dealing with setting appointments, handling correspondence, handling client questions and transcribing business documents. There are also skill specific virtual assistants that work in content generation, link building, website design, etc.

For seamless work relationships, a virtual assistant must be a team player, be determined to see his clients succeed, have a basic understanding of the different business processes into play in their organization, be willing to accept and correct mistakes, and have good organizational and grammar skills.

By knowing the specific duties a project manager and a virtual assistant have, the distinction between their roles become clearer. Your current needs will determine if you need a virtual assistant or a project manager. The question you need to ask yourself is if you need to hire some assistance in certain areas of your business or if you want/need someone to manage your other outsourced workers.

Your answer will reveal to you which outsourcer you need to hire that would be a benefit to your business.