Zirtual reviews

The training is fast and furious and for the people that don't catch on to all the different templates and checklists and emails and google chrome and google hangout and the list goes on in the four days of training, they let you go. There is alot to learn and people learn differently. There were some areas I did well with and others I didn't, but with time knew I would be just fine, but wasn't given that time. I had planned to quit anyway because I feel the training is insufficient, and they change things it seems daily. Templates, checklists, etc. I have worked in administrative jobs for over 24 years and have had my employers give me nothing but high recommendations.

You can't choose any of the clients you work with. Your experience at Zirtual is very much a gamble when it comes to who you are paired with. Many of the clients can be rude, demanding, and have the biggest egos you've encountered. This isn't true of all, there are some genuinely great people who sign up and have clear communication and are respectful of the fact that ZA's have multiple clients they work with. Unless a client becomes outright abusive (verbally through email etc.) management will not allow you to transfer the client who is causing issues. For this reason, many ZA's just quit unexpectedly, and the client is transferred and becomes someone else's issue. Unfortunately, many of the people who sign up for the service don't seem to understand what they have signed up for. They have unrealistic expectations from the start of what they are going to get out of having a Zirtual Assistant. The company has changed from a relaxed attitude with greater flexibility, to a much more "Big Brother" approach where everything must be tracked and monitored (checklists, reports, constant keeping track of each and every task, etc.). You have to remember to have a timer running every second of the day, which is frustrating when changing from task to task. Management seems much more untrusting of the professionals they hired, and want to monitor where each little minute is spent. Policies constantly change, and some of the changes can seem quite arbitrary. Employees of the company must use their personal cell phones for work and are not compensated. Much of the time during the week is now wasted on largely unproductive meetings. There are meetings each week with your assigned "pod group" then one on one meetings with your pod leader, plus end of week meetings or other random assigned meet ups. It seems the company has become obsessed with meetings, all of which take away from actual client time. Along with the meetings, each month has a "theme" to discuss, and each week now has mini homework assignments for employees to fill out a document etc. There are also frequent surveys sent out that you must complete.