Why you can't find the best Virtual Assistants in 2025 and into 2026
Jan 29, 2026
For small businesses in the English-speaking world, hiring a virtual assistant used to feel straightforward. A role went up, applicants came in, a decision was made. This was generally true in the past 5 years or so.
In 2025 and moving into 2026, that same process often feels slower and more uncertain.
This isn’t because there’s less talent available. Quite the opposite, actually.
It’s because the conditions that produce good virtual assistants have changed, while virtual assistant hiring processes largely haven’t.
What looks like a hiring problem is often a visibility or attraction problem. And once you understand that, many virtual assistant hiring challenges start to make sense.
So, here are four reasons why you can’t find the best virtual assistants in 2026.
Four reasons you can’t find the best Virtual Assistants in 2026
1. The best ones aren’t actively looking at job ads
The strongest virtual assistants, executive assistants and remote workers are usually already happily working, and they’re not in a hurry to leave that kind of stability any time soon.
They’re trusted by the people they work with because they’re top performers.
You see, when they’ve developed a sense of trust and responsibility with their colleagues, they really can’t find a good reason to leave.
Their work has weight, and their decisions matter. They are proven rockstars.
When someone is operating at that level and in that kind of environment, browsing job boards never becomes a priority.
Even when pay isn’t perfectly aligned with market rates, satisfaction often is. Enjoyment, autonomy, and a sense of usefulness have a way of keeping people where they are. From the outside, it can look like these candidates don’t exist. In reality, they’re simply occupied.
This is one of the hidden virtual assistant hiring challenges in the past couple of years we’ve identified (and carried over into 2026) so far, and not a lot notice: The people you want are not unemployed - they’re engaged.
2. The best candidates are too busy to jump through hoops
Picture a scenario where one of these superstar virtual assistants begins searching for a new opportunity this 2026.
Those strong virtual assistants will probably not be spending their evenings polishing resumes or recording video introductions you required in your job ad.
Many haven’t updated their profiles in years. Not because they lack ambition, but because their reputation is already spoken for. They’ve been busy solving problems, keeping current ops moving, and carrying responsibility inside someone else’s business.
When your application process for hiring virtual assistants in 2026 still requires them to do long application forms, multiple screening steps, and unpaid tasks upfront, or even paid trial tasks that take too much of their time (say, 4 hours or more) the process filters for availability rather than ability. In this day and age, being too selective before building rapport and trust just means you've basically pushed away most superstar applicants.
3. Some of the best ones can’t be found online
Not all good virtual assistants are actually visible online.
A significant portion of experienced virtual assistants are known through referrals, long-term professional relationships, or recruiter networks built over time. And in our 10 years of experience running a placement agency, we’ve found that only about 50% of the talent pool is actually online. This is because they move quietly between roles, and often at the invitation of someone who already trusts them.
These candidates don’t need to signal competence publicly. Their work has already done that for them. If your virtual assistant hiring relies only on public platforms and inbound applications, it misses this entire layer of talent.
Rather than a failure of effort, it’s really just a limitation of the search.
This is where Targeted Outreach or Outbound Recruiting comes in handy.
While it might take the extra effort to do ‘the search’ rather than setting up a job ad, hiring a virtual assistant this way does grant you the liberty to find and choose quality candidates on your own terms.
4. The best ones are well-guarded
High-performing virtual assistants rarely stay undervalued for long.
They may start below market, prove their worth quickly, and then see their compensation increase steadily as their employer realizes what they’ve found. This happens less out of generosity, but out of good business sense. Retaining someone who understands the business deeply is far easier than replacing them.
Over time, these virtual assistants become difficult to attract from the outside. Both because they’re either unreachable, and/or because the cost of leaving grows higher. Stability, trust, and incremental reward do their work quietly.
By the time a role is posted publicly, someone else may have already decided that person is essential.
PS: This doesn’t mean job ads are useless. They still work for broad roles and entry-level needs.
But when the goal is to hire a virtual assistant, executive assistant or remote worker who can own outcomes, manage complexity, and earn trust, waiting for applications often isn’t enough. That’s why targeted recruiting exists. Some call it outbound recruiting. Others call it headhunting.
For years, large remote organizations have relied on this approach to stay ahead of hiring challenges and secure superstar virtual assistants from a wide talent pool. Yet most remote teams, particularly smaller ones, have not tapped into this strategy.
When a hire or two can make or break your business, Outbound Recruiting becomes a strategic advantage worth introducing. Outbound Recruiting can allow you to acquire top virtual assistants with niche skills that you need, including strengths that may not always be visible on an applicant’s resume.
