The 30-day VA test – how to know in month one whether a placement is going to work

Day 30 of a VA placement is the most important moment in the relationship. If you do not run a formal review, you almost certainly continue with a placement that is not going to work for another 60-90 days, and then have to deal with it from a much worse position.

Here’s the framework.

Question 1: Has the VA owned one task end-to-end without micromanagement?

“One task” means a recurring responsibility, not a one-off. Inbox triage. Customer support first response. The weekly status report. Calendar management.

“End-to-end” means start to finish. They saw the trigger (new email arrived, Monday came), did the task (replied, drafted, scheduled), and closed the loop (you reviewed without rewriting).

“Without micromanagement” means you did not need to check in on the task more than once a week to make sure it was happening.

If yes: the VA is capable of ownership. If no: either the scope was wrong, the SOP was missing, or the person is wrong. Diagnose which.

Question 2: Are you under 1 hour/week of management overhead?

The maths: a VA who saves you 4 hours/week but costs you 3 hours/week of management is a 1-hour gain. That is not what you hired them for.

By day 30, you should be:

• Daily handoff message takes a minute to read
• Weekly check-in is 30-45 minutes
• Ad-hoc Slack is 5 minutes a day

Total: about 1 hour a week. If you’re at 3-5 hours/week of management, something is structurally wrong.

If yes: efficient. If no: the SOPs are too thin, the VA needs more autonomy, or the VA needs replacement.

Question 3: Has at least one mistake been raised and fixed cleanly?

This is the one most founders skip. Counterintuitively, a placement with no mistakes by day 30 is a red flag.

What you want:

• A real mistake happened (everyone does)
• The VA owned it without defensiveness
• You gave clear feedback without softening it to the point of uselessness
• The fix was implemented same-day
• The mistake did not repeat

If yes: feedback channel works. If no: either the VA is hiding mistakes or you are not giving real feedback. Both are placement-ending if not fixed in month two.

Question 4: Would you re-hire this person today, knowing what you know?

The gut check. Ignore the sunk cost of 30 days of recruiting and onboarding. If this VA walked in today as a fresh candidate with the work you’ve seen, would you hire them?

This question is honest only if you imagine the alternative: a different VA, in their place, with a different profile.

If yes: 12-month relationship. If no: replace inside the 30-day window so the guarantee covers it.

What to do with the answers

• 4 yes: Continue. Run a 90-day review in two months.
• 3 yes / 1 no: Fix the no. Time-bound: 30 more days. If it doesn’t fix, replace.
• 2 yes / 2 no: Structural problem. Replace inside the guarantee window.
• 1 yes / 3 no: Replace now.

The most common mistake is “I’ll give it another month and see”. The cost of that month is recruiting time when it doesn’t work, plus 30 days of underperformance, plus the placement guarantee you’ve now burned.

Day 30 is when you decide. Not day 60.

Need help running a 30-day review on an existing VA? Email Jenn the four answers. I’ll tell you honestly whether the placement is salvageable.