Virtual Executive Assistant Australia — DotVA

A virtual executive assistant is the highest-leverage hire most AU founders can make. The cost is one-third the local equivalent. The hours saved show up in week one. The compounding effect, in our experience, is roughly 1.5x your effective capacity within 90 days.

Here’s what an EA placement looks like in practice.

Who the EA is

Every DotVA executive assistant placement is one VA, dedicated to one principal. Not a shared pool. Not a help desk. The same person every day, building the knowledge that makes the role compound.

The pool we recruit from has prior EA or executive support experience (minimum 3 years, most have 5-8), strong written English (assessed before placement), and demonstrated discretion. We screen for the willingness to push back politely — an EA who only ever says yes is an EA you can’t trust with judgement calls.

What the EA owns

By week 4, your EA is owning:

• Inbox triage. They read every inbound email, label by priority (urgent / FYI / waiting on / customer support / spam), draft replies for the routine 60-70%, and surface only the 5-10/day that need you. You read 10 emails instead of 80.
• Calendar management. Booking meetings, defending blocks, sending agendas the morning of, following up on action items.
• Travel + accommodation. End-to-end booking, itineraries, calendar holds, lounge passes.
• Meeting prep + board packs. Pre-meeting briefs, decks formatted, board minutes drafted, action items tracked.
• Vendor + supplier coordination. Quote chasing, invoice approval, contract renewals.

For specialist EA work (M&A document management, board secretariat, light bookkeeping), the placement still fits the specialist tier; we just brief the scope explicitly in week 1.

Why Manila

Most DotVA EA placements are Manila-based. Three reasons:

• AEST overlap. Manila is 2-3 hours behind AEST/AEDT. Live conversation any time before 4pm Melbourne.
• English fluency. Philippine English is excellent in the BPO/EA pool. Reading + writing alignment with AU register is strong.
• EA pool depth. We can present 3-5 vetted EA candidates within 7-10 days, vs 4-6 weeks for the same vertical specialism in Eastern Europe.

What you bring

For an EA placement to compound, you bring two things:

1. A 30-minute weekly check-in in week 1-2, dropping to 20 minutes by week 4.
2. A willingness to write things down. SOPs, preferences, recurring decisions. Your EA reads them. So does Claude when they use it.

Everything else — recruiting, onboarding, performance management, replacement coverage — sits with us.

Pricing

EA placements sit in our specialist tier: AUD $18-25/hr (excl GST). At a typical 20 hours/week placement, that’s AUD $1,500-$2,200/month. About 30% of the loaded cost of a local EA hire.

A $500 refundable deposit covers our recruiting + placement work. We replace at no cost inside the 30-day satisfaction window.

Book a discovery call and we’ll walk you through which 2-3 tasks to delegate first.