Over the last twenty years, the notion of working does not only revolve around 8-5 day jobs at the office. Thanks to the more connected world the Internet and the ever advancing technology has to offer, workers can perform tasks wherever, whenever.

This phenomenon came along with the rise of virtual assistants, which may be classified as an employee, freelancer, or independent contractor who works online and performs a variety of tasks to help individuals or businesses. Virtual assistants can offer a lot of the services an in-house secretary would traditionally handle: data entry, transcription, scheduling, copywriting, programming, design, and other services. They usually work at home and in fact, may never meet their clients in-person.

The rise of virtual work and virtual assistants have demonstrated a steady growth in the previous years. Undoubtedly, it has become increasingly popular among employees and employers alike. In fact, in the US, a boom of 79.7 percent increase in the number of telecommunicating employees who have identified themselves under the category of virtual workers. Moreover, websites hosting job postings for aspiring virtual assistants have recorded over a hundred thousand job postings across the world.

However, there is a common misconception that virtual assistants are some kind of “luxury” only affordable by the big companies to outsource projects that require less management but are considered an overhead. The truth is, it is quite the contrary.

Small companies and start up businesses resort to hiring virtual assistants as a solution to the limited time they have available.

But why is there a sudden boom in this industry? Here are some of the trends why hiring or being a virtual assistant may be a good idea: