Securing a meeting can be a daunting task especially if you don’t know the person. As Yuliia’s virtual assistant, I was tasked to secure a meeting for her Canada trip. The goal was to know more about current situation of hiring Ukrainians in Canada and what can we do to increase their employability. The target people are those who hold higher position in a company. To accomplish the task, we agreed that we will be reaching out to Yuliia’s existing network in Toronto. Yuliia already set my expectation that the chance of accomplishing this task is really low because as we all know, these type of individuals are really busy. The moment I found out that I will be doing this task, I was terrified because I haven’t done this before and I knew I had to do the task flawlessly.
With all the courage that I had, I started doing the task last Friday, April 14, 2023. The first few messages I sent were a little bit vague because I was so clueless on how to do it. Good thing Yuliia advised me to rework the message and suggested a better wording which includes a clear intention. After that, I became more confident in sending the reworked message. It was challenging because after sending the message to multiple individuals, I was not getting any responses.
Even after not getting any responses, I continued, and continued, and just when I decided to rest for a bit, a message suddenly popped up. When I saw the message, I screamed internally. After messaging multiple individuals, I finally got a response and it was a positive response. That person was already hiring Ukrainian newcomers, and was also interested to discuss different possibilities of how we can fill the employment gaps. Because I was too excited upon reading his message, it took me at least 9 minutes to reply, I was just staring at his message for that long. I didn’t know how to reply or what I should say. I wanted to tell him how happy I was because of his positive response, but at the same time, I wanted to keep the conversation as professional as possible. I asked him his preferred time which he responded immediately, and he also provided his email address which made me think that he really is interested in knowing the employability of Ukrainians in Canada.
Going through with this task made me realize that just because I haven’t done this before, doesn’t mean that I can’t do it. It was a great way to end the 1st week of being a virtual assistant.
May this experience serves as a lesson to other virtual assistants that securing meetings or booking meetings is really not easy, but as long as you position the message correctly, there will always be someone who will give you positive response.
Keep your message clear and intentional. Use every opportunity to learn and develop new skills.
