Judgment is the job.
Virtual Assistant Academy trains and hires the guest-experience specialists behind a growing portfolio of short-term rentals in the USA. The routine messages are already automated. What we hire is a person who knows what to answer, what to fix, and what to escalate.
≈ 30 minutes · the course is the interview · no resume required
Real guests. Real houses. Your call.
You'll run the guest side of a working rental operation — answering the messages that need a human, coordinating housekeepers, catching small problems while they're still small, and bringing recommendations instead of questions.
Warmth matters
You're the voice a tired traveler meets at 9 PM. Kind beats clever, every time.
Clear writing matters
Short, warm, unambiguous messages. Perfect English does not matter — we mean that.
Honesty matters most
Telling us early when you're stuck is the skill. Being stuck quietly is the only real mistake here.
A Tuesday, 9:41 PM
Hi — the coffee maker isn't working and we have an early start tomorrow 😞
We're sorry for the inconvenience. Your feedback is important to us.
Oh no — not before an early morning! Try holding the brew button 3 seconds; if it's still out, there's a French press in the cabinet left of the stove, and I'll have a replacement there tomorrow.
That's the job. The struck-out reply is what a bot sends. The second one is why we hire people.
“Most of our routine guest messages are already automated. What I need from a human is judgment. Warmth matters. Writing clearly matters. Perfect English does not.”
You'll work from a purpose-built command center.
- One dashboard, everything live — every property's guests, cleanings, weather and alerts on a single board, built for this exact job.
- A searchable playbook — 69 written procedures. Type “broken coffee maker” and the answer appears. You are never left guessing.
- Real escalation lines — Slack for the team, and a red button that reaches the owner's phone directly, any hour, when something truly can't wait.
- Time-clock & schedule built in — clock in, see your shifts, watch your month's pay total update in real time.
Out today 10:00 AM: Sarah
In today 4:00 PM: Isabelle
Cleaner: Cori — started 10:02 AM
In progressDeckhand today. Lead VA when you've earned it.
A written level system runs from Deckhand up to Lead VA. You move up by finishing training and proving it on real work — and every level pays more. Nothing about the next step is a mystery: the requirements are written down, and you can read them on day one.
every level pays more · requirements in writing
The application respects your time.
No resume screening, no mystery rounds. Three steps, about thirty minutes, and finishing them tells us more about you than a CV ever could.
Take the short course
Three lessons, ~30 minutes. It is the interview — go top to bottom, mark each complete. Your progress saves.
Say hello on video
Seven casual questions over Marco Polo, answered on your own time. No scheduling, no 3 AM calls. Be yourself — a phone selfie energy is exactly right.
Be honest about your skills
A 41-skill self-assessment. “Need training” is a good answer — we built an entire academy for exactly that reason. What we can't train is overstatement.
You will never lose points for asking a question. Not during the application, and not on any day after it.