Red Flags and How to Avoid Bad Author VA Hires
Every author who has hired a VA and had the relationship go wrong can usually point, in retrospect, to signals they missed or rationalized away early in the process. The interview that went on too long with too many vague answers. The test task that came back technically complete but somehow wrong in ways that were hard to articulate. The first week where responses were slower than expected and there was always a reasonable explanation. The instinct that something was slightly off, dismissed because the candidate was otherwise impressive.
This article is about making those signals easier to see in real time rather than in retrospect. None of the red flags listed here is guaranteed to produce a bad hire — context matters, and good candidates sometimes have off days or unusual circumstances. But they're patterns worth taking seriously rather than explaining away, especially when multiple signals appear together.
Red Flags in the Application Stage
The application is a VA's highest-effort, most carefully prepared communication with you. If there are problems here, they will be more pronounced in the working relationship, not less.
Didn't follow application instructions: if your posting asked candidates to include a specific word or answer a specific question and they didn't, they either didn't read carefully or didn't consider the instructions important enough to follow. Either interpretation is a problem for a role that depends on careful reading and instruction-following
Generic, templated cover letter: a VA who sends the same cover letter to fifty postings without meaningful personalization is not demonstrating genuine interest in your specific role. Compare this to a candidate who references your specific books, your genre, or a specific task you mentioned in the posting
Resume or experience that doesn't hold up to scrutiny: vague descriptions of past work ('assisted with social media for various clients') that can't be verified or elaborated on specifically are less reliable than concrete, describable experience
Claims expert-level proficiency in an improbably large number of tools: every tool takes real time to learn well, and a candidate who claims mastery of fifteen platforms may have superficial familiarity with all of them rather than genuine proficiency in any
Immediate pressure to skip the hiring process: a candidate who pushes to skip the interview, skip the test task, or move directly to a contract before you've had a meaningful conversation is either badly matched to the process or in a hurry for reasons that aren't in your interest
Red Flags in the Interview
The interview is where the application gets tested. A candidate who seemed strong on paper but responds poorly to direct questions is usually revealing something real.
Vague answers to specific questions: if you ask 'what would you do if you made a mistake on a task?' and the answer is 'I always try to do my best,' the candidate has not answered the question. Vagueness in response to specific situational questions usually means limited relevant experience or an unwillingness to be honest about limitations
Overpromising: a VA who claims they can have full independence within a week, never makes mistakes, and can handle tasks they've never specifically described doing before is either overconfident or not being honest about their capabilities. Look for candidates who describe what they can do accurately, including limitations, rather than telling you what they think you want to hear
Poor listening: a candidate who answers questions you didn't ask, needs you to repeat yourself repeatedly, or consistently misunderstands the direction of the conversation is demonstrating a listening problem that will manifest in every task you assign them
Resistance to a trial period: when you explain that you'd like to structure the first month as a formal trial period, a confident, experienced VA will accept this as a reasonable professional norm. A VA who pushes back strongly, demands a longer-term commitment upfront, or seems unsettled by the proposal is telling you something about their confidence in their own work
Unavailability to explain gaps or references: if a candidate can't or won't provide any references, or can't explain a gap in their work history with a clear and reasonable answer, treat it as a flag rather than looking for ways to dismiss it
Red Flags in the Test Task
The test task is the closest thing you have to a preview of actual working performance. Treat it accordingly.
Submitted significantly late without communication: if a test task has a clear deadline and the candidate misses it without proactively letting you know there was an issue, this is a direct preview of how they'll handle deadlines in your working relationship
Output that ignores the brief: you provided examples, specific instructions, and a clear description of what you were looking for — and the output doesn't reflect any of it. This isn't a creativity issue; it's a brief-following issue, which is fundamental to VA work
Writing quality significantly below the application: cover letters are the most carefully proofread thing a candidate writes. If the test task output has significant grammatical errors, unclear communication, or a noticeably lower quality level than the application, the cover letter quality was an outlier rather than a representative sample
Output that required no evident effort or customization: a test task that looks like it took fifteen minutes when you estimated two to three hours of work may have been produced with minimal effort, or with AI assistance that wasn't disclosed, without the genuine engagement the task required
⚠ If you've asked candidates not to use AI tools for a test task — particularly for tasks where authentic voice matching matters — and you suspect the output was AI-generated, ask the candidate directly. Their response to the question is as informative as the test task itself. A candidate who's honest about how they used AI is a different conversation than one who denies it when the output is clearly not their writing.
Red Flags in the Early Working Relationship
Some problems only become visible once the relationship has started. The trial period is specifically designed to surface these before they become entrenched.
Communication that requires constant prompting: in a healthy VA relationship, the VA keeps you informed on task status without being asked. A VA who goes quiet for extended periods and only surfaces when you check in is creating the management overhead you hired them to reduce
The 'disappearing VA': a VA who's unreachable for a day or more without advance notice, or who provides a different explanation each time it happens, is either overcommitted to other clients or not taking your work as seriously as they committed to
Consistent inability to learn from feedback: every VA needs correction in the early weeks. A healthy pattern is that feedback is heard, incorporated, and the same issue doesn't recur repeatedly. A concerning pattern is that the same correction is needed for the same type of mistake week after week
Scope creep in the other direction: a VA who consistently underdelivers on hours, produces less work than you're paying for, or fills hours with low-value tasks rather than the priorities you've identified may be managing their time across multiple clients in a way that doesn't serve your engagement
Unusual curiosity about financial or account data beyond their role: a VA whose work requires access to your ad accounts or your email platform should have appropriately scoped access. A VA who asks for access to financial accounts, full admin credentials, or information about your income beyond what their tasks require is a flag worth taking seriously
What to Do When You Spot a Red Flag
The most common mistake authors make when they spot a red flag is doing nothing — rationalizing the signal away, giving extra time for the issue to resolve itself, or avoiding the conversation because it's uncomfortable. The problem with this approach is that VA relationship problems almost never improve through inaction. They get entrenched.
When you notice a red flag, the right response is to address it directly and specifically, usually in writing so there's a record of the conversation. 'I noticed the task was submitted three days after the deadline. In our working relationship, I need deadlines to be met or flagged in advance if there's a problem — can you tell me what happened and how we'd handle this differently in future?' This gives the candidate an opportunity to explain and correct, and their response tells you whether this is an addressable issue or a pattern.
If the same issue recurs after a direct conversation, or if multiple different flags are present simultaneously, the trial period is your clear exit opportunity. End the relationship cleanly, pay any outstanding hours, and begin the search again. The sunk cost of the first hire — the time and money spent — is real, but it's already spent regardless of what you do next. The only decision that matters is whether to continue spending into a relationship that isn't working.
How Purpose-Built Services Help
One genuine advantage of services like Author Anchor is that the most common early-stage red flags — poor communication, inability to follow instructions, unreliability in the application and interview process — are filtered before you ever meet a candidate. The vetting and training infrastructure means you're selecting from a pool that has already been screened for the foundational behaviors that most commonly produce bad hires. This doesn't eliminate the need to be attentive to fit and performance in the early weeks, but it substantially reduces the likelihood of the most fundamental problems.
Conclusion
The red flags covered in this article are reliable signals, not certainties. Good candidates occasionally miss a deadline due to a genuine emergency. Excellent VAs sometimes have an off week. What distinguishes a pattern worth acting on from an isolated incident is recurrence — the same issue appearing again after a direct conversation about it. Pay attention, communicate directly when something concerns you, and use the trial period for what it's designed for: a protected window to discover whether this is the right relationship before you're committed to it. The next article moves from finding and hiring into building the relationship — specifically, the onboarding process that sets the working relationship up for genuine success.
Hello, I'm Randall Wood. When I'm not pounding the keyboard or entertaining my giant dog I like to build tools for my fellow indie authors. In these articles, you'll find lessons learned over sixteen years spent in the indie author world. I share it all here to help you get one step closer to where you want to be.— Randall