Recruitment Virtual Assistant: Hire a Talent Sourcing & Talent Acquisition VA from $8.50/hr
Every open role costs more than the salary. There is the sourcing, the resume screening, the scheduling back-and-forth, the ATS updates, the candidate emails and the no-shows, while the role stays open and your team covers the work. In most small and mid-size companies, the founder or HR lead does all of it alongside the job they were hired for.
A recruitment virtual assistant takes the operational layer of hiring off your plate. VA MASTERS is a virtual assistant recruitment agency that finds dedicated Filipino recruitment, talent sourcing and talent acquisition VAs and tests them on a real search for your roles before you meet anyone. This guide covers what the role does, how to outsource recruitment tasks well, what it costs and how we recruit for it.
Quick Answer
A recruitment virtual assistant is a dedicated remote recruiter or recruitment coordinator who sources candidates on LinkedIn and job boards, screens resumes, schedules interviews, keeps your ATS current and handles candidate communication, while you keep the hiring decisions. Through VA MASTERS, a dedicated Filipino recruitment VA costs $8.50–$14/hr, about $1,360–$2,240 a month full-time or $680–$1,120 part-time at 80 hours. It costs nothing to start, and first candidates typically arrive in about 2 business days.
Talent Sourcing vs. Talent Acquisition vs. Recruitment Coordination: Which VA Do You Need?
The three titles are often used interchangeably, but they cover different parts of the funnel. Which one you need depends on where your hiring gets stuck.
| Role | What it involves | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Talent sourcing VA (candidate sourcing VA) | Finding passive and active candidates through LinkedIn, Boolean search, job-board resume databases and niche communities; building candidate lists; personalized outreach and follow-ups | Companies that don't get enough qualified applicants on their own |
| Talent acquisition VA (virtual talent acquisition) | The whole pipeline: sourcing, screening, interview scheduling, ATS updates, candidate communication, reference-check coordination, offer paperwork and new-hire admin | Growing teams hiring for several roles at once, every month |
| Recruitment coordinator VA | The logistics of an existing process: scheduling, panel availability, confirmations, candidate updates, ATS stages, reference checks | Companies that have a recruiter or HR lead who needs admin support |
Most clients need a mix. Tell us on the discovery call where the bottleneck is, and we write the job posting around that mix: a sourcer, a full-cycle talent acquisition VA or a coordinator.
The hiring bottleneck most companies don't see
When the person who makes hiring decisions also does all the sourcing, screening and scheduling, every new opening takes time away from the interviews and offers only they can handle. A recruitment VA breaks that loop: the pipeline keeps moving, and the decision-maker steps in for final rounds and offers.
What a Recruitment Virtual Assistant Does: Full Task Breakdown
Here is what a recruitment VA typically owns. Listing it is also the start of a good job description.
Candidate Sourcing and Lists
- Searches on LinkedIn, Indeed and other job boards, GitHub for technical roles, Behance or Dribbble for creative roles, and professional directories
- A candidate list per role with current employer, experience, key skills and a note on why each person fits
- Personalized outreach by InMail or email, follow-ups and response tracking by channel
Resume Screening and First Qualification
- Screening applications against your must-haves, nice-to-haves and knock-outs
- A shortlist with a short summary per candidate: where they meet the bar, where they don't, what to ask in the interview
- Short qualification calls for hard-to-fill roles, if you want them
Interview Scheduling and Coordination
- Scheduling across hiring managers, panels and time zones in Calendly, Google Calendar or your ATS
- Confirmations, reschedules, reminders and interview-prep emails to candidates
- Collecting interviewer feedback after each round and summarizing it for the debrief
ATS Management and Reporting
- Moving candidates through stages, logging every touchpoint, tagging by role and source
- Closing requisitions properly so no candidate sits in a stage without a next step
- Standard reports from your ATS: time to fill, source of hire, stage conversion
Candidate Communication
- Application acknowledgements and status updates at every stage
- Respectful rejection emails from your templates
- Offer-letter coordination and pre-start check-ins
Reference and Background-Check Coordination
- Contacting references and running structured reference calls with your questions
- Starting background checks with your screening vendor and tracking completion
- Flagging anything for your HR team, who make the decisions
Job Descriptions and Job Postings
- Drafting job descriptions from your role brief, with clear scope, requirements and honest expectations
- Posting to the right mix of boards and tracking applications by source
- Refreshing or boosting postings when applications slow down
Onboarding Admin
- Collecting signed documents and setting up new hires in your HR system
- Scheduling first-week meetings and sending onboarding materials
If the role leans toward broader HR work (onboarding, HR admin, people operations), see our HR virtual assistants. If you mainly need calendars and inbox handled, an administrative VA may be enough.
See a Recruitment VA and Our Recruiters at Work
Raquel, an HR and recruitment virtual assistant, talks about finding a senior back-end Java developer after months of unsuccessful searching: LinkedIn sourcing, CV screening, interview coordination and keeping the candidate pipeline organized so the owner can focus on clients.
Our recruitment manager walks through our screening process: understanding the role, sourcing, initial screening, custom skills tests, an in-depth interview and the final client interview with the best candidates.
LinkedIn Sourcing, Boolean Search and Multi-Channel Outreach
Most candidate sourcing happens on LinkedIn, and doing it well takes more than typing a job title into the search bar.
Boolean search
Boolean search combines keywords with AND, OR, NOT, quotes and brackets to narrow or widen results. Your VA builds a string per role that targets title, skills, industry, seniority and location together, then saves the search so new matches show up.
Example Boolean strings your VA might build
- Title targeting: ("Talent Acquisition Manager" OR "Head of Recruiting" OR "TA Lead") AND (SaaS OR "Series B")
- Skills targeting: (Python OR Django) AND (fintech OR payments) NOT (intern OR junior)
- Excluding agencies: NOT ("staffing agency" OR recruiter), so agency profiles don't crowd the results
LinkedIn Recruiter, Sales Navigator or a free account
With a LinkedIn Recruiter seat, the VA uses InMail credits, saved searches with alerts and Recruiter's filters. Without one, they work within the free search limits and connection-based outreach. Give the VA their own seat or account: LinkedIn's User Agreement doesn't allow sharing a personal login.
Beyond LinkedIn
Each role has better channels: GitHub and Stack Overflow for engineers, Behance and Dribbble for designers, Wellfound for startup candidates, industry communities and alumni networks for specialists.
Outreach that gets replies
Generic messages get ignored. Your VA references something specific in each profile (a project, a company, a skill that fits the role), leads with what is in it for the candidate, and runs a short sequence: a first message, one follow-up and a close. Replies and outcomes go into your ATS or CRM, so you can see which channel and message work for each role.
ATS Platforms and Recruitment Tools a Recruitment VA Works In
We test candidates on the tools your team actually uses, not on a general claim of "ATS experience". These are the systems recruitment VAs most often work in:
| Platform | Typical users | What the VA does in it |
|---|---|---|
| Lever | Growing tech companies | Pipeline stages, interview scheduling, nurture campaigns, reports |
| Greenhouse | Structured hiring at mid-size and larger companies | Scorecards, interview kits, source tracking, offer workflows |
| Workable | Small and mid-size businesses | Job-board posting, pipeline automation, candidate data requests |
| BambooHR | Companies using BambooHR as their HR system | Applicant tracking, offer letters, onboarding steps |
| JazzHR | Small teams | Job syndication, knock-out questions, pipeline stages |
| Jobvite | Companies with referral programs | Referrals, candidate CRM, analytics |
| SmartRecruiters | Global hiring | Multi-language postings, hiring-manager collaboration, agency portal |
| Bullhorn and similar CRMs | Staffing and recruiting agencies | Candidate and client records, submittals, activity logging |
Other tools recruitment VAs commonly use: LinkedIn Recruiter and Sales Navigator, Indeed's resume search, sourcing tools such as hireEZ and SeekOut, Calendly and Acuity for scheduling, background-check platforms such as Checkr and Sterling, Typeform for candidate questionnaires, and Slack, Notion or ClickUp for hiring-manager updates.
Using a tool not listed here?
If you use another ATS or an in-house system, we add a task in that tool to the skills test, so you see how each candidate works in it before you meet them.
Who Uses a Recruitment VA: Three Common Use Cases
Startup founders hiring their first 10–50 people
You are hiring for engineering, sales, marketing and operations at the same time, while running the company. The VA takes sourcing-to-shortlist off your plate: you get a short list of screened candidates per role and a calendar with first-round interviews already booked. You make the decisions; the VA handles everything around them.
In-house HR teams that need sourcing capacity
Your HR team also handles reviews, benefits, employee relations and onboarding, and still has open roles to fill this quarter. A talent acquisition VA works inside your ATS and your process, takes on the high-volume sourcing and coordination, and leaves your HR leads the decisions and the culture work.
Recruitment agencies and staffing firms
Every hour a consultant spends on sourcing, scheduling and data entry is an hour not spent with clients. A candidate sourcing VA sources for open requisitions, keeps Bullhorn or your CRM clean and runs candidate communication, so consultants focus on clients and placements. For agency outsourcing models (RPO, offshore support teams, dedicated VAs) and their costs, see our guide to recruitment outsourcing companies for recruiting agencies.
Working with VA Masters completely changed the way I handle recruitment. Bringing Raquel on board as my Virtual Assistant has been a huge relief. She takes care of coordinating interviews, tracking candidate progress, and managing job publications, which frees up my time for strategic growth and interviews. … It’s reassuring to know there’s always someone to help ensure Raquel stays engaged and productive. I genuinely appreciate the support and efficiency they bring to my team.
Virtual Assistant Recruiter: Two Meanings, One Page
People search for "virtual assistant recruiter" for two different reasons, and both are covered here.
- A virtual assistant who works as your recruiter. That is the recruitment VA this page describes: a remote sourcer, coordinator or full-cycle talent acquisition VA who works inside your hiring process.
- A recruiter who finds virtual assistants for you. That is what VA MASTERS does. We are a virtual assistant recruitment agency: every search is custom-built for the role, powered by our database of 400,000+ pre-assessed Filipino applicants, AI-assisted screening and human recruiters, and you meet only the best candidates.
The two meet on this page: our own recruiters find, test and present the recruitment VA who will then run your pipeline. The 6-stage process below is the same one we use for every role.
How to Outsource Recruitment Tasks to a Virtual Assistant (Step by Step)
Outsourcing recruitment tasks to a VA works when the work is written down. These five steps apply whether you hire through VA MASTERS or on your own.
1. Decide what to delegate and what to keep
| Delegate to the VA | Keep with your team |
|---|---|
| Sourcing, candidate lists and outreach | The final hiring decision |
| Screening against written criteria | Final-round interviews |
| Interview scheduling, reminders and feedback collection | Offers, pay and negotiation |
| ATS updates, reports and candidate emails | Decisions on background-check results (with your HR team or counsel) |
| Job-description drafts and postings | Final approval of job descriptions and employer messaging |
2. Write the role brief
Recruitment VA job description template
Role: Recruitment virtual assistant ([talent sourcing / full-cycle talent acquisition / recruitment coordination]), [part-time 80 hrs / full-time 160 hrs] a month, [your working hours].
You will: source candidates on LinkedIn and [job boards / niche platforms] with Boolean search; screen applications against our criteria; send personalized outreach and follow-ups; schedule interviews; keep [ATS name] up to date; send candidate updates; coordinate reference checks; report weekly on pipeline and sources.
You have: hands-on recruiting or sourcing experience for real companies or agencies; strong Boolean and LinkedIn search skills; experience in [ATS name] or a similar ATS; clear written English; experience hiring for [your role types, e.g. engineers, sales, healthcare].
Success looks like: a steady weekly shortlist that meets the brief, interviews booked without back-and-forth, an ATS with no stalled candidates, and candidates who hear from us at every stage.
3. Test on a real search
Give candidates one of your roles: build a Boolean string, find five matching profiles with a one-line reason each, and write the first outreach message. Add a short screening exercise (three resumes against your criteria) and a scheduling problem with conflicting calendars. It shows search skill, judgment and writing in under two hours.
4. Ask recruiting-specific interview questions
- Walk me through the Boolean string you would build for [one of your roles].
- A candidate goes silent after confirming an interview. What do you do, and when?
- How do you decide whether a resume goes to the hiring manager when it meets most, but not all, of the criteria?
- Which ATS reports have you run, and what did you change because of them?
- How do you keep a hiring manager updated without filling their inbox?
5. Set up access and plan the first 30 days
- Week 1: the VA's own logins (ATS, email, calendar, LinkedIn seat), your role briefs, screening criteria, email templates and two or three past shortlists you liked.
- Week 2: live sourcing on one or two roles, with your feedback on the first shortlists.
- Weeks 3–4: all open roles, a short weekly pipeline report and one check-in a week.
Candidate data is personal data. Agree where it is stored, who has access and how long you keep it, in line with the privacy rules that apply to your hiring.
Building a Talent Pipeline and a Better Candidate Experience
Reactive hiring, starting from zero every time a role opens, is slow. A recruitment VA can keep a pipeline warm for the roles you fill again and again.
A pipeline for recurring roles
For roles you fill every few months, the VA identifies and tracks good candidates in advance, sends a low-pressure introduction ("we don't have an opening right now, but we'd like to stay in touch") and keeps in contact from time to time. When the role opens, you start with people who already know your company.
Silver-medalist lists
Strong finalists who didn't get the offer are the easiest future hires. The VA keeps a list with your interview notes and contacts them first when a similar role opens.
Job descriptions and employer brand
Candidates judge you by the job description, your LinkedIn page, your reviews and how you communicate during the process. The VA drafts job descriptions that are clear about scope and seniority, keeps your careers page and LinkedIn listings current, and tracks which postings bring qualified applicants and which need active sourcing.
Candidate experience at scale
Every applicant, hired or not, should hear back. The VA sends timely confirmations, proactive status updates, interview prep and respectful rejections from your templates. Over a year, those hundreds of small interactions are a large part of your employer brand.
What Does a Recruitment or Talent Acquisition VA Cost?
Where a candidate sits in the range depends on scope. A coordinator who schedules and updates the ATS sits at the lower end; a full-cycle talent acquisition VA who sources hard-to-fill technical roles and reports to your leadership sits higher. If the job is mostly scheduling and admin with no sourcing, it is priced at our Administrative rate, from $6.50/hr.
| Arrangement | Hours | Monthly cost | Yearly cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Part-time recruitment VA | 80 hrs/month | $680–$1,120 | $8,160–$13,440 |
| Full-time recruitment VA | 160 hrs/month | $1,360–$2,240 | $16,320–$26,880 |
| US HR specialist / recruiter (median wage) | Full-time | about $6,330 wage, before benefits | $75,940 wage (BLS, May 2025), before benefits |
On pay alone, a full-time recruitment VA costs about 65–79% less than the US median wage for human resources specialists, the occupation group that includes recruiters, before benefits, payroll costs and equipment for a local hire. Contingency recruitment agencies usually charge a percentage of each hire's first-year salary, so their cost grows with every hire; a dedicated VA costs the same whether you fill two roles that month or ten. Freelancers set their own rates, and you do the vetting.
Model your own numbers with the recruitment cost comparison calculator or our VA cost savings calculator, or see how much a virtual assistant costs across roles. Most roles start part-time: 72% of the 323 roles opened with VA MASTERS between February and August 2026 were part-time (see the data).
Without a Recruitment VA
- The founder or HR lead does all the sourcing
- Roles stay open while the team covers the work
- Candidates wait days for an update
- The ATS is out of date
- Every new opening starts from zero
With a Recruitment VA
- Sourcing runs every week on every open role
- A shortlist that matches your written criteria
- Every candidate hears back at each stage
- A clean, reportable ATS
- A warm pipeline for recurring roles
How We Find Your Recruitment VA: The 6-Stage Process
Detailed Job Posting
We map your hiring: open roles, hiring cadence, ATS and tools, sourcing channels, role types, and whether you need a sourcer, a full-cycle talent acquisition VA or a coordinator. Then we write a custom job posting for that mix.
Candidate Collection
Every search is custom-built for your role, powered by our database of 400,000+ pre-assessed Filipino applicants, AI-assisted screening and human recruiters. We look for people who have recruited for real companies or agencies.
Initial Screening
We check English, internet set-up and real recruiting experience: which ATS platforms, which sourcing methods, which role types and what hiring volume.
Custom Skills Test
Candidates do the work: a Boolean search for one of your role profiles, a task in your ATS, an outreach message, a resume screen against a sample job description and a scheduling problem with calendar conflicts.
In-Depth Interview
We ask how they would source your role, what they do when a candidate goes silent, and how they keep a pipeline organized. Candidates who answer from experience go forward.
Client Interview
You meet the best candidates, review their test results and choose. First candidates typically arrive in about 2 business days.
The process is selective: about 1 in 508 applicants is placed (166,350 applications, January 2025 to July 2026; Filipino Virtual Assistant Statistics 2026). The practical test does most of the filtering: in our analysis of 16,308 recorded rejection decisions (January 2025 to September 2026), failing the skills test was the most common reason a candidate was turned down (35.9%), and candidates rejected for lack of experience and those who failed the test had almost the same CV ratings (1.76 vs 1.71 out of 5) (Why Candidates Don't Get Hired). That is why we test recruitment VAs on a real search, not on their resume. If you're not satisfied with your VA, you get a replacement, free of charge.
Ready to Fill Roles Faster?
Tell us your hiring volume, your ATS and where the bottleneck is (sourcing, screening or coordination), and we'll build the job posting and skills test around it.
Talk to Our Team →Why Businesses Hire Filipino Recruitment VAs
The Philippines has a large community of recruiters, sourcers and HR assistants who have worked with US, UK and Australian companies and agencies. Here is what matters for this role:
- Clear written and spoken English. Recruitment is communication: outreach messages, candidate updates and hiring-manager reports. We test it in the screening and in the outreach task.
- Familiarity with Western hiring processes. Many candidates have sourced for US, UK or Australian roles and know their job titles, career paths and interview formats.
- Care with records. A pipeline is only as good as its ATS data. The skills test includes an ATS task, so you see how a candidate documents and updates records.
- Your hours. We recruit for your hours, so interview scheduling and candidate replies happen while your hiring managers are working.
VA MASTERS Recruitment VA vs. Other Options
| Factor | VA MASTERS recruitment VA | Contingency recruitment agency | Freelance marketplaces | In-house recruiter |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Who finds and tests the person | We do, with a custom test on your roles and ATS | The agency recruits candidates for each role | You do | You do |
| Dedicated to your company | Yes | No, works across many clients | Varies, often several clients | Yes |
| Pricing model | $8.50–$14/hr, no per-hire fees | A percentage of each hire's first-year salary | Set by each freelancer | Salary + benefits (US HR specialist median $75,940/yr, BLS May 2025) |
| Works in your ATS and keeps your pipeline | Yes | Usually its own systems | Depends on the person | Yes |
| Builds a pipeline for future roles | Yes, if you add it to the role | Per search | Rarely | Yes |
| If it isn't a fit | Free replacement | Depends on the agency's terms | Search again | Recruit again |
| Best for | Ongoing hiring across several roles | One senior or very specialized search | Short sourcing projects | Large, steady hiring volume |
What Clients Say About Hiring With VA MASTERS
Real Messages from Real Clients
Hear From Recruiters at VA MASTERS
Looking for related support? See our HR virtual assistants, virtual operations managers, payroll VA services and administrative VAs.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a recruitment virtual assistant?
A recruitment virtual assistant is a dedicated remote team member who runs the operational side of your hiring: sourcing candidates on LinkedIn and job boards, screening resumes against your criteria, scheduling interviews, keeping your ATS up to date and handling candidate communication. You keep the hiring decisions; the VA keeps qualified candidates moving in front of you.
What is a talent sourcing virtual assistant?
A talent sourcing virtual assistant focuses on the top of the funnel. They build Boolean searches, find passive and active candidates on LinkedIn, job-board resume databases and niche communities, write personalized outreach and hand you a list of interested, qualified people. They don't wait for applications to come in.
What is a talent acquisition virtual assistant?
A talent acquisition virtual assistant manages the whole pipeline: sourcing, screening, interview scheduling, ATS updates, candidate communication, reference-check coordination, offer paperwork and new-hire admin. It is the broadest of the three recruitment VA roles and fits companies that hire every month.
How do VAs assist with recruitment sourcing?
They turn your job brief into search strings, search LinkedIn, job-board resume databases and niche platforms, record each candidate with a note on why they fit, send personalized outreach and follow-ups, and report what is working by channel. You review the shortlist and run the interviews that need your judgment.
How much does a recruitment virtual assistant cost?
Through VA MASTERS, a recruitment, talent sourcing or talent acquisition VA costs $8.50–$14/hr (our Human Resources & Recruiting rate). That is about $1,360–$2,240 a month full-time at 160 hours, or $680–$1,120 a month part-time at 80 hours. It costs nothing to start: no upfront fees and no setup fees. For comparison, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median annual wage of human resources specialists, the group that includes recruiters, at $75,940 (May 2025).
How much does a virtual talent acquisition partner cost?
It depends on the model. A dedicated talent acquisition VA through VA MASTERS costs $8.50–$14/hr, a fixed monthly cost however many roles you fill. Contingency recruitment agencies usually charge a percentage of each hire's first-year salary, and RPO providers price custom programs. A dedicated VA fits ongoing hiring; an agency can fit one senior search.
Can a recruitment VA do LinkedIn sourcing and Boolean search?
Yes, it is the most requested skill for the role. The VA builds Boolean strings with AND, OR, NOT and quotes for each role, runs and saves searches, and sends personalized InMails or messages. Give the VA their own LinkedIn seat: LinkedIn's User Agreement doesn't allow sharing a personal account.
Which ATS platforms can a recruitment VA use?
Recruitment VAs commonly work in Lever, Greenhouse, Workable, BambooHR, JazzHR, Jobvite, SmartRecruiters and, for staffing agencies, Bullhorn and similar CRMs. If you use a different system, we add a task in your own ATS to the skills test, so you see the candidate work in it before you meet them.
Can a VA support a recruitment agency or staffing firm?
Yes. Agencies use recruitment VAs to source for open requisitions, keep the ATS or CRM clean, schedule client interviews and handle candidate updates, so consultants spend more time on clients and placements. For agency outsourcing models and costs, see our guide to recruitment outsourcing companies for recruiting agencies.
How do I outsource recruitment tasks to a virtual assistant?
Map your hiring steps and mark the repeatable ones (sourcing, screening against written criteria, scheduling, ATS updates, candidate emails). Write a role brief, test candidates on a real search for one of your roles, give the VA their own logins, and review a shortlist and a short weekly report for the first month. Keep final interviews, offers and pay decisions with your team.
Is VA MASTERS a virtual assistant recruiter?
Yes. VA MASTERS is a virtual assistant recruitment agency: we run custom recruitment for each client, powered by a database of 400,000+ pre-assessed Filipino applicants, and present the best candidates for a wide range of remote roles, from recruitment VAs to admin, marketing and finance VAs.
How fast can I get recruitment VA candidates?
First candidates typically arrive in about 2 business days after the discovery call, already screened and tested on a sourcing and screening task built around your roles.
Can I hire a recruitment VA part-time?
Yes. Part-time is the most common way businesses hire a VA: 72% of the 323 roles opened with VA MASTERS between February and August 2026 were part-time, and 46% were opened at exactly 80 hours a month (What Businesses Actually Outsource to Virtual Assistants in 2026). A part-time recruitment VA at 80 hours costs $680–$1,120 a month.
What if the recruitment VA isn't the right fit?
If you're not satisfied with your VA, you get a replacement, free of charge. A clear role brief, written screening criteria and a weekly check-in in the first month prevent most fit problems.
I'm a recruiter looking for VA work. How do I apply?
This page is for businesses hiring a recruitment VA. If you're a Filipino recruiter or talent acquisition specialist looking for work, see the open positions on our careers page and apply to the role that fits you there.
Stop Letting Open Roles Drain Your Team
Hire a dedicated Filipino recruitment VA through VA MASTERS who sources, screens, schedules and keeps your ATS clean every week, from $8.50/hr.
- LinkedIn and Boolean sourcing, screening, scheduling and ATS updates
- Tested on a real search for your roles and in your ATS before you meet them
- For startup founders, in-house HR teams and recruitment agencies
- First candidates in about 2 business days
- No upfront fees, no setup fees, no per-hire fees
- Free replacement if you're not satisfied with your VA
Book a free discovery call and we’ll map out exactly how a virtual assistant can save you time, cut costs, and help your business grow. No commitment required.
Connect with our experts to:
- Identify which roles you can outsource immediately
- Get a custom cost savings estimate for your business
- Learn how our 6-stage recruitment process works
- See real examples of VAs in your industry