Virtual Assistant Agency for Canadian Employers
Alliance recruits permanent virtual assistants for Canadian businesses, sourced from India and the Philippines, with working hours that overlap with your day. Your employee, not our subscription. We are a recruitment agency, not a managed VA service. 16+ years, 36+ countries.
We handle the recruitment process from sourcing and screening through interviews and onboarding, so your team can hire capable virtual assistants without managing a VA marketplace or monthly subscription. Candidates are assessed for communication, relevant experience, reliability, and ability to work effectively with Canadian teams, giving you a direct-hire employee who can become part of your business for the long term.
16+ Years Of Experience
550,000+ Placements Delivered
36+ Countries Served
350+ Expert Teams
50+ Top Level Positions
Where Our Virtual Assistants Are Based, and Why It Matters
Let us be direct about the thing most agency pages avoid. Alliance recruits virtual assistants from India and the Philippines, not from Canada.
If you specifically need a Canadian-based VA, we are not your provider, and you should stop here. There are good reasons to want one: identical time zones, Canadian business norms, and data residency if the assistant will handle customer records under PIPEDA. Those are legitimate requirements, and we do not meet them.
What we do provide is a permanent assistant at a materially lower salary, working hours agreed to your time zone, recruited and vetted rather than assigned from a pool.
And there is a second distinction that matters more than geography. A managed VA service employs the assistant, bills you monthly, and often shares them across clients. Alliance does not do that either. We recruit a person who becomes your employee, works only for you, and stays.
One hire, one fee, no subscription.
For the wider practice, see our virtual assistant recruiter agencies page.
A Virtual Assistant Agency That Places, Not Rents
Most virtual assistant companies in Canada sell you access to their staff. The predictable failure is continuity: the assistant who learned your systems over six months gets reassigned, and you start again. As a virtual assistant recruitment agency, we place someone permanently into your business. Slower to set up, and the only version where institutional knowledge accumulates.
How Long Does It Take to Hire a Virtual Assistant in Canada?
Brief and shortlist: 1 to 2 weeks.
Client interviews and a paid practical task: week 2 to 3.
Offer, notice, and onboarding: week 3 to 5. Realistic total is 3 to 5 weeks from brief to start date.
How Much Does a Virtual Assistant Cost in Canada?
Two separate costs, and confusing them is where most comparisons go wrong. Our recruitment fee is a one-off charge, a percentage of first-year salary or a fixed placement fee. The salary is yours and ongoing, and an offshore VA salary sits well below a Canadian equivalent. A managed service quotes you one blended monthly number instead, which looks simpler and costs more over a year. We will run both figures with you.
What We Offer Canadian Employers
A permanent hire onto your payroll
Your employee, your hours, your tools, your confidentiality agreement. Not shared, not billed hourly, not reassigned.
Timezone overlap agreed before sourcing begins
India sits 9.5 to 13.5 hours ahead of Canadian time zones and the Philippines 12 to 15. That is workable with a defined overlap window and unworkable without one. We agree the hours you actually need covered before presenting anyone, rather than discovering the gap at offer stage.
A paid practical task before you decide
Real work: an inbox triage, a multi-timezone calendar conflict, a research brief. Written English and judgement are the job, and an interview tests neither.
Privacy and data-handling assessed explicitly
If the assistant will touch Canadian customer data, PIPEDA obligations remain yours as the employer and cross-border processing needs to be a considered decision, not an accident.
Screening for written communication, not spoken fluency alone
Most VA work is written and most of it goes out in your name.
A replacement guarantee if the hire does not work out
with the period written into the engagement.
Our Virtual Assistant Recruitment Process
Requirement and Reality Check (Week 1)
The actual workload, the hours needing cover, the tools and the access level. This is also where we tell you if recruitment is the wrong route. Under roughly fifteen hours a week of routine admin, a managed service costs less, and we will say so rather than take the fee.
Sourcing and Screening (Weeks 1 to 2)
Sourced in India or the Philippines against your brief. Screened for written English, tool fluency, timezone willingness, and confidentiality track record.
Paid Practical Task (Week 2)
Shortlisted candidates complete real work you set. Expect this to eliminate candidates who interviewed well, which is the point of it.
Client Interviews (Weeks 2 to 3)
Usually two rounds, including one at the hours the role will actually be worked. Interviewing an offshore candidate only during your comfortable afternoon tells you nothing about whether the overlap will hold.
Offer, Notice and Onboarding (Weeks 3 to 5)
Offer, notice navigation, and a structured first-thirty-days plan covering tool access, escalation rules, and a written communication protocol. The most common cause of a failed offshore VA hire is week one with no handover.
Follow-Up and Stabilisation (Week 5+)
We check in after the start to resolve early issues around workload, communication, or expectations before they become long-term problems.
Need Help Choosing Your VA Model?
Not sure whether you need a Canadian VA or an offshore one? Send us the workload and hours. We’ll tell you which option fits—even if the answer isn’t us.
Virtual Assistant Roles We Recruit For
General administrative VA
Inbox, calendar, travel, document preparation, data entry, and scheduling.
Executive assistant VA
Supporting a founder or executive directly, with a higher confidentiality bar and more judgement required.
Bookkeeping and finance VA
Invoicing, reconciliations, expenses and accounts support, with software experience verified rather than claimed.
Customer support VA
Email, chat and ticket handling, where written English quality is the whole job.
Real estate VA
Listing management, CRM upkeep and client coordination for Canadian brokerages and agents.
Sales and CRM VA
Lead research, pipeline hygiene, outreach support and reporting.
Social media and marketing VA
Scheduling, content coordination and community management.
Technical and specialist VA
Web maintenance, design support and research roles.
Coverage across Canada
Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba and Atlantic Canada, including Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver and Montreal. We recruit for employers across all six Canadian time zones and agree on the overlap window per role.
For the broader remote hiring practice, see home based virtual assistant hiring.
Who We Serve
Canadian founders spending hours a week on their own admin
where the cost of not hiring now clearly exceeds the cost of hiring.
Small and mid-sized businesses priced out of a Canadian VA salary
and open to an offshore hire if the overlap and communication hold up.
Employers who used a managed VA service and lost continuity
usually after a second or third reassignment, wanting someone who stays.
Brokerages, agencies and professional firms with repeatable admin
where the work is well-defined enough to hand over properly.
Businesses that tried an offshore VA and it failed
usually appointed on an interview alone, with no overlap agreed and no handover in week one.
Employers who need to think carefully about data
where the assistant will handle Canadian customer records and the cross-border question needs answering before hiring, not after.
The Alliance Advantage
We tell you where the assistant is based on the first screen. India and the Philippines. If that is a problem, better you know now than on the first call.
Permanent placement onto your payroll. We do not employ assistants and rent them to you.
A paid practical task in every process, using real work you set.
Timezone overlap agreed before sourcing, not negotiated at offer.
We tell you when not to hire. Under roughly fifteen hours a week of routine admin, a managed service is cheaper.
One-off fee, not a monthly subscription. After placement, the ongoing cost is the salary, which is yours to manage.
Written English assessed directly, because most VA work is written and most of it is on your behalf.
Onboarding structure included. A thirty-day plan, because the usual failure is week one, not the candidate.
Why Choose Alliance Recruitment Agency in Canada?
The honest version of this page is shorter than most. If you want a Canadian VA in your own time zone with Canadian data residency, there are Canadian agencies that do exactly that, and they will serve you better than we will.
What Alliance offers is a different trade. A permanent, vetted assistant at an offshore salary, working an agreed overlap with your day, who becomes your employee rather than a line on a subscription. For a lot of Canadian small businesses, that trade is worth making. For some it is not, and the difference is usually whether the work is written and asynchronous or spoken and immediate.
We are the wrong choice in three situations. If you need cover starting Monday, recruitment cannot do that and a managed service can. If the workload is under fifteen hours a week of routine admin, a subscription will cost you less. And if the assistant must be Canadian for regulatory or client-facing reasons, we do not meet the requirement.
For Toronto specifically, see virtual assistant Toronto. For the global practice, see our virtual assistant staffing agency page.
Our Client Reviews
We needed a virtual assistant who could take over our day-to-day admin without constant supervision. Alliance understood the role properly and sent us candidates who already had the right experience. The person we hired has been a great fit and has taken a lot of routine work off our team.
Our biggest concern was finding someone who could work with our Canadian hours and communicate clearly. Alliance shortlisted candidates who matched both the skills and schedule we needed. The recruitment process was straightforward, and we were able to make a decision without going through dozens of unsuitable applications.
We were looking for a dedicated virtual assistant rather than a subscription-based VA service. Alliance helped us define the workload, screened candidates for the role, and gave us a few strong people to interview. Our new assistant has settled into the team quickly and now handles several recurring tasks that used to take up my time.
Awards
Meet Our Leadership Team
Molly Anderson
Franchise Lead | Recruitment Franchise
Alex George
General Manager | RPO & Enterprise Recruitment
Nikki Miller
Head of Recruitment | Recruitment & Staffing
Frequently Asked Questions
No. Alliance recruits virtual assistants from India and the Philippines for Canadian employers. If you specifically need a Canadian-based assistant, we are not the right provider.
No. We recruit a permanent assistant who becomes your employee. We do not employ assistants and bill you monthly for their time.
A managed service employs the assistant, bills a monthly fee, and often shares them across clients. Recruitment places someone who joins your payroll, works only for you, and stays.
India is 9.5 to 13.5 hours ahead of Canadian time zones, and the Philippines is 12 to 15. We agree on a defined overlap window before sourcing rather than after the offer.
Three to five weeks from brief to start date, including a paid practical task and two interview rounds.
Two separate costs: a one-off recruitment fee, and the ongoing salary, which for an offshore VA sits well below a Canadian equivalent. A managed service quotes one blended monthly figure instead.
Under roughly fifteen hours a week of routine, non-confidential admin, a managed service usually costs less. Above that, an employed assistant is better economics and better continuity.
If the assistant handles Canadian personal information, your obligations as the employer remain, and cross-border processing should be a considered decision made before hiring.
Written English, tool fluency, timezone willingness, and confidentiality track record, plus a paid practical task using real work you set.
General administrative, executive assistant, bookkeeping and finance, customer support, real estate, sales and CRM, social media and marketing, and technical or specialist roles.
Yes, across Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, and Atlantic Canada, including Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, and Montreal.
Send the workload, the hours needing cover, and the access level. We will confirm whether recruitment is the right route before quoting.
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