Many people fantasize about having a personal assistant at their beck and call to handle all the annoying tasks and to-dos that eat up time and energy.

许多人都非常希望拥有一个召之即来的私人助理，帮助自己处理各种耗时费力的繁杂任务和待办事项。

A growing number are fulfilling that fantasy by hiring virtual assistants. These skilled online helpers work from home or through outsourcing firms to handle a widening range of clients' tasks, from scheduling a doctor's appointment, managing meetings or cleaning out an email inbox, to finding the perfect hairdresser or pair of pants.

通过雇佣虚拟助理，越来越多的人达成了这个梦想。这些技术娴熟的在线助手在自己家中或是在外包公司工作，能够处理客户越来越广泛的需求，从预约医生、安排会议、清理收件箱，到寻找最合适的发型师或者一条裤子。

Businesses have long hired virtual administrative assistants online. Now, consumers are sharply increasing use of virtual assistants in their personal lives.

长久以来，许多企业都在线雇佣虚拟行政助理。现在，在私人生活中使用虚拟助理的用户数量也在急剧增长。

Ben and Lydia C. Choi, parents of 3-year-old twin boys, were swamped last August preparing for a move. Mr. Choi, chief executive of CoffeeTable.com, maker of a catalog-shopping app, and Ms. Choi, who heads a sales strategy team at Google, had purchased a home in Palo Alto, Calif. The historic, century-old house had drafty windows and a broken furnace that needed repairs. The family also needed to have utilities and Internet service up-and-running on moving day. 'We had an endless list of to-dos that neither of us wanted to handle,' Ms. Choi says.

本•崔(Ben Choi)和莉迪亚•C.崔(Lydia C. Choi)是一对三岁双胞胎的父母，去年八月他们在准备搬家的时候忙得不可开交。本是CoffeeTable.com的总裁，并曾开发过一个目录购物应用程序；莉迪亚在谷歌(Google)领导一个营销策略团队。他们在加利福尼亚州帕洛阿尔托市(Palo Alto)购置了一栋房屋。这是栋有着上百年历史的老房子，漏风的窗户和一个破旧的火炉都需要修理。他们还需要让水电煤气和网络在入住的时候能够投入使用。莉迪亚说：“我们有一张无休无止的待办事项清单，我们俩谁都不愿意去做。”

Transferring all that to virtual assistant Phyllis Kaelin of Culver City, Calif., more than 350 miles away, eased the tension, Ms. Choi says. Ms. Kaelin, who worked for 30 years as a researcher helping develop educational curriculum, now works for Zirtual, a Las Vegas-based provider of virtual assistants. She was already helping Mr. Choi with his business. For the family move, she researched movers, shut down utilities at their house in Burlingame, Calif., and turned them on in their new home. She also found an Internet provider and a contractor to replace the furnace.

莉迪亚说，他们把这一切交给了虚拟助理菲利丝•凯琳(Phyllis Kaelin)，从而缓解了压力。凯琳住在350多英里之外的卡尔弗城(Culver City)，做过30多年的教育课程开发研究员，现在在总部位于拉斯维加斯(Las Vegas)的虚拟助理提供商Zirtual工作。她之前已经在帮助本打点业务上的事情。在搬家这件事上，她帮他们研究了搬家公司，关停了加利福尼亚伯灵格姆(Burlingame)旧居的水电煤气，又把新居的开启。她还找好了一家网络服务商，并找了一家工程承建商换掉了火炉。

The Chois, who pay $397 a month to Zirtual for Ms. Kaelin's services, estimate the assistant saved them 10 hours a week over about two months. 'Phyllis has been great for our marriage,' Ms. Choi says.

崔家每个月为凯琳的服务付给Zirtual公司397美元，在过去的两个月里，这位助理每周大概能为他们节约10小时的时间。莉迪亚说：“菲利丝给我们的婚姻生活帮了大忙。”

Virtual assistants may be students working their way through college, parents who want to work from home or older people who are semi-retired. Many assistants never meet their clients, communicating instead by email, instant message, phone or videoconference. Some live continents away from their customers, while others live in the same state or city.

虚拟助理的身份可能是在校大学生、希望在家工作的家长，或者半退休的老年人。许多助理从未与他们的客户会过面，沟通都是通过电子邮件、即时消息、打电话或者视频会议。有些人与客户相隔几大洲，也有些人就在同一个州或城市。

Finding the right match with a virtual assistant requires work. One route is to buy a subscription through an outsourcing company, which matches virtual assistants with clients for a monthly fee. The most popular subscription to Zirtual, where Ms. Kaelin works, costs $197 for 10 hours' service by a U.S.-based virtual assistant, says founder Maren Kate Donovan. Assignments range from a business traveler's request to find a hairdresser in her destination city, to an Italian client's wish to find a perfect replica of actor Steve McQueen's chino pants in the 1963 film 'The Great Escape.' (A Zirtual assistant located a specialty clothing company and delivered the goods.)

寻找一个合得来的虚拟助理需要一些努力。一种途径是订购外包公司的服务，他们将虚拟助理和客户配对并收取月费。最受欢迎的订购公司是Zirtual，也就是凯琳工作的地方。Zirtual创始人玛伦•凯特•多诺万(Maren Kate Donovan)说，一个住在美国的虚拟助理10小时的服务费是197美元。业务范围从帮助出差在外的人在目的地城市找一位发型师，到为意大利客户寻找与演员史蒂夫•麦昆(Steve McQueen)在1963年的电影《胜利大逃亡》(The Great Escape)中穿过的一条裤子同款的斜纹棉布裤。（Zirtual的一名助理查找到了一家能够提供这样一条裤子的专业服装公司并将裤子投递给了客户。）

Other outsourcing firms manage virtual assistants overseas, including Brickwork India in Bangalore; Vahut in China and Hong Kong, and Pepper Virtual Assistants in Manila.

还有些外包公司提供海外虚拟助理，包括班加罗尔的Brickwork India，中国内地和香港的Vahut，以及马尼拉的Pepper Virtual Assistants。

Another route is to hire an assistant directly on a freelance website. Some 50,000 virtual assistants found work on the website Elance in 2012, up 44% from 2011, says chief executive Fabio Rosati. Job postings for virtual assistants on oDesk, another freelance site, rose more than tenfold, to 28,000, between 2008 and 2012, says Jaleh Bisharat, the company's vice president of marketing. Pay rates quoted include the websites' fees.

另一种途径是直接从兼职网站雇佣一位助理。Elance网站总裁法比奥•罗萨蒂(Fabio Rosati)说，2012年约有50,000名虚拟助理在该网站上找到了工作，比2011年上升了44%。另一个兼职网站oDesk的市场营销副总裁贾雷•比沙拉特(Jaleh Bisharat)说，发布在该网站上的虚拟助理职位在2008年至2012年间上升了十倍，达28,000个。薪酬报价中包含了网站服务费。

Pay for individual virtual assistants typically ranges from about $8 an hour to as much as $25 to $50 an hour for skilled help with services such as paralegal work or architectural or engineering support, says Christine Durst, co-founder of RatRaceRebellion.com, a job-hunting site for at-home work.

面向在家工作的求职者的网站RatRaceRebellion.com的联合创始人克丽丝汀•德斯特(Christine Durst)说，雇佣私人虚拟助理的费用从每小时八美元到25美元不等，技术含量高的助理工作每小时收费可达50美元，比如助理律师工作、建筑工作和工程方面的支持工作。

Vetting an individual virtual assistant can take time. ODesk's Ms. Bisharat suggests hiring several candidates to complete the same small project, then selecting the best performer. Adds Ms. Durst: Assign less-important projects first, such as maintaining a mailing list. Make sure instructions are crystal clear and avoid micromanaging.

考核一个私人虚拟助理很耗费时间。oDesk的比沙拉特建议让几个候选人完成同一个小任务，之后选择表现最佳者。德斯特补充道：可以先布置一些次要的任务，比如整理邮件清单。要确保指示明确，不要事无巨细。

It isn't wise to share credit-card or password information with freelance virtual assistants before building a trusting relationship, experts say. Elance and oDesk take steps to verify freelancers' identity, provide tracking tools to measure time worked and post freelancers' skills-test ratings, client reviews and work history. But spokesmen for both sites suggest exercising caution when giving out personal information.

专家说，在建立可靠的关系之前，向兼职虚拟助理分享信用卡信息或者密码并不明智。Elance和oDesk采取了一些鉴别兼职者身份的措施，提供追踪工具来计算工作时间，发布兼职者的技能测试评级、客户点击率和工作经验。但是两个网站的发言人都建议在提供个人信息时要小心谨慎。

Adam Neary, chief executive of Activecell, a business-software company in New York, says he is delighted with several virtual assistants he has hired for $6 to $8 an hour on oDesk, from the Philippines, China, Poland and Argentina. They have handled research, Web postings, software testing and other administrative tasks, freeing up more personal time for him. 'They literally charge by the minute, and when the meter is running they can perform a wide range of tasks,' Mr. Neary says.

纽约商务软件公司Activecell的总裁亚当•尼尔瑞(Adam Neary)表示，他对自己的几位虚拟助理十分满意，这些人是以六到八美元的时薪从oDesk上雇佣来的，分别来自菲律宾、中国、波兰和阿根廷。他们处理了调研、网站信息发布、软件测试以及其他行政工作，为他解放出了更多私人时间。尼尔瑞说：“他们是真正意义上的按分钟计费，在计时器走动期间，他们能够完成各种工作。”

Marc Plotkin, a Brooklyn, N.Y., entrepreneur and musician, hired assistants on freelance sites because he was swamped trying to answer 1,000 emails a day for his 25-employee software startup, DecisionDesk. His personal life was suffering too. 'I was in the workaholic mode of, 'I don't have time to be more sociable,' ' he says. But Mr. Plotkin's hires didn't work out. 'Every time it would start off OK, and then they would drop the ball at some point,' usually because of gaps in language skills, he says.

马克•普洛特金(Marc Plotkin)居住在纽约布鲁克林，是一位企业家和音乐家。他在兼职网站上雇佣助理的原因是，他每天要为自己拥有25名雇员的新兴软件公司DecisionDesk回复1,000封邮件，忙得不可开交，私人生活也受到了影响。他说：“我处在工作狂模式，‘我没时间去社交’。”但是普洛特金的雇员并没有解决问题。他说：“每次开始的时候都还不错，之后在某一个点上他们就会犯错误”，通常是由于语言技能方面的欠缺。

Since he signed on with Zirtual last year, his virtual assistant, Danielle Johnson of Valparaiso, Ind., gets his email inbox down to zero each night. Some emails get standard responses, others get put in project folders. Some responses require consulting first with Mr. Plotkin. To expand his social life, Ms. Johnson schedules regular lunches for Mr. Plotkin, selecting from a list of friends he provides. She recently had printed and framed a photo of Mr. Plotkin with three friends, which he sent to the friends as a gift.

自从他去年与Zirtual签约之后，他的虚拟助理、来自印第安纳瓦尔帕莱索(Valparaiso)的丹妮尔•约翰逊(Danielle Johnson)每晚都让他的收件箱变为零未读。一些邮件有标准回复，另一些会放入项目文件夹。有些回复需要事先向普洛特金征求意见。为了拓展他的社交活动，约翰逊定期帮他安排午餐，从他提供的好友清单里进行选择。她最近冲印装裱了一张普洛特金和三位朋友的合影，这是他送给朋友们的礼物。

Ms. Johnson, 23, is a former English teacher who says she wants to shift to a career in business or entrepreneurship. Mr. Plotkin pays Zirtual about $700 a month for her services.

23岁的约翰逊之前是一名英语老师，她说她想转行到商务或企业领域。普洛特金每月为她的服务向Zirtual支付700美元。