Virtual Assisting for Dietitians: What Is It and How to Start
Are you a nutrition student or intern looking for ways to gain experience and earn money part-time? Then, becoming a virtual assistant for dietitians may be right for you.
Dietitians hire virtual assistants to help them with a variety of tasks, including content creation and social media.
They’re often looking for other nutrition professionals with an evidence-based background to assist them. That’s where you come in!
I started my virtual assistant business as a senior in my didactic program. It was truly an amazing way to work alongside dietitians, improve my nutrition skills, and make money at the same time.
Now I’ve worked with over 100 dietitians through my company Flourish Virtual Assistants, and I want to share what I’ve learned with you.
In this post, I’m going to cover what a virtual assistant is, what services you can offer, how to find VA jobs and more. Let’s get started!
What is a Virtual Assistant?
A virtual assistant (VA) is someone who offers online services to other business owners. Think of a personal or executive assistant, but completely virtual.
You may be wondering, why would a dietitian hire a VA?
Many dietitians are extremely busy people who are looking to outsource various tasks to an assistant to help them free up their time and grow in their careers.
Most of the time, dietitian business owners are the ones hiring VAs. However, clinical or community dietitians sometimes hire assistants to keep up with their social media presence.
Benefits of Being a Virtual Assistant
There are tons of benefits to being a virtual assistant for dietitians as a nutrition student or intern.
Here are a few that I’d like to highlight:
Flexible Schedule
A huge benefit of becoming a VA is the flexible schedule. It can be challenging to find a job as a nutrition student because of your rigorous class and volunteer schedule.
For many VA jobs, you can work in the evenings and on the weekends. I even used to do my VA work on breaks in between classes!
Even further, you can work from anywhere since it’s 100% virtual, including while you travel. You also don’t have to worry about getting a new job once you graduate or move for an internship rotation.
Work Alongside Other Dietitians
As a student and intern, any chance you have to work alongside a dietitian is going to help you grow in the dietetics field.
First, you’ll be able to network and meet other dietitians who are potential clients. Networking is huge in our field and can lead to a host of opportunities in the future!
Second, being a VA to different dietitians can show you an insight into their job and what it might be like for you. It can assist you with narrowing down what areas of dietetics you’re passionate about and might want to work in.
Gain Additional Skillsets
One of the best parts of being a VA is gaining knowledge and experience in different skill sets.
As a VA, I learned so much about marketing, media work, nutrition communications, writing, and other business skills.
When I became a dietitian, these skills helped me tremendously grow my own business, and I believe they’d be helpful in many career paths.
Make Money Part-Time
The cost of becoming a dietitian isn’t small, and it leads many students to get part-time jobs that they can do while going to school.
Being a VA is an excellent way to make money on the side of your journey towards becoming an RD.
You can charge fairly competitive rates as a student and even more as a nutrition intern with a bachelor’s or master’s degree.
Boost Your Resume
Working as a virtual assistant looks great on a resume! It showcases that you’re an independent worker with a wide range of skill sets and shows off that you’ve worked alongside other dietitians.
If you’re planning to apply to internships and graduate school, being a VA can help you be a more competitive candidate.
Bonus: Clients make great letters of recommendation. When I applied for jobs and internships, I asked some of my clients for recommendations. It was great to have a recommendation directly from a dietitian!
Secure Potential Preceptors
If you’re interested in completing a dietetic internship, VA work might also lead to connections for potential preceptors for future internship rotations.
Several KBDI interns have secured their business and enrichment rotations with past VA clients or their VA clients have connected them to dietitians in their network.
Connecting with dietitians through VA work is a great way to expand your network.
Common Services RDs Outsource
There is a wide variety of services that RDs want to outsource to a virtual assistant.
For example, many private practice dietitians hire virtual assistants to help manage their patient load and run their business’s backend.
On the other end, dietitians who work in media and marketing may want help running social media accounts and doing brand outreach.
Common services a VA provides:
- Social media management
- Creating graphics, writing captions, making reels
- Content creation
- Canva work, patient handouts, ebooks, recipe books
- Research and writing
- Blog writing, nutrition research
- Administrative support
- Patient onboarding and scheduling, verifying insurance benefits, email inbox support, fielding calls
- Email marketing
- Other marketing tasks
- Referrals, networking with other healthcare professionals, media, and brand work
At first, consider offering services that you have past experience in. An example would be if you have strong customer service skills, you could start with administrative tasks.
You should also reflect on what you enjoy doing and want more experience in. If you dream of a certain job within dietetics, finding VA clients who do similar jobs can be an excellent way to gain experience.
How Can You Improve your VA Skills?
What skills you will need as an assistant will depend on what services you plan to offer. Doing some sort of outside training is often necessary to learn and improve your skills.
However, this is common with any job you find! Plenty of resources are available to help you grow your skills and offer more services.
Here are a few ways to improve your VA skills:
- Enroll in our Make Money as VA Course
- Look up free YouTube tutorials
- Audiobooks and textbooks
- Online blogs and courses
- Following accounts on social media
- Practice, practice, practice!
- You can start practicing on your own content/business until you get your first clients
How to Find VA Jobs
The hardest part about becoming a VA is finding the right positions. With many applicants out there, the positions can be competitive.
That being said, as with any job, the key is to keep applying! You won’t always get the first job you apply to.
I had to apply to numerous VA postings before I found a few dietitians who wanted to sign on with me. But once you get that first client, it gets even easier.
Here are a few ways to find VA jobs:
- Look through dietitian Facebook groups for job postings
- I run the free Virtual Assistants for Dietitians group. RDs post in the group weekly, looking for assistants.
- Other groups: The Unconventional RD, Registered Dietitians and Future RDs Community, RD and RD2Be Community, RDs Who Write
- Reach out to past preceptors, volunteer opportunities, and dietitian colleagues
- Especially if you had a good experience with them! They may be looking for more help now or in the future.
- If they aren’t looking for help, they might know a dietitian who is.
- Post on your social media pages that you’re looking for assistant work
- Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook
- Search on Indeed or UpWork
- Search for “nutrition manager, social media manager, virtual assistant”
- Join job posting sites
- Prerd.org has postings, although there is a small fee to join.
- Therdlink.com has job postings for food and nutrition brands
- Follow dietitians you’d like to work with on social media and engage with their content
- You should all join their email list, as I’ve seen postings in there!
How to Get Started
If, after reading this, you’re thinking you’d like to be an assistant for dietitians, here is how you can get started.
I recommend first gathering a collection of work samples and putting them into a portfolio. You can include things you’ve done in school, through volunteer opportunities, in your internships, etc.
Then, I would also update your resume to be more “VA-focused,” meaning you’re including your customer service and organizational skills, technology skills, and anything else relevant to being a VA.
Next, I would get a separate work email that you can use to communicate with clients. A separate email makes you look more professional and separates your work from your school or personal email.
After that, you can decide on your rates and what forms of payment you’d like to accept. Many VAs start out accepting PayPal or Venmo, but you may want to consider getting a business bank account and invoicing system as your business grows.
Now it’s time to start sending out your portfolio and applying to positions you see posted!
Virtual Assisting for Dietitians: The Takeaway
Being a virtual assistant for dietitians is a unique and unconventional job that you can have as a nutrition student or intern.
Not to be dramatic, but being a virtual assistant changed my life! It allowed me to excel in my career, even before becoming an RD myself.
This is your reminder that you don’t need to be a dietitian yet to make money in the dietetics field. You can start now with virtual assisting!
If you have any questions at all about being a virtual assistant, my inbox is always open. You can email me at flourishassistants@gmail.com or DM me on Instagram: @flourshva.
About the Author
Hi! I’m Kathryn (Kat) Durston, a registered dietitian and the owner of Flourish Virtual Assistants and my private practice, Naturally Good Nutrition. As a dietetic student, I started my virtual assistant company and have helped over 100+ dietitian businesses in the past 2.5 years. I now offer training and resources for future virtual assistants, including the Virtual Assistants for Dietitians Facebook group with almost 4,000 members. You can find me on Instagram at @naturallykat and @flourishva!