5 Essential Tips for Hiring a Personal Assistant

You’re advancing in your career and beginning to feel overworked. Maybe you’ve finally gotten to the point where you have the money and want to spend more time with your family. You think it’s time to hire a personal assistant.

Hiring a personal assistant can free up your time to focus on the bigger picture, spend more time with family, or have more time to spend on hobbies. The personal assistant can spend time doing tedious but time-consuming tasks, overall giving you more energy throughout your days. Your personal assistant can also be a second pair of eyes and ears. You will have the benefit of someone working closely with you who can provide a second opinion or insight that you might have missed.

If you’re just reading this to get an idea of where to start, but aren’t quite at a place in your business where you can hire yet, check out our tips on how to be more productive right now!

Here are the things you want to consider when hiring a personal assistant:

1. Write down what you want to delegate by deciding what you need help with. Start by paying attention to what you spend time on during the day or week. What easy, repetitive tasks do you do that you can delegate to someone else?

   • Do you need help with administrative tasks such as preparing a meeting agenda, managing your inbox, managing your calendar, or filing documents?
   • Do you need help coordinating travel such as reserving flights and hotels, booking reservations, or setting up itineraries?
   • Will the personal assistant be in charge of personal tasks such as grabbing your coffee, picking up groceries, or doing errands for your home?
   • Will the personal assistant be empowered to support your business? Examples include creating processes or meeting with clients.

2. Determine your budget for the role. Think about how much you want to allocate weekly to hiring a personal assistant.

   • What value will a personal assistant bring to you or your business?
   • Consider how much your time is worth and try to put a number on how much of your time will be saved by the assistant. Then consider the amount of work you’d like to delegate to the assistant and try to find a happy medium between your budget and the amount of work you’d like for them to be able to do per week.
   • Be practical with your budget so you don’t spread yourself too thin – you still want your business to be profitable!
   • Consider any extra costs that may be associated with hiring an assistant, including things like benefits and taxes (if you choose to hire them as a W4 employee instead of an independent contractor – see more about this below).

3. Do you want your assistant to be an independent contractor or W4 employee? Will they be part-time or full-time? Will you be hiring locally, or remotely? Decide how much help you need to begin with and whether or not that help will be in person.

   • If an assistant works remotely for you, will they need to be available during a specific time period so that you can communicate with them?
   • Based on the budget that you determined in step two, will you be able to hire an assistant part-time or full-time?
     • Hiring a personal assistant to work for you part-time would cost you less than hiring a full-time assistant, both in salary and possible health benefits.
     • Overall, people generally look for full-time employment so it’s possible that hiring a part-time assistant may limit your candidates.
   • Do you want to hire your assistant as a W4 employee or as an independent contractor?
     • You would not be responsible for an independent contractor’s benefits and they generally specialize in their field so they require less on-the-job training, but at a higher hourly cost.
   • Do you want your assistant to be local to you or work remotely? Especially in this pandemic era, hiring remotely can greatly expand the pool of candidates who apply.

4. Write the job description. It’s important to think about how the assistant will be spending their time working for you and what qualifications or skills you may require.

   • What experience do you want the personal assistant to have? What traits are you looking for that would make this position successful? Keep in mind that some things (like attention to detail) are difficult to train.
   • If the position is part-time, will the candidate be able to grow into a full-time role?
   • What kind of on-the-job training or benefits can you offer applicants?

5. Use the hiring process as an opportunity to learn about the candidates. Everyone can make a resumé look impressive, but that doesn’t always mean they are the perfect candidate for the job.

   • Include a sample task for the assistant to do so you can see how they work. Think about a task that will require the applicants to demonstrate the traits you’re looking for but that would be possible to complete during the interview.
     • Be sure to consider that the interview may be over the phone or over a video chat.
   • Think about a task (or tasks) an assistant would do regularly. Ask them about their process to achieve a certain goal or finish a task.

Final Thoughts

The best part about hiring a personal assistant is that you can completely tailor the job role to what you need. When you find and train the right personal assistant, your everyday life can feel easier! With someone doing tasks that shouldn’t be on your radar at all, you’ll have more time and energy to give to your business, family, or personal growth.