Hiring a Personal Assistant: 3 Qualities to Seek
It’s been a crazy and busy week for you. Between connecting with team members, reviewing budgets, and overseeing product development, you barely have time to eat lunch, let alone book your next trip to visit a client or investors. You’ve finally decided that you need help.
Whether it’s sticking to your schedule, having someone you can delegate smaller tasks to, or simply having a trusted “right hand man” you can confide in and rely on, an assistant can be an invaluable asset to you and your business. This article outlines four simple steps you can take to determine what kind of assistant you need, what they will do, and how much they will be paid with a huge paystub.
Perhaps you are the founder of a startup or startup, a small business owner and an entrepreneur, or a senior executive – perhaps even the CEO – of a large corporation. Either way, this article will help you feel more confident that you know the right job description to give, the right salary to post, and the right places to hire a personal assistant without meeting lots of trouble.
It’s not enough to wave in the air and call for help. For example, the responsibilities, salary, and level of influence of an office chief can be very different from that of an administrative assistant. You will need to take a methodical, analytical, and introspective approach to determine the type of assistant most useful to you and your organization.
You are human, and like all humans, you have your limits. Maybe you catch yourself on the phone at your kid’s birthday party to book a business trip (sorry!), or you feel like you have no one to lean on when you’re at work. you want to go on vacation. For example, having a good work-life balance is often the driving force behind the need to hire a personal assistant or executive assistant.
As a leader in your organization, your time is valuable. As your organization grows, you’ll want to spend more time growing your team, developing products, and meeting with customers. For instance, face-to-face meetings with your team members will become a priority over trying to find new suppliers for your office supplies. Increasingly, people will be counting on you to set the company’s vision and set organizational strategy, instead of finding a new way to deal with expenses. And as they get busier and their time becomes more valuable, your team members will want you to be at meetings on time and well prepared.
In most SME businesses, everyone wears multiple hats, and if you’re a founder or owner, you probably wear the most hats. This makes delegation difficult, but also makes it essential as the organization grows. This step requires deep introspection about how much control you are actually willing and able to give up on a daily basis. Deciding what tasks and small projects you’re (and aren’t) willing to delegate will affect the type of assistant you want to hire. A personal assistant (also known as an executive personal assistant in some cases) is just there to assist you. However, in the business world and especially in smaller organizations, the title “personal assistant” is not common.
So what are the skills required for a personal assistant role? What are the qualities of a good personal assistant? Depending on the industry, different companies will look for different personal assistant skills. However, some standard skills will be included in most personal assistant job descriptions. Here are the six most common skills you’ll find on any personal assistant resume.
- Communication skills
The ability to communicate effectively is perhaps the most important of all life high-income skills. This is what allows us to pass information on to others and understand what we are saying. It only takes watching a baby listen attentively to her mother’s words and try to repeat the sounds she makes to understand how basic the desire to communicate is.
Communication, in its simplest form, is the act of transferring information from one place to another. It can be voice (using voice), written (using print or digital media such as books, magazines, websites or email), images (using logos, maps, charts, etc.) or graphics) or nonverbal (using body language, gestures, and tone of voice and pitch). In fact, it is usually a combination of several of them.
Personal assistant positions require communication skills to build partnerships, adapt to any situation, and ensure managers are informed of important information in a timely manner. Personal assistants communicate with many stakeholders and being able to spread and absorb communications and information is essential.
- Strong organizational skills
Of course, organizational skills are a top priority for a personal assistant. Organization is second nature to them and they are highly adaptable to be able to adjust schedules based on changing business priorities. They will also know how to organize their storage and database systems perfectly, and always have the right email template at their fingertips.
- Ability to do many things
Some people just don’t work. They are on Facebook, texting on their cell phones, listening to music and working. It’s called multitasking. That is, when we do many things at the same time. We usually think of those who can do it as a little smarter and more capable. Is; A new study shows that those who can do multitasking slowly create a different brain from the rest.
Scientists at the University of Sussex took 75 adults and gave them brain scans. Their purpose was to study what doctors call the “gray matter” of the brain. That is, the essence related to intelligence. The results showed that those who said they multitasked had less gray matter than those who said they didn’t.
The list of personal assistant functions could be endless. They not only provide administrative support but also act as schedulers and agenda managers, having to answer phone calls as they arrive and take care of scheduling meetings – often all together. a time. Multitasking is a skill that all personal assistants must be able to master in order to deal with administrative tasks and competing priorities.