Hiring Your First Business Personal Assistant: Some Guidelines for Successful Hiring

Hiring the first personal business assistant is an exciting time for new business owners. It means that the business is doing well enough that the business owner can no longer keep up effectively with the demands of the new business. Sales are exploding, and time becomes of the utmost importance. Scheduling of business chores and personal chores can become very demanding and complex. This is the time new business owners often find themselves considering a personal business assistant.

A personal business assistant differs from a clerical worker or secretary, as the duties are more diverse for a personal assistant. A personal assistant will do whatever is needed to make the business run smoothly and will do whatever is necessary to make the business owner's life run smoothly also. Although a personal assistant usually also performs clerical and secretarial duties, a personal assistant is more a "jack of all trades" than any other type of employee and the duties may include personal chores done on behalf of the employer.

The choice of a personal assistant therefore should be given the utmost of consideration. Here is a list of possible qualities to look for when choosing a personal assistant:

1. Flexibility of Schedule: the hours a personal assistant works can be very varied, depending upon the needs of the business owner. These hours can include some nights and weekends when social activities and business meetings may occur.

2. Flexibility of Personality: a good personal assistant needs a flexible, easy going personality, as the demands of the job can be quite stressful, as well as diverse.

3. Ability to Multi-Task: since the tasks are diverse, multi-tasking abilities are an absolute necessity.

4. Ability to Bond and Work Well with Others: the personal assistant will be exposed to everyone involved in many ways within the business, as well as the business owner and clients. An ability to establish relationships easily with others is mandatory.

5. Ability to Learn Quickly and Effectively: a personal assistant will need to come into a business and learn every duty quite quickly and effectively. There may be a large learning curve, depending upon the business and the needs of the business owner.

6. Knowledge of Office Procedures and Other Procedures Associated with the Business: without some prior knowledge of office procedures and routine procedures that are unique to the business hiring the assistant, problems usually occur.

7. A Good Work History: having a personal assistant that reports to work sporadically or is frequently late, with many absences, will only cause frustration overall for the business owner and create more work, not diminish the workload.

8. The Ability to Use Judgment and Work with Little Supervision: a good personal assistant will need to be self-motivated, making many of their own judgment calls concerning the business.

9. Leadership Qualities: there will be duties required and chores given the personal assistant which will require taking charge of others at times, and accomplishing goals.

10. Organizational Skills: with the amount of chores and diversity of chores required of a personal assistant, a good one will have high end organizational skills, will be able to prioritize effectively, and will not suffer from "analysis paralysis", but will be able to make decisions quickly and efficiently.

11. Self Confidence: a good personal assistant will need to be aware of their own needs and the needs of others, and will have to stand by decisions without backing down, therefore confidence in themselves and their decisions is necessary.

12. Customer Service Skills: many of the chores that a personal assistant performs will bring the assistant into direct contact with clients, therefore great customer service skills are also mandatory.

A business owner seeking to hire a personal assistant should look for the qualities above and also use their own intuition about an individual applying for this position. The business owner should also seek to hire someone whose personality and goals meshes with their own, as the personal assistant and the business owner will spend many hours each day together, and will need to be of the "same mind" about major issues.

It is also important when hiring a personal assistant to determine how much the business can afford to pay a personal assistant, and also to be realistic about the costs of a "quality personal assistant". Many personal assistants will work for reasonable rates, depending upon the country in which the business owner and assistant reside. This usually doesn't translate into "minimum wage requirements", however, as the diversity of the job itself would require a higher pay scale in order to attract more talented applicants for the position. A good rule of thumb, is to pay as "high as possible" while still staying within the budget of the business.

After all, in a situation such as the search for a qualified, reliable, energetic personal assistant, "cheap is not always better".

Vishal P. Rao is the owner of: http://www.work-at-home-forum.com/ An online community of people who work at home.

---

Top 10 Things Every Business Should Provide for Every Worker - Including the Boss!

Doing business and meeting the needs of workers is increasingly... Read More

Outsourcing NOT Just for Big Business

Outsourcing has become a controversial issue and a hot topic... Read More

Why Your Business Needs an E-Mail Policy

Why is it imperative to have a company E-Mail Policy?... Read More

Score the Rainbows Pot of Gold: Become the Boss That No One Wants to Leave

Leadership is lifting a person's vision to higher sights, the... Read More

Tales from the Corporate Frontlines: Human Resources at Work

This article relates to the Human Resource Functions competency, commonly... Read More

Problem-Solving Success Tip: Look For Sponsors And Solution Owners

Look for sponsors and solution owners rather than problem owners.Everyone... Read More

Tales from the Corporate Frontlines: Senior Management and Directional Change

This article relates to the Senior/Top Level management of an... Read More

3 Ingredients of Highly Profitable Organizational Change

As waves of organizational change sweep across the business landscape,... Read More

PR Still a Mystery to Some

Unfortunately, there are managers who define public relations by its... Read More

Manufacturing Capacity as a Commodity

Excess capacity in an automobile plant at Ford, Chrysler, Toyota,... Read More

The New Economy

This technological revolution has organization, efficiency and productivity requirements well... Read More

Tales from the Corporate Frontlines: Training is in the Eye of the Beholder

This article relates to the Training competency, commonly evaluated in... Read More

Turbo Charge Your Career With The Most Powerful Leadership Tool Of All: The Leadership Talk: Part 1

Leaders speak 15 to 20 times daily. You speak at... Read More

The 6 Steps to Six Sigma

Step 1Get the proper level of Six Sigma expertise at... Read More

Effective Multi Cultural International Business Meetings

Of the many areas in international business where cultural differences... Read More

Get More Impact From Your Annual Conference

How can you get more attention for your conference and... Read More

Employee Motivation - Access Their Unique Talents

Your people are invaluable to you. They are the lifeblood... Read More

Why Businesses Need to Start Nurturing Collective Wisdom

COLLECTIVE WISDOM CAN BE AN effective tool for solving the... Read More

The Myth Of Relationship Selling Revealed At Last

The second you quit being the 'best deal' for your... Read More

A Leadership Screw Driver: The 90 Day Improvement Plan

I was talking with first-line supervisors in a utility company... Read More

Meeting Your Meeting Expectations

"To get something done a meeting should consist of no... Read More

Its a Training Issue!

There's a common phrase used by Organizational Development and Human... Read More

Having Your Phil

February 2nd, at approximately 7:30 a.m. local time on Gobbler's... Read More

A Tricky Supervision Challenge

Many managers believe that treating their team members as responsible... Read More

Effective Meetings by Phone - Part 1, How to Plan a Teleconference

Teleconferences can be a boon or a bust. On the... Read More

Where Else in Your Business Do You Accept a 60% Failure Rate?

I recently surveyed CEOs and Business Leaders of large companies... Read More

Improving Your Inter-Company Communications At No Cost

It's all very well having a flashy (and expensive) advertising... Read More

Managing People - Why Is It So Difficult?

Managing, supervising, being a team leader is the hardest job... Read More

Transparency: A Key To Your Effectiveness

Last month I talked about the Skilled Facilitator principle of... Read More

Poor Employee Performance: How to Deal

KEEP WRITTEN RECORDS: "Document !Document! Document!" Keep a record of... Read More

Project Management - Are You Done Yet

What happens when a Project Manager asks one of his... Read More

Tales from the Corporate Frontlines: Finding The Perfect Balance

This article relates to the Work/Life Balance competency, which investigates... Read More

Contract Management Software: the Solution to the Problem of Coordination

Charles Petrie, from Stanford, released a short article entitled "The... Read More