Why Hire an Executive Assistant?
You can’t become the best executive you can be without a little help. For one thing, the truth of the matter is that on top of everything else, executives have to constantly worry about how they appear to the rest of the company. An excellent executive assistant can help tremendously with this.
You can only be in so many places per workday, but your assistant can be in places where you can’t if you’re physically needed elsewhere. They can help represent the company and be your eyes and ears, as well as the company’s face when you just can’t.
For example, if you just can’t make a meeting because you have another one that is more dire at the same time, your assistant can go for you instead. They can take notes and even respond to questions that other people may have for you when you’re not there, once you’ve vetted them and they have your trust, of course.
Support and Extra Tasks
Not only is it difficult to be everywhere at once, but it’s also difficult to do everything you need to do yourself in a day, or keep going every day of the year.
This is where an assistant can come in. They can help handle tasks you do that are vital while you are on vacation or traveling about away from the office. An assistant who knows your business can help you answer your phone, answer emails, or even delegate tasks to others if they’ve seen you do it enough times.
A good assistant can anticipate what you might need ahead of time and make sure that nothing falls through the cracks.
Where Can You Hire Part-Time Executive Assistants?
If you only need an executive assistant on a part-time basis, there are a number of places where you can look to find one easily. Here are some examples.
Upwork
At Upwork, It’s easy to find the part-time assistants you need by simply signing up, clicking on the category you want, like the “virtual assistant” one, and then selecting a professional through their profile. You can see the assistant’s overall rating out of 5, their picture, how many jobs they’ve completed, what skills they have, their price per hour, and other details once you log in. Signing up is easy to do through Google as well, so you could be finding people to help very quickly if that’s what you want. You can also just post jobs for free and have freelancers come to you instead.
Zirtual
Zirtual is a service that can provide part-time assistants to help you with tasks you just don’t have time for, like data entry or emails. The site can help you manage your inbox or calendar, aid with research, social media strategy, expenses and invoices, marketing through surveys or email campaigns, plan events, and aid with much more besides. Their expert professionals can give you your time and energy back while keeping everything running smoothly through part-time executive assistants.
Simply Hired
This site lets you post jobs in order to find a part-time executive assistant. One of the advantages it has at the moment is that it’s one of the most-used job boards online so you’re going to get a large pool of potentially qualified professionals. The user interface is well-organized and easy to read both for you and your potential hire.
Simply Hired is also known for having low post-to-hire times. In other words, it’s an excellent choice if time is a major issue.
ZipRecruiter
Another useful option for finding part-timers is on ZipRecruiter. The advantage here is that ZipRecruiter will separate out candidates for you based on multiple criteria. For example, if their profile indicates that they don’t meet the criteria you have for your assistant, then that potential employee will be put in a different category.
It will also automatically put applicants who don’t answer the questions you added to the site in a different category as well. That way, if you absolutely need an assistant who’s proficient with certain software like MS Office, for example, you won’t waste your time searching through candidates who don’t fit the bill.
Which Places Let You Hire Full-Time Executive Assistants?
If you’re looking for full-time assistants instead, there are a few other places that will let you do that.
The advantage of Linkedin is that it shows you all of the connections that a potential assistant has with others in the field. This way you can see, at a glance, who they’ve worked with and what kind of experience they might have. It can help to get a more detailed sense of what kind of skills someone has when you can see their network of connections at a glance. The site also allows for features like references and quotes about an individual so you can see who might fit your fulltime position the best from the people who reply to your post.
You also have the option of searching out through the professional contacts you already have and trust as well.
Indeed
Once you post a job at indeed, job searchers will sometimes get a recommendation for your job directly based on their past search history, experience, and other factors. This should make it more likely that you’re going to get the sorts of applicants that you want. There have also been reports from other companies searching for applicants that Indeed’s brand recognition and frequent use means that there’s a broad spectrum of options to choose from.
The site is also known for its filters so that you can get highly specific about what qualifications you need before you find a full-time executive assistant that you will be happy with in general.
How Can You Find Outsourced Executive Assistants?
Virtual Latinos
If you want to work with executive assistants from Latin America specifically, or else don’t mind if you are getting help from outside of the United States, then Virtual Latinos is one place where you can find these sorts of virtual assistants.
For example, if you want bilingual executive assistants who speak both English and Spanish fluently, then this can be an excellent choice. You can get help from bilingual virtual marketers here, for example.
The kind of assistance available here is varied. You can get assistants who can help with blogging and writing, general admin assistants, customer support, web designers, experts in automation and email, advertising experts, web designers, and just about anything else that you might need help with as an executive.
Glassdoor
Glassdoor partly exists for employees to rate their employers, but you can also find outsourced executive assistants here. It’s known as being a site that is particularly honest since you have to add to the site in some way, such as through a review yourself, in order to gain full access.
However, any employer can post jobs whenever they want. A site that has a reputation for being honest and straightforward can be an excellent way to find outsourced executive assistants that will tell you exactly what they are capable of and what they want to do. It can be an effective way to avoid deceptive employees who will just waste your time.
Where Can You Find On-Staff Executive Assistants?
Monster
As one of the older and most well-known ways to find the on-staff executive assistants you need, you’re going to benefit from all of that recognition. It also means that there’s an extensive resource center for getting through any problems that you might have. This means that if you feel like you’re going to need a little extra help navigating the hiring process for whatever reason, Monster can be a life-saver.
Since Monster has been around as long as it has, this also means that you’ll get a wider range of ages as well, in case this is something that you want.
Flexjobs
Finding your ideal on-staff executive assistant may be easier on FlexJobs for a number of reasons. For one thing, the site has a reputation among job seekers as being more elite. The reason for this is that Flexjobs has a minor fee for job seekers to use the site.
The upshot of this is that you are much more likely to get serious on-staff assistants as part of the respondents to your posting. This often means less time spent trying to filter out the large number of applicants that aren’t qualified or serious.
Getting Started
When it comes to trying to find the perfect executive assistant, it’s often worth asking yourself a few questions first to help speed up the process. A big one would be-
Is It Better to Look Myself or Just Trust a Company to Provide Assistants?
If you don’t mind spending time and energy looking through candidates yourself or having your employees do it, then going with a site where you have to do all the posting and all of the vetting yourself might be reasonable. However, half the purpose of getting an executive assistant is to make your life easier. This means that it may be prudent to visit a site that will take care of the vetting for you and provide you with assistants directly.
Saving Time
You’d be surprised how long it takes to narrow down your options and interview everyone if you’ve never had to do it before. Many companies that just provide assistants directly are experts at finding the perfect people for the job based on your preferences. There is a decision to be made in terms of cost versus saved time and effort, however, and that’s an important choice for you to make.