I just went through the process of trying to hire an executive assistant in the US so I thought I’d contribute a bit. My sample size is relatively low (I only tried 1-2 executive assistants from ~3 services), but here are some things I found helpful:
* In my experience additional cost --> additional quality. Boldly (the firm we will likely end up using - $50 / hour) seemed to have higher service quality than places like Time Etc. ($30 / hour)
* I tried a series of ‘work tests’. Here are the two I found most predictive: a) I’m trying to [find an Airbnb here, find a conference center, ship my bags using a remote service—example]. Could you help me figure out the lowest cost provider that has good client reviews? Here are some other criteria that are important (X, Y). This allowed me to see presentation of information, accuracy, and reasoning.
b) I’m interested in services from [X company]. Could you write an email inquiry about whether they are taking new clients & price? It would be great to try to find a personal email for a staff member. This allowed me to see basic email composition skills, spelling, and resourcefulness online.
* I found it helpful to test out two companies in parallel for a month, that way I could have a direct head to head comparison. I would ask both executive assistants to perform the work tests above. I would then ask for a new executive assistant from the firm that was performing to a lower quality standard, and keep using the one that was performing well on one off tasks to get more data. I think this particularly worked in my situation because we had some lead time.
Thanks so much for writing this!
I just went through the process of trying to hire an executive assistant in the US so I thought I’d contribute a bit. My sample size is relatively low (I only tried 1-2 executive assistants from ~3 services), but here are some things I found helpful:
* In my experience additional cost --> additional quality. Boldly (the firm we will likely end up using - $50 / hour) seemed to have higher service quality than places like Time Etc. ($30 / hour)
* I tried a series of ‘work tests’. Here are the two I found most predictive:
a) I’m trying to [find an Airbnb here, find a conference center, ship my bags using a remote service—example]. Could you help me figure out the lowest cost provider that has good client reviews? Here are some other criteria that are important (X, Y).
This allowed me to see presentation of information, accuracy, and reasoning.
b) I’m interested in services from [X company]. Could you write an email inquiry about whether they are taking new clients & price? It would be great to try to find a personal email for a staff member.
This allowed me to see basic email composition skills, spelling, and resourcefulness online.
* I found it helpful to test out two companies in parallel for a month, that way I could have a direct head to head comparison. I would ask both executive assistants to perform the work tests above. I would then ask for a new executive assistant from the firm that was performing to a lower quality standard, and keep using the one that was performing well on one off tasks to get more data. I think this particularly worked in my situation because we had some lead time.