In a world of increasingly sophisticated technology that threatens to replace them, personal assistants are standing strong. In fact, the PA role is thriving, present within more industries and organisations than ever before. While AI bots and virtual assistants such as Alexa and Siri flaunt their latest functions, they remain incapable of delivering the human touch of a great PA partnership.
The key to this resilience is the adaptability of the role. The clue is in the name – whatever the personal needs and working style of a manager, business owner or private individual, a PA role can be tailored to provide bespoke support.
But this very adaptability can make the PA hiring process complex. What responsibilities should a PA job description outline? What does their career progression look like? What skills and experience should you look for? How can the hiring process unpick the necessary character traits to support the specific demands of an individual or team?
In this guide we will delve into each of these questions in detail. Intended for anyone wondering how to hire a PA for either a business or private function, we hope to provide you with the basic frameworks from which to build out a bespoke hiring process – from job descriptions and interviews to employee onboarding and development programmes.
Before hiring a personal assistant, you should be clear in your understanding of a what a PA role entails, and whether it is the right call for you to hire one. It is a significant investment, so having a firm grasp on the different types of PA, what they can and can’t do for you, and the costs involved, will all help to streamline the process.
A personal assistant (PA) is someone employed to provide support to a senior manager, business owner, or private individual. They can be tasked with both business and personal administrative duties, and are found in every size of organisation, from startups to SMEs and large corporations.
What Does a Personal Assistant Do?
Due to its bespoke nature, no two PA roles are the same. Depending on the needs and preferences of a manager, the responsibilities of a PA can include:
Manage schedules and calendars
Handle correspondence (phone and email)
Creating reports and documents
Meeting minutes and agendas
File organisation
Maintaining office supplies
Data entry and database management
Travel arrangements
Project assistance
Expense management
Personal assistants possess a wide range of skills to accomplish their diverse tasks, but there are several responsibilities outside of their remit. Both a manager and PA should be aware of these.
Specialised professional services
Unauthorised financial transactions
Personal tasks outside of scope
Deep cleaning your home
Cooking for your family
Childcare services
Personal Assistant vs Executive Assistant
Personal assistant and executive assistant roles share similar responsibilities, but there are several important differences between PAs and EAs. While the PA role is a versatile position that can encompass supporting a team, senior staff, and private individuals, an EA works on a 1:1 basis with a high-level executive in a business. An executive assistant is typically considered a more senior position, and they act as a right-hand person to the executive, bearing more business-related responsibilities.
Why Hire a Personal Assistant?
Hiring a PA may not be the right decision for every business or individual, but if you are finding yourself overwhelmed by your workload, PAs can provide many benefits that justify the expense.
Effective Time Management
With a PA handling your business, travel, and calendar administration, you will free up time to devote to more critical work. This in turn will improve your productivity and the results of your work.
Increased Organisation
PAs will take on the filing and retrieval of your physical and digital documents and correspondence, reducing the risk of losing an important report, email, or tickets for travel and accommodation.
Efficient Communication
Having an assistant dedicated to monitoring all your correspondence can streamline your communications with clients and colleagues. A PA will ensure that all emails, phone calls, and letters are responded to within an allotted timeframe.
Personal Support
The demands of work can often mean your personal responsibilities take a backseat. PAs can help you stay on top of this side of life too, where appropriate. This could mean booking a restaurant, purchasing a gift, or arranging childcare.
Types of Personal Assistants
With this knowledge of typical PA responsibilities, you can start matching them to your requirements and build a picture of your ideal PA.
As well as determining the PA’s responsibilities, you should also consider the industry the PA will be working in, and the role of their Principal within the organisation. While they may have a similar skill set, prospective PAs will have a different working knowledge and expertise, so finding one with experience matching your sector and position will be crucial for success.
There are several different types of PA under the personal assistant umbrella, including:
Corporate PAs
Corporate PAs work at the senior management levels of businesses. They have a strong understanding of the inner workings and dynamics of complex organisations.
Team Assistants (TAs)
TAs specialise in providing admin support for multiple members of staff. Depending on the size of the business, this could be the full workforce, or one department-specific team.
Private PAs
Private PAs are employed directly by individuals to assist in their personal and/or business affairs. They are adept at supporting the needs of HNWI, business owners, celebrities, private families, and other high-profile individuals.
Family Office PAs
Family office PAs specialise in assisting senior executives or HNWI within family offices.
Business assistants
Business assistants support business owners, chief executives, or other staff in the most senior positions in an organisation. This is a more senior assistant role that typically requires several years of experience.
Virtual PAs
Virtual assistants (VAs) offer remote administrative support to senior managers, teams, or private individuals. They are often freelancers, and may work part-time for several employers.
How To Hire a Personal Assistant
Once you have a clear idea of the type of personal assistant best suited to your needs, you can begin the search. Whether or not you are working with a recruitment agency, there are some PA hiring best practices that should inform your personal assistant hiring process.
Personality fit
As you will work more closely with your PA than with any other colleague, finding someone with a complementary personality to yours should play a role in the decision-making. The best PAs will quickly synchronise with their manager’s work rhythms and communication style, and could grow into a great partner for brainstorming ideas.
Consider prior experience
A PA’s personality fit should be balanced with an appraisal of their work history. Experience in the same industry or for an employer in a similar position are good indicators that a candidate will gel with the wider team and type of business.
Trust Your Recruiter
PA recruitment agencies are experts when it comes to balancing skills, experience, and personality fit in the search for candidates. When you’re presented with a recruiter’s shortlist, it’s important to trust in their expertise and consider their selection. Sometimes, a candidate may not appear to be a good fit on paper, but if an experienced consultant believes they could thrive, it is probably worth a meeting.
Manage Expectations and Be Responsive
When recruiting prospective PAs, remember to keep them informed about how many stages are involved, their current application status, and when they can expect to hear your decision. Following their interview with you – whether they’re successful or not – they will appreciate transparent feedback that helps them to improve next time. Your communication will go a long way to demonstrating the authenticity of your employer brand, which in turn contributes to future candidate referrals and credibility.
Skills To Look For In a PA
While PA roles can vary widely in terms of responsibilities, there are a number of core PA skills and character traits that the best assistants share. Keep these in mind when considering candidates for your PA position:
Organisation
In order to juggle many varied tasks, regular deadlines, and constant change, PAs must have excellent organisational and time management skills.
Communication
As the gatekeeper for their Principal, PAs must be excellent written and verbal communicators, confident dealing with clients and colleagues of all seniorities.
Proactivity
With senior managers often unavailable due to meetings and travel, PAs must be able to take the initiative without direction.
Discretion
PAs are party to much private and sensitive information. They must be trustworthy and meticulously discrete.
Computer literacy
PAs will conduct a large portion of their work on computers so need to have a strong grasp of several key programmes. This includes email software, word processors, spreadsheet software, and organisational tools like calendars and project planners.
Resilience
EAs work in a high-pressure, fast-moving environment, requiring a thick skin and ability to remain professional in challenging situations.
Language
PAs will need to have excellent communication skills, and this includes being able to work at a professional level in the local Swiss language. Very often, English is required and an additional European language is always highly beneficial
Writing a Personal Assistant Job Description
With your criteria and hiring process now in place, you will need to create a detailed and bespoke job description for candidates. The more specific, the better, as it will help filter out inappropriate applicants, and target those with the right experience, and a genuine interest in the role.
The below is a general PA job description template, which can be adapted to your needs.
Personal Assistant Job Description Template
Key responsibilities:
Efficient minute-taking in team and client meetings
Extensive travel with the managing director to meetings and conferences, sometimes internationally
Clear and accurate typing up of all letters, memos, reports and similar documents from shorthand notes
Saving and archiving, where necessary, all documents in the company database
Occasional transcribing of dictation and voice memos
Implementing and maintaining an office filing system
First point of contact for all incoming calls and visits
Complex diary management, both business and personal, for the managing director and team
Extensive and efficient email correspondence
Answering telephone calls in a timely fashion, taking clear and detailed messages
Organisation of meetings, including booking venues, ordering refreshments and minute-taking
Essential requirements:
Qualification/certificate in a relevant area
At least three years’ experience in a similar role
Excellent written and verbal communication skills
Competent with Microsoft Office suite
Polite telephone manner
Languages: English required alongside German, French or Italian
Personality profile:
Extremely organised
Detail-orientated
Focused and responsive
Takes initiative
An excellent multi-tasker
Benefits:
Competitive salary and bonus
Gym membership
Company phone
Pension scheme
Health care
25 days annual leave per annum
You should also consider the typical PA salaries when building your job description.
Tips For Interviewing a PA
Getting your interview questions, style and structure right are key when considering how to hire a personal assistant. The interview stage is the chance to dig deeper and find the candidate who ticks all the right boxes to be your ideal personal assistant. It’s best practice to combine both broad and specific PA interview questions, as this will build a full, detailed picture of the candidate.
Your questions should be designed to tease out insights into their work background, achievements, communication, problem-solving skills, industry knowledge, personality, and interests.
General interview questions
Tell me about yourself
Why should we hire you as a personal assistant?
What is your greatest strength and weakness?
How do you prioritise tasks and manage your time effectively?
Why do you want to work here?
Experience-related interview questions
Can you tell me about your previous position?
What do you think are important skills for a personal assistant?
What is the biggest mistake you have made at work?
Can you provide an example of when you went above and beyond your duties as a personal assistant?
Can you provide an example of a challenging situation you encountered as a personal assistant and how you resolved it?
Have you ever been responsible for managing travel arrangements?
How do you handle working with confidential information?
Have you organised an event or function?
Is there any part of this job role that concerns you?
Onboarding and integration
With a successful interview process behind you and a new personal assistant raring to go, it’s vital not to let things stall. By having a robust PA onboarding process in place, you can ensure the partnership with your new PA lives up to, and exceeds, its potential.
Set expectations
At the first opportunity, you should clarify the roles and responsibilities detailed in the job description. Both parties need to agree on what is within the PA’s remit.
Create a schedule
You should ensure you both understand the days and hours of regular work, and expectations on communication and work outside of those times.
Use the latest technology
There are many tools for PAs available. Apps and online services are now available to streamline many PA tasks, including calendars, budgeting software, project planning programmes, and many communications channels.
Set KPIs
Key performance indicators (KPIs) will help you and your PA track their achievements and areas for improvement, ensuring the working relationship goes from strength to strength.
Set up a support base
Partnering your PA with a work mentor and introducing them to other assistants in the business will help them settle in and feel more confident in their work.
Learning & Development for PAs
As much thought and effort should be put into retaining a great personal assistant as is put into hiring one. Having a long-term PA can provide many business benefits, from improving efficiency, to maintaining strong client relationships, training new staff, and fostering camaraderie among the wider team.
While welcoming a new PA into the role during the onboarding phase, you should also show them how they can grow in the business. This could be through internal promotion, learning and development programmes, or external courses.
By actively investing in your PA’s professional growth, you can improve the quality of their work while also nurturing loyalty. Holding onto a member of staff who is both qualified and has a deep working knowledge of the business is crucial for success.
Organisations can offer both internal and external learning and development opportunities as part of their employee benefits package. Mentoring by more senior administration staff is one of the most effective ways to upskill existing personal assistants, and some businesses offer the chance for staff to diversify their skills with training run by other departments.
PA career progression
Having a thorough understanding of a personal assistant’s career path in different organisations will help you advise your PA on their potential internal progression. A typical path from entry-level to senior could look like:
PA Career Progression in SMEs
PA Career Progression in medium-sized businesses
PA Career Progression in Large Businesses
Looking To Hire a PA?
Now that you understand how to hire a personal assistant, it’s time to get the ball rolling! Let us know your requirements and a consultant will be in touch.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a PA cost per hour?
The latest data shows that temporary or contract PAs in Switzerland on average earn between CHF545-CHF700 per day.
How much does it cost to hire a PA?
In Tiger’s latest salary and benefits review, we found that PAs in Switzerland can expect to earn on average CHF85,ooo-CHF110,000 p.a.
Can a normal person hire a personal assistant?
Anyone can hire a PA to provide business or personal assistance (within reason). However, there are significant costs involved, and anyone wondering how to hire a personal assistant should factor the typical salary and expenses into their calculations.
How do people find personal assistants?
Businesses and individuals can work with personal assistant recruitment companies to find a personal assistant that suits their needs. A PA recruiter can assist in creating a job description, job advert, candidate shortlist, and interview questions.
How do I find a PA?
If you are struggling to understand how to hire a personal assistant, working with a recruitment agency is the best solution. Tiger’s consultants can advise on hiring both business and private PAs, EAs, and specialist assistants. Get in touch with us today to find out more.
What does a private PA do?
A private PA works with an individual or family to give administrative support in both personal and business affairs. They will often work closely with domestic support staff and family office staff.
As the leading PA recruitment agency, we’ve worked with thousands of individuals in PA jobs. From start-ups to global corporations, finance to creative industries, we’ve seen the whole range of…
If you’re looking to hire a PA or you have PAs within your employment, it’s helpful to have a full understanding of a personal assistant’s career path. This includes the…