Personal Assistant

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Hiring a Personal Assistant

More and more people are occupied with so many things. Some are so busy into their work—thus—they have less or no more time for other things that they should be doing. While others simply cannot perform or attend to their duties to numerous reasons such as medical condition or lifestyle. For these people, having a personal assistant is a great help to maximize their time as well as their energy.

Process of hiring a personal assistant

Today, the demand for efficient personal assistants continues to increase because more and more people are busy with so many things. With this at hand, the employment for personal assistant has become a lucrative employment target.

If you have an extremely busy life, a time-consuming executive career or your own business, or if you are working in a large home taking care of handling daily operations that involves business or office, then it is a must that you hire a personal assistant. Since a personal assistant will have a great responsibility in your life and business, you cannot just hire somebody for the position. To effectively hire a personal assistant, you must:

1. Write down the description of the job that the personal assistant needs to do. This list should contain specific details of what you really need the personal assistant is for.

2. Advertise your need for the personal assistant depending on your requirements. You can do this by placing a small advertisement in the local newspaper. Make sure that you include your contact details so the applicant can reach you easily.

3. Choose at least the top five among the applicants based on their resumes and credentials. To save some time, make sure that you pick those that have previous experience in being a PA in your work setting. This can be very convenient because it will take you lesser time to train the PA, all you need to do is conduct an extensive briefing and that would be it. In some cases, it will also be wise to hire qualified college fresh graduate because you can benefit from their vigor.

4. Set the schedule for the interview. Scheduling an interview should take place in one single day. By doing this, you can readily compare each applicant and there's a greater chance of hiring a new personal assistant when the interview sessions are over. If you are not in a hurry to hire one, you can conduct a two-part interview to properly screen the respective candidates. On the second interview, ask somebody—a friend or a co-worker—to come with you and conduct an observation. This can be beneficial for you because you can get a feedback from other people.

5. After you have chosen the best candidate, prepare an orientation. This is very important because he or she exactly would be briefed on how the office or the business works. During the orientation, be prepared to discuss the salary and other benefits he or she will be getting.

6. Set a trial period. This is a wise move when hiring a personal assistant because you will never really know if he or she is fit for the job unless the PA is doing the work. A three-moth period is suitable to know if the hired personal assistant is fit for the job requirements that you need or not.

Start a Home-Based Personal Assistant Business

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This is an extremely simple and easy home business opportunity that virtually any stay at home mom can start. Before you start, you have to ask yourself whether you know how many people have time to manage the variety of important tasks before them each day. Not too many, think of your own life. How many times have you wished you could have more time to complain about a billing error and how long it eventually took to be resolved when you finally had enough time to deal with it? Well there are thousands of people saying just that and have the same problem with time. This problem is now your opportunity, now you can start a Home-Based Personal Assistant Business.

Here is a listing of the types of tasks that many people need help with the most:
Billing Complaints
Organizing Meetings and Appointments
Party Planning
Client Christmas Card Mailing
Important Date Reminder
Vacation Planning
Information Inquiries

Getting started is simple, there are three things to consider, business setup, service pricing and marketing.

Business Setup
You will need a phone that can handle multiple incoming calls at one time. Nothing worse than a busy signal when an important call is coming in and you cannot handle it in a professional manner. A cell phone and a pager, always be available for your clients. You may even consider obtaining a blackberry to handle email when you are away from your office. Next, you will need a fax machine, a computer and a high quality printer. The last essential piece of office equipment is a tickler file. The tickler file is a filing system methodology that incorporates organizing tasks by importance and due date. Those tasks that are of most importance and are due sooner than the others are placed in front of the file, while those of least importance and are due later are placed behind. As tasks are completed, they are moved out of the file system and into a separate complete file so that only your active tasks remain in the tickler file.

Pricing
You can be paid in two ways, though methods that are more creative can be used also. The first is to be paid by the hour, if you do choose to employ this method, make sure you keep good track of the time you spend on tasks so that you can provide detailed billing, much as an attorney would for his clients. Do not be too fussy, some minor tasks can be listed but can also be discounted. The second way to be paid is to obtain a type of retainer fee from the client whereby you promise to complete a set number of tasks in each given year without sending a bill.

Marketing
Start by advertising in your local newspaper and gradually graduate to prominent business journals, magazines and newsletters. Once you have a few clients and have successfully completed a few tasks, ask them for referrals. If they use your services, chances are they have the same types of friends that will also need your services.

I hope you will think about this unique opportunity and if you do start a business of your own that it will be successful and you will enjoy many happy years of financial freedom.

Article Source: http://www.articlesnatch.com

About the Author:
Diagonal Street Business Services offers work at home articles and business ideas to stay at home moms. If you are thinking of starting a business, visit www.BestBusinesses4u.com.