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I'm just curious if anyone else has done this and if so how did it work out? Where did you find the person you hired? Would it be odd to hire someone to do part housework and part admin stuff for my business? Or would it be better to just hire one or the other?
I thought that maybe a college student or a local mom with kids in school during the day might be interested in some part time hours with a flexible schedule.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
With the weekly supermarket shopping, I am considering using a home delivery service, as I don't really enjoy this task, especially at peak seasonal times.
I would consider hiring a cleaner, but it seems that the best ones are fairly expensive these days.
not at all, i did that and the girl i hired loved it! in the uk we currently have so many east europeans who are hard working and usually overqualified for what they are doing eg. working coffee shops, cleaning etc. in my case the girl was working as a cleaner so was happy to do cleaning/housework but she was more than competent to do office work too and was glad of the opportunity to do something different as well.
She doesn't like the job very much, hates the pay and would prefer I elevate her status to something like CEO but I don't see that happening any time soon.
I outsource a lot of stuff. That's not really an assistant though.
Would I hire an actual assistant? Ummm... no. Not when I can get one for free.
My G/F is my assistant.Not when I can get one for free.
Have you fully calculated whether this is a good deal for you? I'll bet it's a long way from free. She may already be CEO and you just don't know it yet. LOL
'right person' and 'right situation' are key; same as with any other employee, it's always a gamble, not to be rushed into.
The right person is vital. This cannot be stressed enough.
But, also look at yourself. For 30 years I was lucky enough to have a career where I was assigned a personal secretary. I had great ones and not-so-great. One of the best I had was an older woman that was not working out for anyone else. I was to take her on, chart her problems and (kindly) send her down the road.
To do that, I outlined her jobs clearly. She did them. And so I gave her more, outlining what she was to do. And she did them. With a smile. And she made positive suggestions. Made my life easier. Cared about what we were doing. She thought her new boss was great.
Turns out, she had had poor bosses who didn't tell her what to do. She worked for me for 11 years. When she retired, a lot of the managers who wanted to get rid of her were still around and they were so sorry to see her go. No one remembered that they wanted me to get rid of her. I was "lucky to have her."
Jane, it might be clear to you, but it probably will not be clear what you want done and how you want it done. Explain each job in detail and then ask questions to see if you were understood. If the task is not done or not done as you wanted, it's possible (likely) you failed to explain it well.
Also, remember everyone is working for more than a paycheck. We all want to hear how we are making a positive difference and our efforts are appreciated.
Bottom line: If you can be a good boss, an assistant can be a very good idea.
Would I hire an actual assistant? Ummm... no. Not when I can get one for free.
My kids said they didn't see a need for a housekeeper. Of course they don't need one, they already have one 24 X 7 at their disposal who works for free and often even ends up doing their chores for them.
One for the personal stuff, and one for the business stuff.
Lacking that option, I'd go for the personal assistant and carefully explain that their duties included "assisting me" and that would include both personal and business related activities.
Lacking that option, I'd go for the personal assistant and carefully explain that their duties included "assisting me" and that would include both personal and business related activities.
If I hire someone for the business it is a tax deductible expense, but that work is harder to offload. It would be easier for me to spend time doing A/B testing on my Adsense ad placements and have someone else go to Costco and the pet supply store for me than the other way around. So that is part of my indecision on how to proceed.
A good business assistant is priceless. Dump task and forget about it - that's golden.
We've got a business assistant. Actually we currently have a business admin that I dump all my mundane chores on. Plus my wife is my other dump and forget business admin. Both my wife and the other admin actually enjoy the task of being told once, then taking mundane but detail oriented tasks to their conclusion. Like, I couldn't be bothered. They're like, luv it - talk to clients, talk to vendors, fix things, look after stuff I didn't even know was going on. I don't know how you hire for that. The one I married, the other is someone we knew on a personal basis (extended family) so we knew she was salt of the earth to begin with. I guess what I'm suggesting is that what you're really looking for is someone with good work ethics. The rest is easy.
Part of our assistant's job is to ease the pressure on my wife - so she's got the time then to do the personal assistant stuff; shopping, corralling family, kids etc. And that was a distinct part of our decision in hiring the admin - to free up my wife's time to do the personal stuff. If you're so inclined, maybe you can work the business assistant in in such a way that you're time gets freed up to do the personal stuff - if that's your thing.
In addition to freeing up our personal time we've tried various housecleaning services. None of them perform to my wife's satisfaction, so we still have that burden. Our personal solution was to realize that cleaning and tidying the house was going to have to be done by us. In order to take some of that load off of my wife, I've committed to specific housecleaning chores as have the kids. I get 2 hours in the bathrooms once a week :). It's not my cup of tea, but I take the time to do it consistently so my wife doesn't have to. The kids have similiar chores, vacuuming/dusting, etc. Doing it consistently (and I do) means she can then dump and forget those tasks, leaving her enough free time to continue to mix her office tasks and her personal/home tasks. I scrub bathrooms so she doesn't have to think about that job getting done.
Anyway, that's what we do. Business and personal assistants for the self employed gets into a very personal mix so there's no right answer - just the right answer for you.
Okay, so thanks for all of the comments so far. I think I'll try to hire a mother's helper at first on a temporary basis to see how that works out. That should be an easier hire than someone to help with the web business work.
