Are you looking to hire the best Personal Assistant to support your management team?
Whether you’re looking for a Personal Assistant in Brisbane, a Personal Assistant in Melbourne or a Personal Assistant in Sydney, you need to consider your selection criteria carefully before commencing a recruitment process. Here are the top skills you need to look out for to ensure you get the most out of your Personal Assistant hire.
Most HR professionals and executives understand that a great Personal Assistant is not just a basic outlet for administrative support; they are a crucial organisational and workflow master for your business operations who empowers you and your key team members to thrive.
When choosing an ideal Personal Assistant, many businesses and recruitment agencies simply look to match a Personal Assistant’s skills on a resume to the requirements of a role – but this simply isn’t enough.
While ensuring that a potential hire has the experience to suit the role is crucial, what is perhaps more important is that the potential hire has the deep-seated skills that truly make a valuable difference.
Recognising that these skills are often overlooked in the hiring process and aware of how pivotal they are, we’ve compiled a guide to help with your next Personal Assistant hire.
Specifically, this article will identify and unpack the five must-have skills that your next recruit should possess to excel as a Personal Assistant who can add value.
Our role as a professional consulting firm is to ensure we offer advice that supports your business to succeed. So as you embark on the journey of hiring a support team that adds immense value, know that understanding and prioritising these skills will not only streamline your hiring process but also contribute to the ongoing success and function of your organisation.
Agility
Agility has quickly emerged as a sought-after quality in businesses around the world.
Forbes explains that the adoption of Agile working and Agile teams drives:
- Adaptability to change, technology and innovation
- Engagement resulting in retained IP
- Speed of results allowing greater impact
The story is no different when it comes to the role of a Personal Assistant where “agility” has become an increasingly valued asset.
You may have heard the term before, but in this context, let’s define agility as the ability to seamlessly navigate the dynamic and ever-changing nature of an assistant’s professional demands.
A truly agile Personal Assistant possesses a set of skills that exceeds those found on a resume and those needed to complete routine tasks.
Instead, an agile Personal Assistant encompasses a proactive and controlled approach to their responsibilities. This means they can seamlessly adjust to unexpected and evolving situations and juggle priorities to ensure that they can support the dynamic needs of both their executive and the team.
Effective Communication
When it comes to identifying the perfect Personal Assistant for you or your business, communication is king and mastering this skill is non-negotiable.
High-quality communication skills foster strong relationships and allow individuals to convey quality, thought-provoking ideas. Personal Assistants are often brand ambassadors that connect many moving people and parts within an organisation, so communication is key to maintaining authenticity, trust and harmony both internally and with external stakeholders.
So, what are the underlying traits that indicate effective communication skills?
Verbal skills
Often working as an intermediary between their executive and other stakeholders, the best Personal Assistants articulate ideas verbally with clarity and eloquence to avoid confusion. They also build rapport with whomever it is they’re communicating with adapting to their style and acting as a brand ambassador for the managers they represent. They are confident in building relationships at all levels.
Written skills
As the business world becomes increasingly virtual, the ability to communicate ideas through the written word is essential. From speed of output to accuracy when it comes to attention to detail, as well as strong comprehension abilities – being able to confidently and effectively articulate in a written format is a vital skill for a Personal Assistant.
Confidence
The underlying thread of strong communication skills is confidence. This is because a confident manner instils trust, projects professionalism, and ensures that the executive or manager is well represented during daily interactions with key stakeholders and staff.
Relationship Building
Following on from effective communication skills is the skill of relationship building—a vital trait of any exceptional Personal Assistant.
Whether you are an executive, manager, or human resources professional making the hiring decisions on someone else’s behalf, it’s important to recognise that a crucial element of a Personal Assistant’s duties is to act as the go-between between the person they represent and their broader network.
A good way to think of this is that a Personal Assistant bridges the gap between an executive and key personnel. That means the stability of the bridge depends upon an ability to build productive relationships.
Here are some important competencies to look out for when determining if a potential Personal Assistant has what it takes to build positive relationships.
A Deep Knowledge of the Executive’s Role
To understand how best to support their manager, Personal Assistants need to be able to understand their manager’s role within the business and the objectives that need to be achieved by their Manager. Usually, evidence for this competency is gauged through proven business acumen developed within a similar role working closely alongside a Manager as well as through formal education or other qualifications.
An Open and Honest Approach
In business and life, transparent and open communication is the bedrock of all successful relationships, best described as being humble and authentic in your approach. As such, a proficient Personal Assistant fosters trust by engaging in honest communication with both the executive and the teams they interact with resulting in a more harmonious, trusting and efficient work environment.
A Proactive Mindset
Proactivity is the engine that drives a successful Personal Assistant, as after all, there is no use having an assistant if it takes constant oversight and micromanaging to assist them to shift into gear.
A proactive Personal Assistant anticipates needs, identifies potential challenges, and takes the initiative to address them before they escalate. This “one-step-ahead” approach ensures the smooth functioning of daily operations and efficiency.
When it comes to business, maintaining order amidst the potential chaos is the key to success.
An assistant who can swiftly adapt on their own accord without succumbing to challenges and obstacles they face is key to ensuring a harmonious workflow for you and your team. As such, when building your top-notch team, it’s best to seek an agile Personal Assistant with a growth mindset, always needing to learn and evolve.
Organisational Skills
Organisational skills are the most important skill of a proficient Personal Assistant as their tasks are broad and time management is key.
This may seem fairly straightforward, and yet, basic resumes often overlook this skill or at least state this skill without any evidence for the claim.
Organisation is not just about keeping your tasks in order; it’s also the ability to orchestrate and prioritise tasks for others, especially for Personal Assistants who by nature are working in a support role. But the organisation isn’t just about squeezing everything into a calendar leading to rushed tasks, it also involves the crucial ability to say no to certain tasks and to prioritise effectively. The key here is self-awareness.
An organised assistant who also embodies the previous significantly contributes to the smooth functioning of an entire team. But at this stage, you’re probably wondering how you can measure and identify these skills in your potential candidates.
That’s where a specialised recruitment agency can help.
How a specialised recruitment agency can help you find and engage a Personal Assistant with the right skills.
Engaging a recruitment agency that specialises in sourcing and attracting top office support talent to your business, such as MJD Recruitment is a streamlined and cost-effective way to ensure that your next Personal Assistant hire has the right skills and competencies.
Here’s how the recruitment process works.
Step 1: A Consultative Approach
The process begins with the recruiter listening to you and your team to gather a comprehensive understanding of your business and the specific requirements of the Personal Assistant role you aim to fill. By engaging in open communication, the specialist looks to determine the technical aspects of the role as well as the unique dynamics of your work environment to ensure that the candidates they present are strategically aligned with your business goals.
Step 2: Skills Match
Following the consultative phase, specialist recruiters leverage their industry experience and expertise to meticulously analyse various candidate resumes and qualifications to identify Personal Assistants with the precise competencies required for the Personal Assistant job description. The goal is to present you with a pool of candidates who not only meet the technical criteria but also possess the potential to thrive in your professional setting.
Step 3: Identifying The Top 5 Skills
Many of the five PA skills and attributes we highlighted go beyond the basic skills you would find on a resume.
What distinguishes specialist recruitment agencies is their commitment to evaluating less obvious skills that go beyond basic Personal Assistant qualifications when finding you the ideal Personal Assistant candidate.
Using recruitment consultants trained in behavioural-based assessments, specialist agencies like MJD Recruitment delve beyond basic qualifications to understand a candidate’s suitability on a deeper level. Using proven behavioural-based interviewing techniques, they can identify the presence of the five key Personal Assistant skills required for success:
- Agility
- Communication
- Relationship Building
- A Proactive Mindset
- Organisational Skills
as well as extra competencies like attention to detail, willingness to go above and beyond, and a genuine desire to contribute meaningfully. This assessment ensures that the Personal Assistant you ultimately choose to hire not only has the technical know-how but also aligns with the values and culture of your business – the all-important ‘fit’.
Looking For a Specialised Office Support Recruitment Agency?
When it comes to office support, MJD Recruitment is trusted by many high-value organisations for staffing recruitment services.
Contact us on 1300 251 905 or reach out to Tara Elias or General Manager of Recruitment to learn more about how we could assist.
