How to Reduce the Cost of Hiring a Personal Assistant

You know that the time has come to hire a personal assistant. You have entirely too much to do across work and/or personal life to manage it on your own, and your time could be better spent on high-value items. You are ready.

Once you have decided to hire a personal assistant, one of the first things you may wonder is how much the hiring process is going to cost and how long it will take. One of the key factors here is whether you work on your own or with a qualified personal assistant staffing agency. By working with someone who knows the ins and outs of personal assistant recruitment, you will save both time and money, and end up with an amazing fit for your personal assistant position.

Reduce the Time Spent Recruiting

The first way to reduce the cost of hiring a personal assistant is to reduce the time spent recruiting them. This is one of the most important ways that a personal assistant recruiter can reduce your total cost of hiring.

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) reports that the average time to hire a new, non-executive employee is 36 days, and the average cost per hire is $4,425. By reducing the time spent, you reduce the overall resources utilized and the time taken out of your schedule to find someone. If you are filling this position after a prior personal assistant’s departure, you also reduce the number of days the position is open, which is important in order to keep all of the proverbial balls in the air.

How a Personal Assistant Recruitment Firm Reduces Time-to-Hire

The expertise and focus of a personal assistant recruiting agency reduces the time it takes to hire a personal assistant in a number of ways. Firstly, a good recruiter can build a great job description with a fitting title in a short timeframe and help you get the candidate identification and screening part of the search going sooner.

Once that is ready to go, a firm like C-Suite Assistants can use its vast network of both active and passive candidates to pair the perfect people with the opening. This cuts down on the time spent waiting for applications to roll in from only active candidates finding the posting online. Because your recruiter knows many potential candidates personally, they may already know someone who might be a good cultural and chemistry fit for you as well as someone who possesses the skills to help you excel.  An experienced staffing agency that specializes in personal assistants will be able to quickly present you with a slate of qualified candidates. Bringing in great candidates quickly and early on will really get the process rolling, and prevent you from wasting time screening and meeting candidates who aren’t a good fit. A good recruiter with the right personal assistant staffing agency will reduce the time it takes to find the perfect fit.

Additionally, since your personal assistant recruiter is fully devoted to the process of finding you a great personal assistant, their time will be focused on this task. This means that you won’t have a screening and testing process that drags on. Everything will be conducted with a high level of efficiency, and candidates will be moved onto the next step as soon as possible.

A Recruiter Allows You to Work on Higher-Value Tasks

Whether you are an executive in a company or running a busy household, you are hiring a personal assistant to do those tasks that you don’t need or want to do personally, so that you can better utilize your time. This probably means you don’t have much time to set aside to conduct an entire recruiting, screening, testing, interviewing, and hiring process. And even if you could manage to set the time aside, you probably have higher-value tasks that need completing.

Let those with expertise in this area focus on finding you a great personal assistant, while you do what you’re best at.

Reduce Turnover

And, of course, retention is another huge benefit when it comes to reducing the overall cost of hiring. By finding the right person, which you are more likely to do when using a recruitment agency with an impressive talent pool and the resources to match the best person with the position, you drastically reduce the likelihood that this person will quit early on, necessitating that this process starts all over.

Turnover is especially likely if certain key elements aren’t quite right during the hiring process. For instance, if the job description doesn’t fully encapsulate what is expected of the candidate, they may quit early on. If you need someone available 24/7, for example, that won’t work for every personal assistant. The needs from one employer to another can vary greatly when it comes to a personal assistant position, so it is key that the expectations be communicated thoroughly and clearly. A great personal assistant recruitment firm understands this and will ensure expectations are spelled out on both sides..

You also need to make sure that personalities mesh. Because recruiters get to know their clients and candidates very well, they can have extra insight regarding this, even beyond what you might discover in an interview.. In addition, recruiters gain valuable insight from candidates in post-interview discussions, and can provide you with valuable feedback to help you recalibrate, if need be,  the ideal candidate profile and the job requirements throughout the process.

Finding the perfect personal assistant can be a daunting task, especially when you are a busy person to begin with. Allow C-Suite Assistants to help. Contact us today for a free consultation, and let us find the perfect personal assistant for you.