Before you make a hire, make sure you have a good personal assistant to CEO job description. This job description is key to attracting the right candidate for the job. In this post, we’ll go through what it should look like. The sections we include are based on what has brought us consistently great results.
Job Description of a Personal Assistant to a CEO
The typical job description has some basic sections that we like to keep. So, you will notice some items are familiar. We just tweaked some of them to make sure you can get all the important details in. Then, we included a couple of new items. We also put an emphasis on expectations around compensation and work conditions. This is not to put too fine of a point on it. We are very intentional about ensuring that everybody is on the same page before making any big decisions.
For a personal assistant to CEO job description, these sections will, of course, take on some color. You will see more than just an overview of the typical responsibilities and daily tasks. This is because we want to make sure that you include the key qualities you look for. These are the characteristics that someone taking care of your CEO should bring to the table. This means looking into the details of the role that they have. For instance, you would think about managing the CEO’s schedule, handling communications, and liaising with team members and clients.
Key Skills Required
A personal assistant to the CEO must have certain key skills. The abilities that you want to list on the job description are the non-negotiables. We put this section first because it’s easy to scan through. This way, a candidate can tell early on if they have the essentials of what you require. If they do, they can move to the next section.
I’ve included the most common key skills we look for below, but you may have additional ones. You might also want to remove those that aren’t too important. This way, you can attract the perfect match who specializes in what you need.
- Excellent organizational skills for efficient management of tasks and responsibilities.
- Strong communication skills for effective liaison with clients, team members, and other stakeholders.
- Independent decision-making to carry out tasks with minimal supervision.
- Problem-solving abilities to handle administrative issues smoothly without external assistance.
- Management skills, including time management and multitasking, as well as teams and high-level projects.
- Proficiency in business software and tools for managing data and schedules.
- Advanced knowledge and experience on the principles and common procedures of the industry.
- Ability to complete complex assignments and integrate elements from other specialties as needed.
- Strong commitment to the company vision and dedication to achieving goals.
Duties and Responsibilities
The role of a personal assistant is mainly ensuring the well-being of the CEO. This means doing whatever the CEO needs to be optimally productive at work, including personal errands.
The duties you list are required, and should therefore be listed first. Some responsibilities might be non-negotiable, so you can put those at the top, too. Anything that you prefer, but is not a deal-breaker, can go at the bottom of this section. You want to be careful not to turn away good candidates by setting the bar too high. If something isn’t important to you, don’t make it look like it is.
If a candidate does not meet the expectations of the job in this area, there’s no harm done. They can click off without wasting too much time. Common duties and responsibilities include:
Administrative Support
- Develop and maintain a filing system.
- Prepare documents for meetings.
- Manage calendars and bookings (including setting up events, scheduling appointments, and making travel arrangements).
- Update and maintain office policies and procedures
- Order office supplies.
- Plan meetings and take detailed minutes.
- Organize and coordinate daily activities.
Communications
- Provide general support to visitors.
- Direct all contact from company departments and outside offices (by phone, email, etc.)
- Maintain contact lists.
- Draft and send out communications (emails, memos, newsletters, etc.)
- Maintain work files and retrieve and distribute them as required.
- Prepare reports.
Salary Expectations
The average salary for a personal assistant in the United States is $15-$16 per hour. This is well below the national average hourly salary of $24-$25. If you are hiring a personal assistant virtually, these rates can be cut to as low as a third of these averages. We have a dedicated post on personal assistant salary ranges if you want to look at more numbers.
Consider, however, that you are hiring for the CEO. You will probably want to expand your rate range beyond the average rates. This will prevent the best candidates from snubbing your offer. Otherwise, you will most likely end up with below-average hires. When they fail to meet the high standards that the average CEO demands, you will need to start all over again. This ends up wasting a lot of time and resources, especially in terms of your CEO’s productivity.
You don’t need to put a rate on the personal assistant to CEO job description. Including a range, however, will look better to applicants. Granted, a higher rate range may initially attract unqualified candidates who simply liked the dollar value. You can easily remove these applications with a simple vetting procedure and initial personal assistant interview questions. Keeping the rate visible will show serious candidates that your offer is a legitimately healthy one.
Here’s a well-kept freelance secret: the best candidates initially pass over any offers that don’t include pay rates. This is because most companies that hide the rate they are willing to pay do so because it’s generally unattractive. They demand a lot in the job post but aren’t willing to pay at par with these demands. You don’t want to attract the stragglers who couldn’t get the better jobs because you didn’t post a rate range.
Other Factors Influencing Compensation
The biggest factors that affect rate ranges are job difficulty and location. Because this is an assistant for the top executive in your company, you can already expect to pay more. If you require a lot of experience or higher-level analytical skills, for example, then you need to go even higher. You will also pay higher for someone working in-office. You will pay less, but not a great deal less, for someone working from home. The same is true for hires in North America and Europe.
Where you get the most savings is hiring virtually from countries with lower living costs. This is because of two main reasons. First, hiring virtually means lower costs for both you and the person you hire. You don’t need to pay the usual benefits and taxes. The assistant doesn’t need to compensate for commute times or fare. Second, an assistant who pays a lower cost of living will simply not need as much. Someone whose rent is three times higher, for example, will need a rate that much higher, on average.
Of course, you don’t need to know right off the bat what the right range actually is. (Although we can help with that if you want to outsource work rather than hire locally. We highly recommend this, of course, unless you absolutely need someone to be physically present.) You can put out an average range and indicate that it’s open for negotiation. Just be very careful when vetting and interviewing candidates. You want to be sure that you are actually getting your money’s worth.
Work Environment and Hours
Be very clear about the typical working hours that you expect a hire to keep. Describe the environment that they will work in, too. Sometimes, even if you want them to work odd hours, the environment can help. If they know that the atmosphere will be comfortable, they may not mind staying late. Or, if they know that they will not be working alone, they may be more pliant. Some people will feel happier working different times than they’re used to if they have company.
Especially if you’re hiring overseas, make the time zone hard to miss. If you are flexible at all with the work hours, mention that. The best will always be a little less flexible, because they can. They know their worth and will often choose comfort first because they know they can do better. If you might need more flexibility here and there, you must mention that. You can explain what that level of flexibility is when you interview them. Most people are ok with being flexible, as long as you tell them upfront and are willing to compensate them fairly.
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Conclusion
This template of a personal assistant to CEO job description is not the be all and end all. Our aim was to give you a sample that you can modify according to your needs. With an understanding of what you need to focus on, we hoped to make that easier. All in all, we think this should help you to create the perfect description for the job.
