The Ultimate Guide to Hiring the Perfect Personal Assistant
Learn How to Hire a Part-Time Personal Assistant from the Experts at The Middle
You’ve worked hard to be successful. The only problem is… now you’re too busy to enjoy it. You keep wishing you had more time, an extra set of hands, ideally just a clone of yourself! Sure, you’ve heard about personal assistants, but that idea seems like a luxury, certainly not one applicable to your life. Personal assistants are only for celebrities and billionaires… right?
Wrong. Modern PAs are for busy families, entrepreneurs, professionals, and anyone else who values their time. Working with a personal assistant isn’t an unattainable nice-to-have; in fact, once you start working with a personal assistant, you may find they have become a must-have! To show a PA can be applicable to your life, we’ll walk you through everything you need to know when hiring a personal assistant for your everyday real life.
Step 1: Define Your Needs
Track Tasks
Getting the ball rolling is lower lift than you think: start by tracking your to-dos for a week to see what can be offloaded. You can jot these down in a Notes app on your phone, on an actual notepad if that’s your vibe, or in an audio note folder– whatever works for you! Based on the list you end up with, you’ll have a good idea of the scope of work so you can attract the right type of talent.
Part-Time vs. Full-Time
If you find that your commitments and needs change fast, and you often need someone by your side all day (or at least, only an immediate phone call away), you likely need full-time support. However, most people find they just need to skim off the top of their weekly responsibilities and could offload a part-time capacity at 10-20 hours per week. For most people, there are very few circumstances where needs are so immediate that they can’t wait until the next morning. This is The Middle’s core focus: part-time personal assistants who can manage routine tasks, day-to-day needs, and handle behind the scenes admin that keeps you moving forward without needing to be directly supervised.
PA vs. EA vs. House Manager
Executive Assistant: Business focus (email, scheduling, travel, administration).
House Manager: Vendor management, staff supervision, organization
Personal Assistant: Hybrid work-life support. Errands, gifts, light scheduling, returns, household needs.
Step 2: The Job Description
The more details you can provide about you, your lifestyle, and the support you need, the more refined talent you’ll attract, preventing you from wasting your time meeting with people whose availability, interests, or skills don’t align with your needs. It can be tempting to generalize tasks by just saying “run errands,” but specifying those tasks– i.e.,“drop off dry cleaning on Mondays”,“take clothes to donation site,” or “purchase gifts for friends with newborns” will make a huge difference in setting expectations, a crucial element of finding and hiring the right assistant. Instead of “help with stuff that doesn’t get done,” say, “unpack boxes from move earlier this year,” or “follow up with Verizon on why my bill increased,” or “find a new dermatologist in my insurance network.” These details help build out your world so your PA has clear expectations on what will specifically be required of them.
Adding insight into who you are, how you work, and personality traits can also help make sure candidates bring the right soft skills. Do you prefer daily communication or a weekly rundown? Are you Type B looking for someone Type A who can hold you accountable? These are important details for personal assistant positions as often personalities meshing is the make or break factor in a successful partnership.
It’s also good to list non-negotiables, such as having a car, strong email etiquette/writing skills, or ability to meet at your home 3x/week.
Step 3: Where to Find Personal Assistants
Option A: The DIY Route (Indeed/Craigslist): Cheap, but you will drown in unqualified resumes.
Option B: A Traditional Agency: Extremely expensive (20% fees), often overkill for part-time needs.
Option C: The Middle (That’s Us!): A hybrid model. Professional matchmaking without the agency markup. We take care of the screening, share a short list of qualified candidate matches, and schedule interviews for you. We take a small placement fee but give you the flexibility in employment: you’ll work directly with your PA, pay them their hourly wages directly, and enjoy direct communication.
Step 4: Interviews
We’d argue that the personality match is more important than the hard skills (but we definitely don’t skip those!). If communication styles don’t align, trust is never established, or the vibes simply don’t mix, the relationship is bound to fail, even if they are doing everything technically right.
We’ve pre-screened and selected your candidates because we believe they can handle the position. When you’ve done the task of thinking about what you really need– with specifics– you can enter interviews with the baseline understanding that the candidates are truly qualified for the job because everyone involved knows what is needed and what to expect. This makes for not only more efficient interviews, but more successful ones, because not only do you know what you’re looking for, but you’ve already done the work of articulating it. For more interview recommendations or questions to ask during an interview, check out our Interview Tips.
Reviews From Our Clients
Step 5: Onboarding for Success
Create a Primary File of your life: You could create an “SOP” (Standard Operating Procedure) of all your basic data that your PA will need to frequently reference (DOB, gate codes, allergies, preferred airlines and frequent flyer numbers, etc). Your PA can also create or add to this over time.
Payments/Reimbursements: Define how to handle expenses your PA may incur on your behalf when running errands. You shouldn’t expect your PA to front cash for your personal purchases, but arranging reimbursement for subway fare or mileage is acceptable.
Set a Weekly Meeting: Having a set time to meet every week, even if only for 15 minutes helps establish the relationship. This is a great time for your PA to ask you questions, to get approvals from you, or to share information on projects that may require collaboration. Over time, a weekly meeting may no longer be necessary, but it can be a helpful tool in establishing trust, consistency, and access to you (a very busy person!).
FAQ: Common Hiring Hesitations
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Part-Time personal assistants are generally looking for $30-45/hr. Candidates new to being a PA may accept $25-30/hr, while highly experienced personal assistants or executive assistants may command $40-50+/hr.
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We respectfully decline clients who are friends that want to hire the same PA. These roles are highly personal and the PA who is the best fit for you, may not be the best fit for your friend. It’s best to keep needs separate to avoid sticky situations where it works out well with one of you, and not the other.
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We conduct reference checks for all of our personal assistant candidates. If you would like to conduct reference checks directly, we ask that you only do so for your top 1-2 candidates.
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The Middle does not conduct background checks. We are a California company and California Assembly Bill 1008 prevents background checks from being conducted until there is a conditional offer of employment. Since the candidates are not our employees, we are legally restricted from conducting background checks.
Hiring help isn't an expense; it's an investment in your sanity. Don't have time to sift through 100 resumes? Let The Middle handle the search, vetting, matching, and scheduling for you.
