Welcome to part 2 in our series on hiring an administrative assistants! In the previous video, I walked you through how to know when it was the right time to hire an administrative assistant. The next question you should be asking is “what should I look for in an admin?” If you want to hire an assistant to help take your business to the next level, you need to be looking for these five qualities in your applicants. Slow down your hiring process and make sure they are truly a good fit!
BEST QUALITIES FOR AN ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT
Continuing the theme of administrative assistant, the next question you need to be asking is “what should I look for in an admin?” In the last video, we talked about when you know if it’s the right time to hire an admin. Today we are going to talk about what you should look for in that perfect administrative assistant who’s going to help you take your business to that next level.
DETAIL ORIENTED
Remember we talked about the fact in the last video that if you suck at details, it’s time to hire somebody that is detail oriented. There’s a lot of things you can do in the hiring process to flush this out because everybody is going to say they are detail oriented, but the ones who are really detail oriented, you’re going to spot it if your hiring process is strategic enough to flush out this information. You’ve got to make sure they are detail oriented.
COMPLIMENT YOUR PERSONALITY
How do we figure this out? We leverage the DISC profile test. If you’ve not taken a DISC profile test, you can actually take one on our website. You can go to travisrobertson.com/disc and you can take a free DISC profile. Send anybody there that you’re thinking of hiring. You’ve got to figure out what is their personality style, what is your personality style and whether they compliment you. You don’t want to hire somebody just like you because you’re not good at details. You want to make sure the personality you’re hiring, the energy level, the style that they operate under is a compliment to you, not clashing with you and definitely not the same as you. You don’t want to hire a clone of you. You want to hire someone that’s different than you.
HIGH ENERGY
People confuse high energy with bubbly. I don’t mean super bubbly personality and a party looking for a place to happen. That’s not what I’m talking about with high energy. What I mean is that when they’re driven, when they’re focused, they get a lot of stuff done. They are able to adapt and they are able to stay on task for a long period of time. You need to sense that they’ve got an energy and a vibrance to them if they are going to be a good administrative assistant. You don’t want somebody who’s boring, someone who’s dull, somebody who’s too reserved, especially for someone like you. If you’re a high energy person, you need somebody who’s going to have a little bit of energy and bring that to the table.
SYSTEMS DRIVEN
They must be focused on systems. This is critical, because a lot of times when we’re ready to hire an administrative assistant it’s because we don’t have the systems in place and we’re all over the map. You need somebody who’s good at creating the systems, at developing the systems, at fine tuning them because you may have some systems in place but you want someone who’s going to come in and who’s going to change it and improve it and going to make it better so that you operate way more efficiently and effectively than you’ve been operating.
PULL ACTIVITIES
They must pull activities from you. This is absolutely critical. They have to be somebody who’s not going to sit around and wait and say “well if they don’t tell me what to do, I guess I’m just going to sit around and play card games on my computer.” You don’t want people like that. You want people who are going to come to you and go “hey! I need more to do. Let me take this. Let me handle that for you. You shouldn’t be doing that. I’ll handle all of that.” You want somebody who’s just going to come to you all the time and make sure that if they see you’re overworked, they are coming to you and pulling activities off of your plate. If you find somebody like that, they are gold. Overpay them. Keep those golden handcuffs on them because you do not want to lose somebody who’s willing to come in and pull activities from you. backlinkboss
PRO TIP
This is absolutely critical. Too many people have a hiring process that is too fast. You’re exhausted, you’re overworked, and you’re like “man, if they can fog up the mirror, I’m hiring them!” I don’t want you to do that. Instead, I want you to slow down your hiring process. Anybody can show up once with their A game for an interview. I don’t want somebody who can show up once with their A game. We have multiple, multiple rounds of interviewing for anybody we bring on our team. I want you to do the same thing. Slow the process down. Interview them once, interview them twice, interview them a third time, interview them a fourth time. Take them out to dinner. Have a spouse interview. Just get to know them before you bring them on your team. This is somebody who’s going to be working very closely with you. Don’t just hire the next person that can fog up a mirror.
