Your Personal Assistant

Are you searching or thinking of employing a personal assistant? Choosing your personal assistant is a highly personal and sometimes stressful process. The first thing you should do is write down why you need an assistant. What tasks do you need them to perform? What will their job responsibilities be? What hours will they be expected to work? How much will they be paid? These are all things you should know before you begin your search. You might need an assistant who lives with you or one who works specified hours. It all depends on your particular lifestyle and your needs.

You might want to begin searching on the Internet. You can research various personal assistant agencies and freelance assistants online. Going through an agency is often a good bet because the assistants who are placed by the agency are trained and screened. If you go for a freelance assistant who is not affiliated with such an agency you may need to check work history, references and even perform a criminal and background check which is always a good idea. Once you've got a list of potential candidates, it's time to begin the interview process.

The interview process is very important when it comes to choosing the right candidate. At this time you will get a first impression of each potential assistant. First impressions can be very important and you should trust your gut. From there you will get to converse with the candidate, get an idea of their work history, explain your requirements, let them ask any questions they may have and let them explain why they feel they are the best candidate for the job. After several interviews you may have a few standouts or you may have made your choice.

When you are ready to hire your personal assistant you should have legally binding contracts drawn up by an attorney. These contracts should protect both you and your employee and state all requirements and expectations of both parties. Before starting work your assistant will need to sign the contracts and submit any tax documents necessary like W-4 forms or W-9 forms depending on whether they are your employee an independent contractor. Depending on which option you go for, you will either be responsible for subtracting taxes from your assistant's pay or they will be responsible for paying their own taxes as a self employed contractor.

Personal Assistant News:

Personal Assistant Training in the Celebrity World
Choose a type of celebrity - There are a variety of people who need to hire personal assistants, including: actors, musicians, athletes, politicians, directors, authors and motivational speakers. It helps to work for someone in a field ...


A Personal Assistant on Your iPhone (The Hendersonville Times-News)
JENNA WORTHAM A start-up called Siri says it combines "speech recognition with a brain" in its new virtual personal assistant for the iPhone. The application is designed to perform simple tasks such as booking restaurant reservations...


App of the Week: Siri a Digital Personal Assistant (The 33 News Dallas Fort Worth)
Siri Makes Getting Dinner Reservations or Concert Tickets as Easy as Talking To Your Phone If you've always wanted to have a personal assistant - here's one for free! The brand new app is called 'Siri', and it resembles a personal assistant you can take with you anywhere you go...


Siris IPhone App Puts A Personal Assistant In Your Pocket (TechCrunch)
After nearly a year in development and $24 million in venture capital, Siri is finally ready to bring its personal assistant to the iPhone. Siri brings a conversational interface to the iPhone which allows you to ask it to perform tasks for you such as find a French restaurant nearby and book a table, look up movie listings, order a taxi, or look up the phone number and address of a local ...


A Personal Assistant on Your iPhone (New York Times)
The pop-culture record shows that most artificially intelligent assistants dont work out too well for their human masters. Theres the comically co-dependent EUR” and largely unhelpful EUR” duo from Star Wars, C-3PO and R2-D2...

Siri: Your Personal Assistant for the Mobile Web (ReadWriteWeb)
Siri is one of the most ambitious mobile services we have seen in the last few years. Imagine if you could just talk to you phone and tell it to call you a taxi, reserve a table at your favorite restaurant or tell you what the weather in New York City will be like tomorrow. If you have an iPhone, you will be able to start doing that tonight. Siri, a virtual personal assistant, will recognize ...


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