Is 2020 the year you hire an assistant?
Hiring an assistant is a big step for every entrepreneur. They’re typically the first addition to your growing team and that makes it both an exciting and nervewracking endeavour.
If you’re planning on hiring an assistant this year, there are a few tips and tricks I can share with you that will make the experience better for the first time boss. It’s not just you anymore, so here are a few things that will make it a positive experience:
Budget For It
We could all use a little extra help, but if you hire before you’re financially ready it won’t go so well. If the time for you to hire an assistant is coming up soon, then it’s time that you start building a budget.
Try to figure out how much money you can afford and how much work you need. The sweet spot is where those two meet. If you’re just starting out it might be best to hire an assistant part-time.
Not only will it help lessen the costs but, more importantly, it will help you ease into having an assistant. You’d be surprised how hard it can be to go from solopreneur to team, you’ll want time to adjust.
Make a Plan
Before you hire an assistant, you need to actually create a plan. Once your budget is set up and you have your starting hours, you need to make a plan to figure out how you’re going to fill those up.
You don’t want your assistant just waiting around for you to send them work. It’ll bore them to pieces and you’ll be disappointed because you’ll feel like you need to hover over their shoulder.
Instead, you want to have some specific tasks set aside that you want them to complete. And you want those to be whole tasks, not simply part of them. That’ll avoid waiting on someone else before you or your assistant can complete a project, and it’ll ensure that you have a project delivered complete.
Communicate Your Expectations
Once you hire an assistant, you need to make sure that you communicate your expectations in a clear and concise manner. The worst thing that you can do when you first hire someone is giving them a task but don’t communicate what you actually want.
Be clear about what you need your assistant to do, how you expect it to come back to you and how you’re going to communicate during the process. Make sure you have an open door so they can ask the question they need.
But I would highly recommend not pushing your methods of getting the work done on them. If you’re hiring someone, you’re hiring them to help. But if you have to look over their shoulder it’s not going to be the experience they want. Focus on the result, not the task itself.
Do you have tips to hire an assistant? Share them in the comments below!
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Tae started out as a journalist before following the money into the corporate world. But it turns out that the grass isn’t always greener and now you can find her spending most of her time writing about all the things she loves. Namely, money, travel and business with a hefty dose of self-deprecating humor. She is a podcast fanatic, blogging aficionado and loves to find new ways to turn passions into cold hard cash!
