We like advice… when it comes from experts.
Our client, one of the largest advisory firms in the US, understands that perfectly, working in an advisory and consultation capacity for C-Suite and industry leaders around the world. Whether it’s management, investment, or even forging business strategy, organizations come to them because of their expert advice.
If the product you’re selling is your expertise, you can’t have anyone but experts on your team.
Our client understands that perfectly. They’ve assembled a team of over 1200 experts on nearly every imaginable area of concern to industry executives. But even as they advise their own clients on finding talent and building their teams, they have the same challenges.
What’s the best way they can scale their services across the entire globe? The best thing they could do is skip hiring for certain roles completely.
That may sound audacious, but we’ll explain.
Top Talent Attracts Top Clients
First, consider the attraction model when it comes to finding the right people for your team.
Think of it like a cycle. When your company is dealing with CEOs and high-level leaders, you both attract and need that kind of help when you build your team. Then the cycle starts over again. The quality of talent you build your team with determines the direction your company will continue to go.
Hiring for this is extremely difficult because the whole process works against you. Either you make a quick decision to shave off hiring time and bring much-needed help in quickly, or you delay in order to get the best talent and risk losing productivity during that time.
That’s why we suggest that when you need a great executive assistant, the last thing you should do is hire one.
Hiring Without Hiring
Hiring costs. A lot. It costs in time (months!), in money (thousands!), and in the energy and frustration that comes with the whole process.
As their offices continued to expand around the globe, our client was experiencing the real pain that comes with incredible growth. Every expanded office meant more unfilled positions. It was their top-level consultants spurring that growth, and they needed their own executive assistants to take administrative tasks like scheduling and travel planning off their plate and keep things going.
Standard hiring says you can’t always get the very best very quickly. But we say otherwise.
Can you fill a position in days instead of months? Yes. Can you find top-tier executive assistants? Absolutely. Can you skip all of the headache of both hiring, and legal compliance? Definitely.
You can do all of that because you’re not actually hiring. We are. And we do it through a four-part approach:
- Full employees. We hire all of our US team members, as our full employees are complete with payroll and benefits. We even handle all legal and compliance employment issues.
- Superior talent. Every year we get tens of thousands of applications, and from that, we use a rigorous process and only choose a few. We’re looking for people who have incredible talent, and have experience with C-suite and Fortune 500 companies. That’s a lot of effort in recruitment and interviewing you don’t have to do.
- Variety. We want multifaceted workers, with different work styles and personalities. We take compatibility very seriously when we match an executive assistant with a client. Because the working relationship will only thrive if there’s trust, it’s important our clients “click” with their executive assistant.
- Great workplace culture. We’ve built a real team, with a solid and supportive culture that has led to some of our executive assistants working for clients for more than seven years, which is practically unheard of in this industry.
We did this because we know, like our advisory client, you need to get your executive assistant ASAP but you can’t sacrifice on quality.
To be the expert, you must build a team of experts.
Get Your Executive Assistant First, And Fast
A great executive assistant can do just about anything and everything. Expense management, customer service, travel planning, meeting management, human resources, handling your email and schedule—for C-suite executives, they are a must-have.
Before anything or anyone else, get your executive assistant in place. In fact, we’d be so bold to say that if you get the right executive assistant first, you’ll find your hiring list might get a bit shorter on its own.
Let’s use our client as an example of why you can trust our process and feel comfortable moving so quickly.
- Multilingual and global capabilities. As a global organization, our client needed executive assistants who knew a variety of languages. They also needed to be located in different time zones.
- Familiarity with C-suite expectations. Our client consults and advises a variety of different industries, though it is all at the C-suite level. They needed executive assistants who were comfortable and experienced with C-suite work.
- Experts in expectation. Because our client was rapidly growing and had many other job openings to fill, they couldn’t waste time. They needed an executive assistant who understood what is expected without having to be constantly told.
- Broad skills and work styles. A global company has a variety of cultures and personalities in play wherever they do their work. Our client needed executive assistants who were a good fit for the person they’d be working with.
- Growth demands agility. Growth requires agility, and traditional hiring is the great roadblock of agile growth. Our client needed to quickly bring on talented executive assistants who were vetted and trustworthy. Working with three-month hiring cycles was impossible, and they already had a large backlog of open jobs.
- Growth demands flexibility. Because growth isn’t always a straight shot to the stratosphere, there can be times when your budget and your needs shift. Our client, who grew from three people to 33 offices around the world in just under a decade, needed that kind of flexibility. Depending on who the executive assistant worked with meant needed hours might vary.
We were able to provide exactly what they needed because of our vetting, hiring, and matching process—and it’s done in a way that’s compliant. The final piece, flexibility, comes with our subscription staffing approach.
With subscription staffing, you avoid contracts. Instead, you pay for the time you need our team to work. In the process of growth, if you find you need more hours or fewer hours from your executive assistant, you pay us accordingly for that month. One monthly payment for amazing talent, someone who can be up and running in a few days.
There’s nothing comparable. It’s one of the reasons our client has been able to capitalize on global growth instead of being paralyzed by it.
You can follow suit. Connect with us right now. We’ll have a conversation about what you’re looking for, and we’ll find a match. It’s really that easy.
Topic: Remote Staffing
