Advice on how to get a remote personal/executive assistant

Check out Pineapple Operations list for part time and virtual PAs: 

 https://pineappleoperations.org 

[Edit: The following aren't exactly "good leads," but I thought it would still be useful to share some of the comments I've heard on options people in this community have tried.]

Fancy Hands

"Fancy Hands is a team of US-based virtual assistants".

Comments I've heard on them from a couple of EAs:

I used various assistants over a couple of months for in total maybe 30 tasks, each about 20 minutes long (their limit per one credit). I would say that the quality varied a lot and most of the time, they did not save me any time if included coordination cost, etc. If it was a straightforward task that could be done in 20 min, they performed okay, but even in that case I still found it to be large time-saving. I know one EA who likes it and uses it somewhat regularly. Maybe I just didn't figure out a way to utilize them well. Feel free to share it with other people under "an EA told me"

And then I wasn't sure if this EA has actually used Fancy Hands, but they summarised it thus:

FancyHands function almost as a platform, where they remain in the middle and take a cut. It's easy to use a small # of hours/per week, the provider will swap you out with other assistants relatively quickly, and the people you work with are relatively junior.

[Edit: Athena 

Athena set you up with full-time Philippines-based PAs. One EA said the PAs nevertheless work to US timezones; another said that being in the Philippines was a problem when their colleague used Athena. Some other comments from EAs:

A couple people I know have been using them recently and seem happyish with them.

We have used them previously but found the person was too junior to be helpful - not sure if this is the norm of if we were paired with the wrong person.

I think there was an initial $1500 signing fee for equipment and now we pay $2500 per month [~£10/h]. If there are not enough tasks you can share a PA with multiple people, but ideally only one person would be coordinating and assigning them tasks.

My PA is good, but not super excellent. I'd recommend them for tasks such as:
- booking travel insurance, travel, and accommodation
- calling doctors/Covid centers, making appointments
- researching flight regulations
- transcribing messages (but not really drafting them from scratch (at least not with EA context and slang)
- sending out presents/gifts
- scheduling things (if all preferences are clear and it's not a high stakes meeting)
- researching things such as: "What is the newest HP laptop model with xyz features" -- needs to be pretty specific
- accountability things...

I'd recommend it for people who just don't like doing these things themselves. But you probably won't get a person who actively has your back, thinks about deadlines and is super proactive.

That being said, [another EA] also had an assistant from Athena but decided to switch to another assistant (also from Athena), because she made a bunch of smaller mistakes and was not able to do tasks.

I...talked to a few EAs who've used it and found they've had widely-ranging experiences

I'm trialing a full-time assistant via AthenaGo who has been pretty helpful, but I don't have a great reference point, since this is my first time around.

Another EA told me that they've found Athena to be "medium-y" so far.

And then in a phone call with another EA in March 2022, I was told that Athena is good but there's a waitlist, and that the first assistant they tried wasn't good enough, the second was good, and the third was okay.]

Upwork

When I was doing more PA work for EAs myself, I briefly tried experimenting with re-delegating anonymised tasks to Upwork, but I couldn't find any takers for the first task I tried. Another EA I know uses them for PA tasks though.

Assistant headhunters

One EA recommended US-based Pocketbook Agency...

https://www.pocketbookagency.com has been good to work with...it's low-commitment (paid on contingency, so you'll just fwd your description and do a 30m call and they send you candidates)

...and another EA said...

I’ve tried to use a domestic staffing agency in the Bay Area before but didn’t have much luck and they weren’t great to deal with.

Mati Roy is an EA with some US-timezone friendly VAs: https://bit.ly/PantaskServices (on the website it says "We hire mainly in North America and Europe" but I think they still generally prefer to share the Google doc).

[Edit: And before anyone wastes time on CampusPA - another EA-run PA agency that I sometimes hear mentioned - while their website is still up, the CEO's LinkedIn says "I closed CampusPA in February of 2022."]

Do you use Virtalent UK?

I don't think my particular VAs have more capacity, but I believe Virtalent has other VAs ready to match with clients.

It is unclear to me whether I’ve just gotten lucky. But with Virtalent you can switch VA and the minimum commitment is very low, which is why I think the best strategy is just to try