Hire an executive assistant
Senior support for a founder or an executive whose week is decided by other people. An executive assistant is not a more experienced virtual assistant — the difference is judgement about your time, your access and what gets said in your name.
- From $10/hour
- Both sides of every match vetted
- Member of VAASA
The handover
What moves, and what doesn’t.
Every agency will tell you what a hire takes off your plate. This is that list, and the other one.
Hands over
- Gatekeeping the diary, including saying no on your behalf
- Deciding which meetings need you and which need somebody else
- Preparing you for the day — briefs, papers, context, names
- Inbox management at the level of drafting replies for approval
- Board and leadership meeting coordination, papers and minutes
- Travel, itineraries and the contingency when one leg fails
- Following up on what other people agreed to do
- Holding the list of things you said you would come back to
Stays with you
- Anything that commits the business to a person or a number
- The relationships where you are the reason somebody stays
- Performance conversations, and everything adjacent to them
- Final approval on anything that goes out under your name
- Deciding what you are prepared to be interrupted for
None of this is a limitation we are apologising for. It is the part of the job that only works if it is yours, and an arrangement that pretends otherwise fails in month two.
The role
What the week actually looks like.
The reason this role is hard to buy is that its output is invisible. A virtual assistant produces a cleared inbox and a tidy set of files; you can see the work happen. An executive assistant produces meetings that did not take place, and nobody notices those.
The job is mostly refusals. Somebody wants thirty minutes. Somebody wants a call moved for the second time. Somebody has sent a five-paragraph email that resolves to a yes or a no. The value in the role is that none of those reach you in that form — the ones that need you arrive with the context attached, and the rest are handled. That only works if the rules for it were agreed before the person started, which is why the first conversation is about what you protect rather than about what tools you use.
Preparation is the second half of it. Walking into a call knowing who is on it, what was agreed last time and what they will ask for is the difference between a meeting that ends in a decision and a meeting that ends in another meeting. That is a real skill and it is one of the things assessed before anyone is proposed — the whole process is set out on how we work.
Where this role fails is almost always on the delegating side. Somebody hires an executive assistant, then keeps their own calendar open “just for the important ones”, and six weeks later has an expensive scheduler. If the gatekeeping is not real, the role is not real. That is worth being honest with yourself about before the hire rather than after, and it is one of the things we ask about on the client side of the assessment rather than only the professional’s.
On hours. South Africa is UTC+2 and has not observed daylight saving since 1944, so once your working hours are agreed the offset never moves again. For a role whose whole job is to be ahead of your day, that stability matters more than it does anywhere else on this site — the full arithmetic is on why South Africa.
Support is arranged at fifteen, thirty or forty hours a week from $10 an hour; pricing sets out what each level covers. If what you actually need is the administration of the business rather than the management of your own week, hire a virtual assistant is the more honest starting point and usually the cheaper one.
Before you hire
Four things worth checking, wherever you hire.
These apply to any provider, including this one. A page that is only useful if you buy from us is not a guide.
Ask them what they would do with an ambiguous request.
Most of the job is requests that are not quite instructions. A candidate who says they would ask you is describing a role that costs you time; one who describes how they would decide, and when they would check, is describing the role you are actually hiring for.
Decide what they are allowed to decline before they start.
An executive assistant who cannot say no on your behalf is a scheduler. The value is entirely in the refusals, and if nobody has agreed the rules for those in advance, the first difficult one gets escalated back to you and the pattern sets from there.
Ask how they handle something they overhear.
This role sees compensation, resignations, a bad quarter and a difficult board conversation, usually before anyone else does. Discretion is not a line in a contract, it is a disposition, and it is worth spending a question on rather than assuming.
Check they will be awake for your morning, not your afternoon.
Diary control only works if it happens before the day starts. Get the local working hours in writing and check them against the hour you actually need somebody — an executive assistant who comes online after your first three meetings is running yesterday.
Support levels
Fifteen, thirty or forty hours a week.
15 hrs / week
Nira Focus
Focused support. More time for what matters.
Founders and professionals who need consistent administrative support without a full-time commitment.
30 hrs / week
Nira Elevate
More support. More capacity to grow.
Growing businesses that need deeper support across administration, clients, systems and daily operations.
40 hrs / week
Nira Signature
Dedicated support. Seamlessly integrated.
Executives and established businesses requiring a dedicated professional who becomes an extension of the team.
From $10/hour. Executive support is delivered at one of three levels, and a business can move between them as the work grows.
Questions
Before you enquire.
What is the real difference between an executive assistant and a virtual assistant?
Volume against judgement. A virtual assistant runs the administration of a business — calendar, inbox, files, follow-ups — and does it against a process. An executive assistant runs one or two people's working lives, which means deciding what is worth your attention, declining things on your behalf and knowing what to say in your name. If the thing eating your week is quantity, hire a virtual assistant. If it is the number of small decisions about your own time, this is the role.
Can one executive assistant support more than one executive?
Up to two comfortably at fifteen or thirty hours a week, and it works best when the two people are close enough to the same part of the business that the context overlaps. Beyond that the role stops being executive support and becomes a queue, and the judgement that makes it valuable is the first thing to go.
How long before they can act without checking?
Longer than a virtual assistant, and that is the right way round. The first month is spent building the picture — who matters, what you protect, what you are prepared to be interrupted for — and most of that is learned by watching decisions rather than by being told. Expect meaningful autonomy from about month two and real gatekeeping by month three.
Should the role be UK hours or US hours?
Whichever contains your morning. South Africa is UTC+2 all year with no daylight saving, so an ordinary South African day sits comfortably ahead of a London one and an afternoon start covers a New York morning. The arithmetic for five markets, with the offsets shown, is on our why South Africa page.
Is this a personal assistant role?
In the UK and South Africa the terms are close to interchangeable and neither is junior. What matters more than the label is where the line sits between business and personal, and that is worth agreeing explicitly on the first call rather than discovering by accident in month two.
Where this goes next
Related pages.
The service
Industries
Get started
Tell us what the week looks like.
A short call if you would rather talk it through, or a short form if you would rather write it down.