How to determine if you’ll make a good personal assistant
For people who wanted to start anew or shift to a new career, perhaps a job as a personal assistant could be your option. As this profession requires you to be competent in a couple of areas such as project management, time scheduling, task prioritization, interpersonal skills, and even computer-technical skills, it is always a good strategy to first go about your skills list.
The work of a personal assistant can be as tedious and demanding as other jobs and it is pertinent that you are prepared to handle anything. May it be to respond to your superior’s needs, manage schedules, and arrange collaterals, being up-to-speed is almost always necessary.
To help you check if you have what it takes to be a skilled and proficient personal assistant, here are simple guidelines that you can follow.
Make an Intensive Skills Assessment
A very basic yet effective way in identifying your skills set is to simply write it down. Take time to reflect on what you can do and then list down all your strengths in a sheet of paper. Be as intensive as you can get. Here are some guidelines:
- Reflect with what you have done and worked on during your previous employment. It is always best to look up for your previous job descriptions and see which of those have you performed.
- Organize your skills and place each according to appropriate headings or categories as necessary. For instance, a broad category of technical skills may be broken down into sub-categories such as “computer skills”, “internet skills”, “software development”, “graphics design”, etc. This way, your skills aren’t mixed up, and it will be easier for you to identify which areas are you highly proficient, or otherwise.
- For a more comprehensive leveling of skills, mark each depending on how adept or proficient you are. For instance, you may rank them depending on your level of competency or years of experience.
- Remember to only include in the list skills that you are confident you can perform. Do not include skills or activities that you have only done once. The goal of this skills assessment is to know the things you can do. Do not attempt to make it longer by including items that are irrelevant.
- Do not forget to associate experiences, events, or activities corresponding to each skill. This is important so you will be able to share this with your employer as you go through your interview.
Set your Goals
After completion for your skills inventory, not only you are aware now of what areas you are good at. It also tells you which gray areas you need improvement.
What you can do for a start is to check on those weaknesses or skills with low expertise. Then, take extra efforts to train yourself to become adept at those. You can enroll in short courses that will teach you how to do it. You may also do a little research and take time to learn by yourself. In the long run, this will definitely benefit you.
Short online courses are always readily available for language training, computer skills development, and many others. In addition to that, there are institutions and offices that offer classroom training in many technical areas. All you need to do is look it up and enroll yourself.
However, you need not enroll in all courses you find. Not only is that impractical, but it is impossible for you to simultaneously cram all those skills into your head. Only select skills training that you think will be vital to your career as a personal assistant. This will ensure that you keep yourself up-to-date and up-to-speed.












