moving to bangkok. hiring personal assistant.

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boddicker

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May 22, 2010
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i'm moving to bangkok in five days. when i arrive i plan to hire a personal assistant to take care of what are essentially time-consuming, mundane tasks. i run two businesses that have little to do with marketing. to increase productivity and allow me to focus on my work, i'd like to free up a ten hour block where i don't have to worry about these interruptions. the person i hire will be responsible for those things (picking-up dry cleaning, booking plane tickets, getting lunch).

recently it has occurred to me that there will probably be large moments of time where there isn't all that much to do; basically some days will be busier than others...other days there will be less distractions. of course, i can easily create work. but, if i'm going to do that, i'd like that work to be as productive as possible. as things are now, the assistant will have very little to do with my current business operations. at $600 a month full-time, she/he would mainly be there to help me stay organized in life and let me focus on what i want to be focused on. but i've been planning to focus some of my efforts at affiliate marketing for awhile now so that i can learn some new stuff. i realized that maybe this personal assistant could also help me out in this regard when the time comes. i could hire a assistant/graphic designer for example.

granted, this could be a bad idea. for example i'm not 100% familiar with how graphic designers in bangkok will react to the personal assistant aspect of the job. though, i might as well post and see the response. obviously i couldn't train a non-designer or non-programmer how to do either of those things since i can't do them myself. in fact, since i have very little design background myself, i might not make the best leader when it comes to design or whatever (not too worried about this).

basically, my feeling is that it couldn't hurt to have someone qualified to help me out a bit w/ this stuff if i want to give it a go, as long as they're also willing to take care of my personal tasks (since i'm definitely hiring someone to do that).

if this thinking is reasonable enough, what are some good basic skills that i should list as required in the job listing that should get me what i want (someone that can help me w/ affiliate marketing when i decide to give it a go)?

should i basically hire a competent designer that can take care of creative stuff so that i can direct my attention elsewhere? obviously, if they're willing to work for me i'd want them to know as much as possible about everything. but since that's not realistic, what are some core skills they should be good at? php/html/css/photoshop?
 


Hire a Thai assistant and outsource your design tasks to the Philippines. It'll save you a lot of headaches.
 
Get someone for your personal stuff and when you have found someone, go and get someone for the rest.

Thing is you want different kind of designers for different work and you want to be able to change them without having stress. When you have someone who can design well and sucks at assisting oyu for the rest what you gonna do?

A personal assistant needs different qualifications then someone who is going to pull out designs for you so no need to mix those up. Plus design work is more expensive then personal assisting.

So do what everyone else is doing get a personal assinstant (read: a sexy bitch that you like to see every day) and rent a designer once in a while get some good contacts and have a list of dunno 3-10 depending on your demand of designers that all have different qualitys and let them do the work.

Remember you get what you pay for. No decend designer will work for that and those who are shouldn't be someone you are looking for.
 
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It's hard enough to find a good personal assistant in Bangkok, I know first hand. Trying to expand on the skills base is just going to be frustrating for you.

BTW, $600 a month is a little low for a good personal assistant in Bangkok. The really good ones make far more than that. Just getting one who is fluent in English is a challenge. They also need to be very organized and connected as much as possible. There aren't many like that which is why they pull good money, much more than you would think in a country where the average annual income is US$4,000.
 
thekaine said:
Get someone for your personal stuff and when you have found someone, go and get someone for the rest.

Thing is you want different kind of designers for different work and you want to be able to change them without having stress. When you have someone who can design well and sucks at assisting oyu for the rest what you gonna do?

A personal assistant needs different qualifications then someone who is going to pull out designs for you so no need to mix those up. Plus design work is more expensive then personal assisting.

So do what everyone else is doing get a personal assinstant (read: a sexy bitch that you like to see every day) and rent a designer once in a while get some good contacts and have a list of dunno 3-10 depending on your demand of designers that all have different qualitys and let them do the work.

Remember you get what you pay for. No decend designer will work for that and those who are shouldn't be someone you are looking for.
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ya this makes a lot of sense. shot in the dark. since they're two separate jobs it's obvious how it would be hard to find the right fit.

i did have one person apply as a personal assistant that listed graphic design and advertising experience. that sort of lead me to believe maybe it is possible. of course, they could suck.
 
geomark said:
It's hard enough to find a good personal assistant in Bangkok, I know first hand. Trying to expand on the skills base is just going to be frustrating for you.

BTW, $600 a month is a little low for a good personal assistant in Bangkok. The really good ones make far more than that. Just getting one who is fluent in English is a challenge. They also need to be very organized and connected as much as possible. There aren't many like that which is why they pull good money, much more than you would think in a country where the average annual income is US$4,000.
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could you tell me a little bit about your experience getting an assistant? how many people did you interview? i know some people in bangkok and they say the hardest thing is getting somebody with a good grasp of english. though, i posted an ad and had one person from england one person from australia apply (ladies) at $600 a month. these people wouldn't know thai, so that would be a negative. there were a few 50% thai 50% americans that had lived in america, but their english was somewhat flawed.

i was told that any girl graduating from a good university would be very happy with a job that paid $600. since i'm not going to have them run any of my current business operations, it's not like they need to be a genius. i haven't actually interviewed anybody since i'm not even there. i could find out very fast that you're right. i did get a lot of applications at that price range though.
 
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