How to recruit a personal assistant as an individual employer
02 Sep 2021
As part of our #RecruitmentReady spotlight we look at what individual employers need to know when recruiting a personal assistant.
Being an individual employer can help you to live independently and in a way that you choose. Personal assistants (PA) work for you so you decide what their responsibilities will be and when you’d like them to work.
How to fund a personal assistant
You can use a personal budget from health and/or social care (direct payment or personal health budget) or your own money (also called self-funding) to pay for your personal assistant(s).
You can find out more about personal health budgets and if you qualify for one on the .
Key things to think about before recruiting a personal assistant
It’s important to have a clear picture of what you want from a PA before you start the recruitment process, list the skills that you’d like your personal assistant to have, for example:
- Do you want someone who can drive or has good communication skills?
- Think about their values, for example, a sense of humour, patience or being able to use their initiative.
- List the tasks that you’d like your personal assistant to do, such as, support at work, helping with personal care, attending social events, or making meals.
- You might also want to think about your own cultural and religious needs and whether you want to employ someone who understands them.
Where to start when recruiting a personal assistant
΢΢²ÝÊÓƵ has a which is designed to support individual employers to recruit, manage, and train their PAs. Booklet 1 ’ guides you through:
- developing a job description and person specification
- advertising the role
- setting up an application
- interviewing
- completing all the correct checks for example, references and DBS.
We also have a webinar on ‘’ which is supported with a useful resource list as well as some question and answers on the topic.
You can also about how they approached the recruitment process and how they used ΢΢²ÝÊÓƵ resources to guide them through it.
Visit our for more information; you can also to keep up to date on the latest guidance, resources and upcoming events.
Print this page