What Our Fractional Executive Assistants (EA) Do
Fractional executive assistants are highly skilled administrative professionals who provide part-time and/or on-demand support to busy executives, business owners, and leadership teams. Instead of hiring a full-time executive assistant, businesses can leverage a fractional EA for flexible, cost-effective assistance.
Who Hires Fractional Executive Assistants?
While fractional executive assistants can provide support to a wide variety of people across various industries, fractional EAs are most commonly hired by entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, and startup companies.
One step up from that are small and mid-sized businesses that have a growing leadership team and seek admin support, but don’t need a full-time hire.
We also find that C-Level Executives, investors, high-net worth individuals, venture capitalists, and their leadership teams reach out to us to for expert executive support because they often don’t have time to vet the marketplace for highly-skilled candidates.
Regardless of their size, these business owners wear many hats and don’t want the overhead of a full-time, in-house executive assistant - or, they simply don’t have the time to tackle the risky hiring process on their own. That’s where we come in.
Why Choose a Fractional EA Over a Virtual Assistant?
The most important difference between a fractional executive assistant and a virtual assistant lies in the level of expertise, scope of responsibilities, and strategic involvement in a business. While you might hire a VA to do tasks that don’t involve you whatsoever, you might involve a fractional executive assistant in meetings and other strategy decisions. But primarily the two differ as it pertains to expertise and experience.
EA: A fractional executive assistant typically has high-level experience supporting CEOs. Our EAs often come from corporate executive support positions. They can handle complex, high-level administrative and operational tasks, and often find themsleves working on project management teams with business decision makers. Fractional executive assistants also are more likely to work long-term and get embedded into workflows.
VA: Virtual assistants are usually more task-oriented. They often specialize in certain areas like social media management or data entry and support the administrative needs of the company. The relationship, though intimate and personal, is more along the lines of a freelancer, or ad-hoc position.
What are the Benefits of Hiring Fractional Executive Assistants?
First and foremost, if you don’t need your assistant to be sitting in the office, then hiring a fractional executive assistant gives you immediate access to expertise that may not necessarily be available within 5 miles of your home office. Rest assured - we scour every corner of the U.S. to find the most experienced and skilled personnel in every industry.
If you’re not interested in the overhead of full-time salary and benefits, a fractional EA gets you everything you need - and likely more efficiently. In terms of flexibility, fractional EAs scale their time and availability as needed to help meet your needs, as they change in real-time.
Which One Should You Hire?
If you need a strategic, high-level partner to optimize workflows and help with executive-level tasks → hire a fractional executive assistant.
If you need task-based, general admin support on a flexible basis → hire a virtual assistant.
