Best interview questions for your hiring process
CEO Assistant Interview questions
CEO Assistants are skilled individuals when it comes to communication, scheduling and organising. Their role focuses primarily on managing the administrative tasks of a CEO or other C-Level executive.
The perfect CEO Assistant (or Executive/Personal Assistant) should have the following traits:
- An excellent communicator, both written and verbal.
- Impeccable organisational and scheduling skills.
- They should also possess high computer knowledge, especially in Microsoft Office or any other software that your company uses.
Executive Assistants will often be dealing with external stakeholders, as well as internal, on behalf of the CEO or other C-Level individuals. Therefore, it’s important to gauge their people skills too!
Interviewing a CEO Executive Assistant
Finding the correct candidate for a CEO Personal Assistant role is vital to the productivity of your C-Level individuals, which has a direct impact on the rest of your company! This means it’s essential to get to know your potential hires properly in the interview. To help you prepare, take a look at these draft interview questions for an executive assistant.
These questions are designed to be used in the early stages of the recruitment process, so you can get a good idea of whether to proceed to the more in-depth stages of the interview process.
How to open the job interview
Naturally, the candidate may be a little nervous to start. This is why it’s important to put them at ease with a few positive and fun questions at the beginning of your interview. Focusing on open-ended and engaging questions will get the conversation flowing and warm them up for the meatier part of your conversation later on!
The opener doesn’t need to last too long but is vital to earn the candidates trust and ensure they are showing their full personality.
Best interview questions for your hiring process
See our CEO Assistant Job Description hereFor the interview
A positive opener to start
What is it you enjoy about working as an Executive Assistant?
What has your career journey been so far?
Behavioral Questions
Which tasks or responsibilities do you enjoy most when assisting a CEO or executive?
How do you usually prioritise and organise your day?
The answer here will give you an idea of how they organise themselves, as well as showing whether they understand which tasks are a priority in this role.
What is a moment that you’ve been proud of in a previous assistant role?
Here you will get an idea of the aspects of the role that the candidate performs well in.
Soft Skills
Can you give an example of a time you’ve had to multitask and manage several projects at once?
This shows whether the candidate can handle a high workload and will give a rough understanding of their prioritisation, time management and organisational skills.
How would you go about anticipating the needs of the CEO here?
How they answer this question will allow you to decipher their forward-thinking ability, and give a deeper look into their understanding of C-Level duties.
In your past roles, how have you dealt with organising files or data that you’re not familiar with?
This answer will give you an impression of a candidates willingness to develop and learn within their role.
Hard Skills
How proficient are you with computers? And which applications have you had the most experience with?
This will ensure the candidate has the level of knowledge needed to perform the role well while giving you an idea of what systems they would need to be trained in.
Describe a time you’ve needed to book and organise a business trip for an executive leader.
Allowing the candidate to describe a past experience will give you a clear overview of the process they follow when performing a task they’ll need to complete in this role. It will also give you an idea of how well they can self-manage a situation.
What would your step by step process be when setting up a meeting for the board of executives?
This shows whether the candidate has the general knowledge and organisational skills needed to handle one of the main tasks they would be handling. It may also give an insight into their overall working style.
Operational / Situational Questions
How would you handle a difficult or demanding stakeholder?
Finding out how the candidate would deal with a difficult situation like this will help give insight into their people skills and also help give insight into their personality.
If a project you were working on for the CEO became overwhelming, how would you handle this?
The answer here will give you an idea of how easy the candidate finds asking for help and also how they handle high-stress situations, which are sure to be a part of this role!
If you were creating a report for the CEO and found that a department’s files or information were missing, how would you rectify this?
This will test the candidate’s problem-solving ability, as well as their ability to coordinate with multiple people on one project.
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This shows the candidate’s knowledge when it comes to tasks they will be performing, while also giving you a clear idea of whether they’d be a good fit for the tasks your specific role contains.