Design a fair paid work sample for an executive assistant

Start with the real decision

What should an executive assistant work sample test, and how can a team run it fairly? The answer should follow the leadership team's real workflows, risks, and capacity rather than a generic rule. A useful work sample recreates the shape of the job without turning a candidate into free labor. Choose two or three frequent decisions: resolving a calendar conflict, preparing a concise meeting brief, triaging an inbox, or planning a travel change. Use fictional names, invented documents, and a fixed time limit. Pay every finalist on the same basis. The purpose is to collect comparable evidence about how candidates organize information, ask questions, explain tradeoffs, and recognize the edge of their authority. It is not to reward whoever spends the longest polishing a take-home assignment.

Avoid the common shortcut

Avoid live inboxes, real customer records, confidential board material, production credentials, and tasks whose output the company plans to use. Those inputs expose the candidate and the organization to needless risk. Avoid puzzles that have little connection to the role, and do not change the instructions for favored candidates. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission advises employers to use selection procedures that are job-related and consistent with business necessity. A standardized, relevant exercise and written scoring guide make the evidence easier to compare and defend.

Map the work

Pick one outcome that matters in the first ninety days. If the hire will protect a founder's calendar, give every candidate the same fictional week with overlapping customer calls, focus blocks, a personal appointment, and a late board request. State which commitments are fixed and which facts remain unknown. Ask for a revised calendar plus a short note explaining what moved, what did not, and what requires the executive's decision.

Make ownership explicit

Write the scoring guide before candidates begin. Useful dimensions include accuracy, prioritization, clarity, appropriate questions, confidentiality awareness, escalation, and completion within the stated time. Define what strong, acceptable, and risky evidence looks like. For example, moving a board meeting without authority is a boundary failure even if the final calendar looks tidy. Weight the dimensions according to the real role rather than treating visual polish as proof of judgment.

Test the operating model

Give identical instructions, resources, deadline, and payment. Tell candidates how much time you expect them to spend, which tools they may use, and whether they may make assumptions. Provide an accessible alternative when needed. If a candidate asks a clarifying question, record the answer and share any material clarification with all remaining candidates. Consistency does not remove human judgment, but it prevents avoidable noise from entering the comparison.

Protect access and judgment

Observe the process as well as the artifact. Ask the candidate to walk through the first five minutes of their approach, the evidence they trusted, the assumptions they marked, and the point where they would escalate. A candidate can make a reasonable choice different from yours and still demonstrate excellent judgment. The strongest discussion distinguishes preferences from genuine constraints and shows how the person would make uncertainty visible to a busy executive.

Choose a reviewable first step

Close the loop respectfully. Explain when the exercise will be reviewed, who will see it, how long it will be retained, and when the candidate will hear back. Score it before discussing personality or rapport. Keep notes tied to the rubric, not vague impressions such as executive presence. Then combine the sample with structured interviews and references. No single exercise should decide the hire, especially when the role spans trust, communication, and long-term working rhythm.

Example for a leadership team

A practical ninety-minute simulation can contain twelve fictional emails, one calendar view, and a one-page travel policy. The candidate must identify the five messages needing action today, draft one response, propose a calendar change, and list three questions. One message requests bank details from an unfamiliar sender; another asks to move a customer meeting that the brief labels immovable. The scoring guide awards points for verifying the financial request, protecting the customer commitment, and escalating an unresolved priority conflict. It does not require the exact wording the hiring manager prefers. This scenario reveals security awareness and decision boundaries without touching a real account.

Measure whether the choice works

After the hiring cycle, compare work-sample scores with interview evidence and, for the selected person, early on-the-job outcomes. Look for scoring dimensions that failed to distinguish candidates, instructions that generated repeated confusion, or tasks unlike the actual role. Revise the exercise before the next search. A good assessment becomes shorter and more job-related over time, not more theatrical or burdensome.

Review the evidence before approval

Before approving this selection process decision, hold a short evidence review with the executive, the person who will manage the work, and any owner responsible for security, people, tax, legal, or specialist questions raised by the scope. Read the actual proposal, agreement, workflow, or candidate evidence rather than relying on a sales summary. Write what is confirmed, what remains an assumption, which conditions must be satisfied before access begins, and who can accept each condition. Use EEOC guidance on employment tests and selection procedures as a primary reference for the relevant external principle, then ask a qualified owner to interpret requirements that depend on your location or facts. The review should produce a go, revise, or stop decision with reasons.

Write the launch brief

Turn the decision into a one-page launch brief. Include the supported leaders, first workflow, intended outcome, input owner, service window, access needed, authority boundary, escalation contact, success evidence, and review date. Link the operating references, including executive assistant scorecard and inclusive executive support hiring process, so the person doing the work can find the surrounding rules. Walk through one normal case, one ambiguous case, and one failure case before expanding the scope. If the team cannot agree on the safe action in those examples, the design is not ready for a new assistant or provider to interpret under pressure.

Turn the guide into an action

Use this guide as a working decision record. Write the assumptions, owner, evidence, next review date, and safe response when an answer is missing. Keep executive judgment with the accountable leader and specialist decisions with qualified owners. HireExecutiveTeam helps leadership teams define and staff practical executive support; a useful next step is to compare the framework here with your current calendar, inbox, meeting, board, travel, and follow-through workload before discussing a role or service.

Related resources

• executive assistant scorecard
• inclusive executive support hiring process
• hire an executive assistant for a leadership team