What Our Fractional Executive Assistants (EA) Do
Our fractional executive assistants are highly skilled administrative professionals who provides part-time and/or on-demand support to busy executives, business owners, and leadership teams. Instead of hiring a full-time executive assistant, businesses—especially startups, small businesses, and entrepreneurs—will leverage a fractional EA for flexible, cost-effective assistance.
Who Hires Fractional Executive Assistants?
Typically Entrepreneurs and solopreneurs who wear many hats and don’t want the overhead of a full-time, in-house executive assistant will hire our Fractional EAs. Founders of startups are also among the core group who use fractional executive assistants.
One step up from that are small and mid-sized businesses that have a growing leadership team and need admin support, but again don’t want the overhead of people to manage.
We also find C-Level Executives and their leadership teams, who travel frequently, want a reliable assistant to manage their schedules will reach out and grab up fractional executive assistants. At that level investors (angel and real estate), venture capitalists and high net-worth individuals who need executive support reach out because they also don’t have time to vet the marketplace for highly skilled candidates.
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, not necessarily available within 5 miles of your home office. For instance we scour every corner of the U.S. to find the most skilled personell.
If you’re not interested in the overhead of a full-time salary and benefits, a Fractional EA gets you everything you need - and likely more efficiently.
Speaking of that a fractional EA is great for productivity when you have a virtual assistant tackling the administrative duties, keeping the fractional EA focused on strategic priorities.
Finally, in terms of flexibility Fractional EAs will scale their own time up and down to help you meet your needs. Furthermore, we will make sure that as your business and needs grow, so does your access to more (or fewer) assistants. Alpine Virtual gives you the opportunity to scale as needed.
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.
