Employing your own personal assistant

Interviewing

The council cannot choose your personal assistant for you. It is your decision who you want to employ. So once you have people interested in your job you need to decide whether you want to interview them. Interviews give you a much better idea of what the person is like and if they would be good at the job.

You can hold interviews in a variety of places, such as a café, at the house of someone you know, a hotel foyer, the local community centre or at a location that the personal assistant will need to go with you (e.g. a sports club). It is usually not a good idea to hold interviews in your own home and you may want to ask a friend or relative to sit on the interview panel with you.

You should plan the questions you want to ask people in advance. You should choose questions which will help you decide who would be best for the job so they should be based on the job description and person specification. Ask the same questions in the same order to compare the different candidates.

If you decide you do not want to employ someone you will have to write to them and tell them they have been unsuccessful.