About the Organization

A global philanthropic organization working on multiple fronts, from climate change to transforming education, and is building interdisciplinary teams of the world’s brightest minds to take on the challenges.  

  • Industry: Philanthropy
  • Size: 11 Quickskill Assistants

Core Processes We Started With

Calendar Management

Travel Management

Expense Management

CRM Contact Management

The Problem

Our executives and their team’s needs differ significantly

The organization’s leadership team was growing faster than it could recruit, hire, and train executive assistants. The Vice President of Finance and Operations is responsible for executive support, and they needed to speed things up. 

“We found some great traditional recruiters, but we still couldn’t hire fast enough,” the VP said. “We also wanted to look outside the box of the traditional 1-1 executive to admin model because our executives and their team’s needs differ significantly.”  

The organization’s executives include scientists, educators, academics, investors, analysts, program leaders, and operational staff in HR, events, and other corporate functions. “What appealed to us about Quickskill was their team approach—we hoped that Quickskill would enable us to scale faster and tailor services for each executive.”   

Hiring executive assistants one by one was not working, and the company did not want to be in the business of hiring and managing dozens of assistants. The VP liked Quickskill’s managed service model, where Quickskill hires, onboards, trains, and manages remote executive assistants, so the service does not add any HR or management overhead. Executives document their task requirements with Quickskill’s Engagement Managers, and Quickskill adds virtual assistants with the skills and experience they need.  

“We were growing faster than we could hire executive support and traditional recruiting couldn’t keep up.”

–Vice President of Finance and Operations 

The Goal

Adding administrative support for a fast-growing executive team to free executives to focus on their programs and initiatives. 

Our Solution

Huge Value-Add

Quickskill worked with the team to identify five executives with distinct types of responsibilities for a pilot program to test the service:  

  1. The Head of Talent oversaw the pilot as a potential company-wide staffing model.  
  2. The Executive Director of a multi-million-dollar talent program focused on identifying the world’s most exceptional students and supporting their visions. 
  3. The Director of Strategy oversees ten programs worldwide and has an extraordinarily complex calendar.  
  4. The Director of Recruiting is tasked with doubling the organization’s headcount in a year.  
  5. A Senior Manager who plans 60 events a year, from dinner gatherings to week-long conferences to VIP retreats.  

“So many of us were buried in task management and needed support desperately,” said the Head of Talent. “I wanted to get help to as many people as possible, but we had to prove the concept first.”  

Calendar Management

“Coordinating meetings with large global teams is incredibly time-consuming,” the Head of Talent said. “A lot of them are meeting with very high-profile scientists, government officials, and authors that expect white glove treatment. The Quickskill assistants just took it on and ran with it and have been practically flawless.”  

Travel and Expense Management

“It can take one person several hours to plan a long business trip, and then they return with expenses from multiple countries and currencies. Expense account support was the number one need for many of us. Quickskill assistants are travel and expense wizards.”  

CRM Contact Management 

“The volume of contacts we’re working with is huge, and we use different CRMs for different functions.” The Quickskill team seems to have experts for every business tool.”  

Results

“I can’t tell you how huge the value-add has been for us,” the Head of Talent said. “We all get a daily report of everything our assistants do and see how much time we get back. We were concerned that it would take resources to get the assistants up to speed, but it required little effort, which is a tremendous relief.”   

The organization liked what it experienced, and expanded support to nine executives and is standardizing the service for its executives as it grows.  

“I can see where every director and above role in the company has a Quickskill assistant,” the Head of Talent said.  

“Our people have been desperate for this kind of support, and we have been desperate to find it so they can spend more time on their people and their projects, and the quality of the service is excellent.”  

Experience Quickskill