Technical and Personal Assistant Needed

Woodinville area entrepreneurial couple need help.

Who We Are

We are two independent professionals each with our own business and looking for more hours in the day.

Leo is an internet entrepreneur with a very active technical Q&A website, as well as many other on-line endeavors. On top of that he's a boardmember of a local non-profit, and the bookkeeper, computer support and maintenance guy, as well as occasional sales person for his wife's business.

Kathy owns and operates a retail collectible doll shop with a very strong and active internet presence.

We're both looking for more time - both for our businesses and for our selves. Your job as assistant is to help make that happen by relieving us of many of the tasks we each take on today, and also taking on some of the opportunities we simply don't have time for.

Who You Are

You are flexible, smart, interested in learning new skills, and above all reliable.

As you'll see below, the possible tasks we might have you undertake are quite varied. The tasks we envision are often somewhat technical in nature and could include internet research, email filtering, minor web site and blog maintenance, data entry and editing or some basic photo cropping and resizing. At the other end of the spectrum, we might ask you to make a trip to the post office to deliver packages or other minor errands.

Our hope is that the varied tasks and the positive impact on our lives will make the job educational, interesting and rewarding.

You don't have to know everything, but you must be willing and able to learn - in fact you should probably be excited at the prospect. Technology and change should not scare you, and the ideal candidate will eat it up and grow in abilities and value while working for us.

We can't stress reliability enough. If we can't count on you, if we can't trust you, then there's simply no point. Reliability, to us, is making sure that expectations are as clear as possible in both directions, and that those expectations are met. Communication must be clear, often and open.

An open mind is essential. A sense of humor is a must. You'll be a self-starting, detail-oriented person who enjoys the lighter side of life. The ability to quickly switch from task to task without getting confused is a major plus (see "Duties").

This is a huge learning opportunity as well. We are both successful business people, both internet and retail, and a motivated assistant will have a lot of opportunity to learn and grow.

Duties

Duty number one will be to help define your duties. This is a combination of understanding our businesses and relating your skills and desires to grow to what we do. Our expectation is that you will grow in both skills and trust over time, with commensurate increase in hours worked as well as potential pay rate.

Examples of tasks in no particular order may include:

• Filtering incoming email, and providing stock responses to some clients and customers.
• Minor changes to web sites including blog posts, as well as some direct, but limited, manipulation of HTML.
• Packing and shipping of doll shop internet orders.
• Errands - typically infrequent post-office runs to take out those internet orders.
• Capturing images from the internet, or possibly photographing in our small studio, dolls and then cropping and resizing those images for use.

It's possible we might look to you to step in as retail sales clerk at the doll shop on occasion.

There's probably a lot more you could do. Your duties are really limited only by your skills and willingness to help out wherever possible.

Skills

Basic requirements:

• You must be familiar and comfortable with computers (ideally Windows-based), using e-mail, surfing the web.
• You must be able to read and write English clearly and professionally.
• You should have internet capability at home. While having broadband at home could enable eventual telecommuting, we're fairly reliant on email and IM, and want to be able to communicate with you that way on a regular basis.
• Some basic blogging skills and/or HTML.

Ideally you'd be close to our home in Woodinville, and have a car available for errands in and around Woodinville and Redmond.

The successful applicant must provide recent references, agree to a background check, and sign a confidentiality agreement.

Environment

While some tasks are candidates for off-site or telecommuting, initially the job is on-site at our home in the Hollywood Hills area of Woodinville. We'll provide a computer and desk space. Work hours are totally flexible.

There will be dogs. We have three Pembroke Welsh Corgis with the run of the house. There are also two cats that you won't see as often.

Aside from the occasional barking dogs, things are pretty quiet at home, and you may end up working alone for periods.

You'll actually be an hourly W-2 employee of Kathy's doll shop for paperwork and tax reporting purposes. You'll accrue the equivalent of two weeks paid vacation at the rate of 1.6 hours vacation per 40 hours worked, vesting after 6 months.

Initial work commitment will be part time, at 10 hours per week. This could scale up to full time (40 hours / week) depending on your skills and opportunities. Initial hourly wage will be between $10 and $20 per hour, based on your incoming skills, and subject to increase as your skills increase.

Anything Else?

There's a ton of information about both of us out on the web. That should give you quite a leg up on understanding what we're about, and what we care about. Heck, your ability to figure that out will tell us a lot about whether you might be right for the job.

Interested?

Interested? Send a plain text email to pa <at> dollsandfriends.com with your contact information and your resume (preferably also plain text, but Word or PDF also ok - or a pointer to your resume on the web).