In short: an interview measures how a candidate presents, not how they work. To test an Executive Assistant properly, put them inside a realistic scenario and watch three things: whether they read what is really going on, whether they make the sensible move, and whether they turn it into concrete action. Score every candidate against the same bar, so you are comparing like with like.
In thirteen years of recruiting Executive Assistants, one question came up more than any other. Not “where do I find them,” though that one is hard enough. It was “how do I actually test them before I commit?”
It is a fair thing to worry about. An EA is one of the highest-trust hires a business makes. They see your inbox, your diary, your money, your people, and the parts of the job you would never say out loud. Get it right and you get hours of your week back. Get it wrong and you usually find out three months in, when the cost is already paid.
The problem is that the interview, the tool most of us lean on, tests the wrong thing.
Why an interview shows you presentation, not judgement
A good interview tells you whether someone is warm, articulate and prepared. Those things matter. They are also the easiest things for a strong candidate to perform for an hour across a desk. What an interview cannot show you is how the same person handles a Tuesday: a chaotic inbox before nine, three priorities landing in the same minute, a sensitive message that has to go out in your name and cannot be got wrong.
That is the actual job. It is judgement under pressure, and it is almost invisible in a conversation about someone’s last role.
I have watched candidates who interviewed beautifully come unstuck the moment the work was real, and quieter people who barely sold themselves turn out to be exceptional once you saw them think.
What testing an EA should really measure
When people say they want to test an EA, they often reach for a skills test: typing speed, a grammar quiz, a few multiple-choice questions about Outlook. These measure the parts of the role that are easiest to measure and least likely to go wrong. Nobody loses a good EA because they were slow at a spreadsheet. They lose them because the person could not read a room, could not prioritise by what mattered rather than what shouted loudest, or handled a delicate situation without the judgement it needed.
So a real test has to put the candidate inside the decisions, not the trivia. You are looking for three things.
The read. Can they see what is actually going on behind the words? An email marked “quick question” from a board member is rarely a quick question. A journalist who references something they should not know is not a press query, it is a leak. The best EAs notice. The rest take things at face value.
The move. Once they have read the situation, do they do the sensible thing? That is managing up without being asked, protecting your time and your reputation, closing a loop rather than leaving it open. Seniority in the room should not change their judgement. Good sense should drive it.
The follow-through. Do they turn a decision into something concrete, a real time, a named person, a clear next step, rather than a vague “I’ll sort it”? Plenty of people can tell you what they would do. Fewer can show you exactly how.
How to test an EA in your own process
You do not need anything elaborate to start. Give your shortlist a real scenario from your world, not a hypothetical. Something like: “It is 8:45. Here are six things in the inbox. I am in back-to-back meetings until eleven. Talk me through what you do, and why.” Then listen for the why. The reasoning tells you far more than the answer.
Push on a conflict. Give them two things that genuinely cannot both happen, and watch how they choose. Give them something sensitive, a message that has to be firm but cannot burn the relationship, and read how they handle the tone. You are not looking for a perfect response. You are looking for how someone thinks when there is no obvious right answer, because that is most of the job.
If you can, get more than one person to look at what comes back, against the same bar. It is very easy to mark the candidate you already liked more generously. A consistent standard is what stops that.
See an EA actually work, before you make the offer
Every candidate sits the same scenario-based working day, scored against the same benchmark and reviewed by a specialist. You get evidence you can defend in a decision meeting, not a gut call. Employer pricing from £495 +VAT, returned in 48 hours.
See how it works →Four ways to assess an EA, compared
Most hiring processes use one or two of these. The ones that go wrong usually stopped at the first.
| Method | What it shows you | What it misses | Your time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Interview | How they present, how they talk about their work, whether you would enjoy working with them. | How they actually work. Rehearsable, and increasingly rehearsed with AI. | An hour per candidate, plus the debrief. |
| Psychometric test | Self-reported traits and preferences, on a comparable scale. | Behaviour. A conscientious profile is not the same as a triaged inbox. | Minutes to set up, minutes to read. |
| In-tray exercise you run yourself | Real judgement on a real task. The best signal most hiring managers never collect. | Consistency. Each candidate gets a slightly different brief and a slightly different marker. | Half a day to build, an hour per candidate to mark. |
| Scenario-based assessment | A full working day, the same for every candidate, scored against a published rubric by a reviewer who does this weekly. | Chemistry with you. Which is what the interview is for. | Five minutes to commission. The report comes to you. |
The right process is usually two of these, not four: an interview for fit, and one structured look at the work. If you want to run that look yourself, the in-tray exercise guide has three tasks and the scoring sheet. How the scenario-based assessment runs and how it is scored are both published, if you want to compare the bar to your own.
Where a structured assessment earns its place
Doing this well, for every candidate, to the same standard, takes time most hiring managers do not have. That is the gap we built The Core Standard to close. Whether you use us or run it yourself, the principle holds. Stop testing what is easy to test. Watch how someone thinks when the work is real, before you hand them the keys.
Common questions
Can you test an Executive Assistant before hiring?
Yes. The most reliable way is a scenario-based assessment that puts the candidate inside a realistic working day and scores their judgement under pressure, rather than a skills quiz that only measures typing or software knowledge.
What should an EA test actually measure?
The judgement that makes the role work: how a candidate reads a situation, prioritises competing demands, communicates across audiences, and follows through with concrete action. Speed and software knowledge rarely predict a strong hire.
Are typing tests or multiple-choice tests good for assessing EAs?
They measure the parts of the role least likely to go wrong. They tell you very little about the judgement, discretion and prioritisation that separate a good EA from a great one.
How do you test an EA candidate in an interview?
Give them a real scenario from your world: a full inbox with competing priorities, a genuine conflict to resolve, and a sensitive message to handle. Ask them to talk you through what they would do and why. The reasoning reveals more than the answer.
Lily Shippen
Founder, The Core Standard
Lily spent over a decade recruiting Executive Assistants at the highest level, founding Lily Shippen Recruitment at 22, before building The Core Standard. She has worked with hundreds of EAs, PAs and leaders across the UK, and now scores candidates through the assessment herself. Connect on LinkedIn.