Quality. Considered. Rare.

We introduce founders and COOs to the Executive Assistants, PAs, and Chiefs of Staff who change what their business is capable of.

A considered introduction, not a flood of CVs.

The Standard

Most searches end the same way: a stack of CVs and the feeling that something is being done.

We start somewhere else. Before a single introduction is made, we ask what your business actually needs to become. Not a job spec. Not a list of software. The real shape of the gap and the person built to close it.

We work on one assignment at a time. We say no more than we say yes and we do not stop until the answer is unmistakable.

Who We Work With

Founders and COOs building something real: businesses moving fast enough that the wrong hire costs more than a salary.

We are not for everyone. We are for the people who have stopped tolerating the wrong room.

The Assignment

Search. We go where the right person already is, rarely where a job advert is.

Introduction. The right people, considered, not a flood of CVs.

Placement. The decision made, not deferred.

The Proof

In 1974, Penni Pike joined a young company called Virgin. She became Richard Branson’s executive assistant and held the role for the next 31 years, through the launch of Virgin Records, Virgin Atlantic, and hundreds of businesses after them.

It wasn’t a revolving door of hires. It was one considered decision, kept for three decades.

That’s not a fluke of loyalty. It’s what happens when a search is done once and done right.

About

I built Assignment LDN because I’d sat on both sides of this problem: inside businesses that were only as good as the room around the founder and inside searches that mistook motion for progress.

Judgment isn’t a skill you can shortlist for. It’s the thing I look for first, and the only thing that’s never been automated.

Get in Touch

The right person for your business is rarely available the day you need them. We start looking before you do.

Start a conversation. henrietta@assignmentldn.com

I have spent years recruiting the people that make offices actually work. The assistants, support roles and the people that histor…

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I like office stuff, I always have. I am not an expert in typewriters or a collector just an enthusiast. It started with the electric typewriter in my Dad’s office. I only went there occasionally. His secretary at the time was called Pam and if she was there working then I would sit and watch her. She was efficient, friendly and had everything in it’s place. She made cups of tea, typed things and I wasn’t allowed to get in her way. I liked her but I had no idea what she was actually doing.

If Pam wasn’t there then I would sit at her desk which felt exciting and grown up but I absolutely wasn’t allowed to touch anything on the desk. Pam was a secretary in the old sense of the word. She had a reporters note pad with lines and dots scribbled on the pages. I found out later that that was shorthand, a language I have never been able to understand. Everything on her desk was neatly arranged, in stark contrast to my Dad’s desk.

What I really wanted to get my hands on though wasn’t the notepad or the calculator but the object that sat underneath the shiny grey plastic cover.

The electric typewriter. I wasn’t allowed to touch it, it was expensive, it was for adults, it wasn’t for me. That made it worse, I wanted to hear the keys click and clack when I pushed them. I wanted to type things and work there and be part of whatever was happening. I had no idea, I just liked being in a new space and with all of this stuff that went along with it.

When I started recruitment one of the perks was going to people’s offices and seeing how other people curated and styled their spaces. In those days hedge funds had wood panelling in their offices, big leather topped desks and gold pens. The variety was staggering and it was so exciting to be able to see it all. I loved the feeling of understanding the business through its physical spaces and I still get that to a certain extent but it’s not exactly the same. Offices are like a theatre for business aren’t they? They show you what they want you to see about what they do and it’s part of a performance. I love that.

I must have worn my Dad down because I was eventually allowed to use the typewriter for short periods of time. The whir of the machine, the sound the keys made as my little hands typed out total nonsense on the page. The feeling of being at a desk, in an office with all the magical things we didn’t have at home, like a stapler and a hole punch was exciting to me. Who knows why, I will have to take that up with a professional I guess when I have some time but since then I have loved office stuff.

My enthusiasm for these things hasn’t really changed over the years. The old bubble style brightly coloured Mac that I used at Marie Claire magazine when I interned there felt like the coolest thing I had ever seen. The Dell I brought when I launched my own business and felt that I was a professional now for sure. The Acorn computer my parents got me for Christmas as a kid which I ruined by getting red nail varnish all over it after I had badly painted my nails. The first Rolodex I was given to keep all my important work contacts details in. The list goes on and on.

The things we use to do the work we want to, whether it’s write a book, an email or create a magazine feel familiar to us because they remind us of a particular time in our lives. That’s something to be celebrated I think. It’s nice to look back at them and appreciate what they did and how we felt about ourselves when we used them. The fact that some of the things I used are now in a museum makes me feel ancient but I am pleased they live somewhere so we can revisit them and remember.

Until next time,

Hen x

Tess McGill was sitting on the trading floor, watching her ideas get repeated back to her by other people. She never looks shocked, she looks like someone confirming something she already suspected.

The film isn’t about someone discovering they are capable, she already knew that and so did we. It’s about a woman discovering that knowing what to do isn’t the problem, being underestimated is.

I was watching Working Girl with my teenage son last weekend and it’s easy to miss how little of it is really about ambition. I admit, I love watching films that have some kind of connection to my own work. I’ve never been an Assistant or a Secretary but I have recruited them for a long time. When I watched this movie as a kid, I didn’t know anything about business or secretaries then but it was always a favourite.

What I could see then and now watching it when I am much older is that Tess isn’t chasing the corner office because it’s prestigious and will give her some kind of ego boost. She’s chasing it because she keeps having better ideas than the people who currently have those offices. She’s tired of watching other people take her ideas and knowledge and giving her no credit at all.

Tess reads the trade press, she understands the mechanics of the deal, not just the pitch but the structure of it and the reason that all of it would work together. She has been watching, listening and learning. I think that’s the detail the movie really gets right about the role and it’s what most movies get wrong about secretaries. She isn’t valuable because she’s loyal, hard working or great with people even though she is all three. She’s valuable because she understands the business just as well, in some ways, even better than the people she is supporting.

The support was never the celling, it just so happened to be the entry point. This has happened time and time again, it was just the first time I was aware of it.

I don’t think Hollywood has ever really quite known what to do with this kind of character. Secretaries on screen tend to fall into a narrow set of roles. They’re either the gatekeeper, the love interest or the villain’s right hand. Competence is usually the punchline, usually something like ‘she practically runs the place’, rather than the actual plot. That’s one of the reasons I love this film now, from this vantage point. It’s all about Tess, her life, her career and her insight into the businesses around her. Creativity looks different in different spaces.

Watching it now you can see that it looks a lot like an 80’s movie because it is. There’s a makeover, a man and a betrayal and redemption arc but underneath all of that it takes her competence seriously. It was rare to see that then and it’s not exactly common now either.

All the big shoulder pads, bigger hair and Manhattan skyline is a reminder of some of the great things about the 80s. Work looked glamorous and pretty exciting.

While the mechanics of her job have changed almost completely, many things haven’t. Tess’s world runs on phone calls, paper memos and information that has to be physically located. I remember those days and everything seemed to work pretty well, even if it did take a bit longer to find things out.

The modern equivalent of her role runs on a completely different set of tools but I don’t think that the value has really shifted. Even with AI joining our work places, we can see that the person who does this work well is still the person who understands the business better than their job title might suggest.

I think more than anything what’s changed is how visible the role is allowed to be now. Today it’s recognised as more strategic than it used to be but the shift is absolutely slow and uneven. We’re nowhere near finished.

Obviously her character isn’t a perfect symbol for anything but she’s a useful one because she gets at something that can be lost in serious conversations about this work. The frustration of being really good at your job and having that mostly unseen isn’t a new problem at all and it’s not a small one either. It’s usually just told as someone else’s story and not on the big screen.

She always knew, she just needed someone to look properly and I think a lot of people in business support roles can still relate today.

Until next time.

Henrietta x