If you are going to hire an administrative assistant though, I’d encourage you to go a step further and hire one with a solid music background, you’ll be able to use them in many more ways and they will be much more interested long-term in the position. Most recently I hired what we call my “Piano Assistant”. After many interviews of dozens of musicians, I hired a 28 year old college graduate with a music education and piano performance degree. He easily handles any administrative tasks such as scheduling of lessons, maintaining the daily changes to our piano teaching calendar and fielding calls from prospective families. More valuably though, he teaches about 5-8 make-up lessons for me each Saturday for families that had to cancel throughout the week. It allows me to keep one day open where I do not teach and can exclusively devote that day to my own children-this is invaluable to me. Parents know if they cancel a lesson during the week, they are permitted to have one free makeup lesson per semester with Mr. Mike on Saturdays. Any future cancellations are charged at the full private lesson rate. It allows my students a chance to work with another teacher who has a unique personality and set of skills and brings his own gifts to the lesson. They have really enjoyed him and he is often full on Saturday-sometimes up to 20 students on that day.

On the occasion where I or the other teachers are ill or have a conflict, Mike is our substitute teacher that can pop in and teach a random lesson here and there. His skill set, being a quick learner and having worked in several offices during college made him invaluable to us. He knows much more about computers and websites than I do, and has taken over updating the website, writing music related articles and planning group lesson themes/topics for us.

We do have a separate person that we hired two years ago to handle the billing and accounting. When you get over 100 students it is certainly necessary to have some support there. My billing person records all checks, on-line and Paypal payments, sends our receipts/emails, updates accounts, sends out a new statement on the 1st of each month and also organizes my studio expenses, receipts for tax purposes. She sends reminder notices out if an account is more than 10 days late and doesn’t hesitate to call them if 30 days late and lessons are about to terminate. Since we hired her we’ve had nearly 100% on-time payments. Because she plays piano herself, I often come out to the studio and find her practicing an hour or so before she has to be there, just because she loves our pianos. I know that her own personal love of piano adds to the enjoyment of her job and one of the reasons she is likely to be a long-term employee.

Please remember when searching for a new employee or support staff: there are many, many qualified, degreed music teachers with strong piano backgrounds out there that are looking for work these days. In my city, the public school system has cut K-8 music the past three years! When I placed an ad online, I had dozens of teachers more qualified than I applying including Ph.ds from the local community college whose classes have been cut. Investing in someone well educated with a genuine interest and love of your instrument will further enhance your studio’s popularity and develop your reputation of a place where families can come for a superior music education.

Now, I run a studio of 14 teachers and 135 students, on multiple instruments. We quickly reached a point of needing a receptionist/office assistant. She fields all phone calls, schedules prospective students for consultation appointments, registers new students, receives/records tuition payments, responds to general emails, manages the studio schedule, does minor clean-up at closing time, sets up rooms for group lessons, etc. The primary things I looked for when hiring her were: a very friendly personality, a bit of a salesman, good work ethic, and enough intelligence that I could teach her the rest. Some experience with the computer was important, but not critical, as the programs she would be using (primarily Studio Helper) were very easy to learn and weren’t typical programs that she would have had experience with elsewhere. Oh…and neat handwriting and good spelling/grammar. She would, after all, be the one taking phone messages for me and other teachers, sending emails to students, and proof-reading text for me.