This has come up in a few different threads so I'm interested in hearing what other people think. It seems that different titles mean different things to different people in different countries so I'd be interested to know what the following terms/titles mean to you and where you are from so we can get an idea of different meanings. Also, feel free to add any I've forgotten.

For me (USA), these are listed in order of increased skill/pay level:

• Clerk/Clerical - The lowest support level, providing basic services like mail sorting, copying, faxing and filing. Basically they just need to know their ABCs to do their job. No experience necessary.
• Secretary/Secretarial - Basic support including what a clerk does as well as proofreading, typing notes and supervisor provided correspondence, managing a calendar, answering phones. 1+ years of experience.
• Admin Assistant - Mid-level support including what a secretary does and also reading/responding (with supervisor approval) to email and other correspondence, general meeting planning/coordination, expense management and low-level projects. 3+ years of experience.
• Personal Assistant - Same as an AA but also doing personal errands like vacation travel planning, buying gifts, scheduling personal meetings/appointments, etc. 3+ years of experience.
• Executive Assistant - Supervisor's right hand able to do all of the above (but usually has a lower-level person doing it) but also independently responding to email/correspondence, attending meetings on supervisor's behalf, project management, coordinating direct reports, ability to speak on behalf of their supervisor, etc. 10+ years of experience

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Amanda Moore
Virtual Assistant
VagabondetteVA Blog

I think of Clerk as sort of the bottom rung in the office hierarchy. Exec Assistant as the top of that same ladder. The other three are pretty interchangeable in my mind....interesting to see they're pretty clearly differentiated here.

All in all they mean 'office' to me

I'm from the northwest originally but I'm not sure that means much one way or the other as I've never worked in a corporate office setting a day in my life.

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I think that I agree with you but, like Tess said, I think that they can at least be slightly interchangeable. I'm an Administrative Assistant (my original title was Administrative Assistant to the Executive Director until she resigned last year) and I pretty much fall into what you said about that category. However, when the ED was around, I would also act as her personal assistant and do some executive assistant type stuff. Now that she's gone (I actually got laid off when she resigned because I "was hired to be her assistant and she's not here, so we must not need her" (use a deep haughty BoD type voice when saying that...lol) and I'm back, I still call myself and Administrative Assistant because I do all of that, but I'm also acting as the Account Manager (without the title and pay ), so I think in today's business arena it pays NOT to be a "one trick pony" and, even though you may have a certain title, not get yourself tied into that stereotype or roll.

Secretary...hmmmm I don't use that word very much anymore. My mom was a secretary; I'm an administrative assistant. Today, I think their pretty much the same thing. An Admin Assistant is just a more modern term. Also, when I think of what I thought secretarys were a few years ago, I would have put them more towards the top of the ladder if not the equivalent to an Executive Assistant. But that could be because I used to think my mom was very important and had the greatest job in the world when I was little (not that she's not important now, but you know what I mean).

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Stephanie
New VA in the research phase :daisy:

I agree that they can all be interchangeable but I think it's good to know what other people think of the different titles because although you may know that the title means to YOU, it really matters more what OTHERS think of it, particularly if using a particular title is going to make people pass you over because it conjures a different image than what you intended.

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Amanda Moore
Virtual Assistant
VagabondetteVA Blog

I don't use any of these terms in my marketing materials, conversations with clients, etc. - they seem old-school to me and don't really apply to my own current business model so haven't been mentioned - I'm not sure a survey of the semantics of the terminology would do much to change that for me.

I think a discussion on the definition of 'Virtual Assistant' and even more so: how to educate potential clients and the public at large accordingly could be more useful.

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Secretaries used to be highly regarded. Where I am a PA or Personal Assistant does not run personal errands at all. In fact they are what a Private Secretary or Personal Secretary used to be - the word Secretary was replaced with Assistant.

I still use some of these terms in my meta tags on my website - not everyone on the web knows the modern day terms for what we do and many still search for secretaries.

My background is exactly that - I was a secretary, EA and PA for 23 years before beginning my business so I still work with that same mindset in place, providing my clients that same personal secretary type support I used to give CEOs and MDs.

Great point about search terms Kathie, and yes, we use those in our tags here on the forums too...you're so right that people still search online using all of the above.

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