Help needed with career definition, please.

Island Girl

I would appreciate your input on if whether there is a definitive difference between the title of 'Personal Assistant' and 'Secretary'. If so, could you tell me what those differences might be, please?
I've been writing one of my characters as a PA but am now wondering what a PA's duties might include if the boss also had a secretary. Would he even need a secretary if he had a PA and if so, what would HER duties involve?
Thanks all.

davaaris

Hi IG. I don't know the official definition but my view is that a secretary is office based dealing with typing, shorthand, telephones etc. While a personal assistant travels with the person taking care of the diary and advising them on what to do, what to say and making sure that they are where they should be on time etc. I imagine you would have one personal assistant but could have several secretaries.

Island Girl

Thanks Davaaris. Do you think the secretary would book meetings and appointments or would that be the domain of the PA, too? Would the PA be involved in filing anything? I can't think why a PA's job would be so demanding if he/she only had to fill in a diary and travel with their boss.

(I'm ducking as PA Talkbackers prick their ears up and decide to throw heavy objects at my head.)

dorothyd

I was PA to a legal executive in my last paying job. That involved doing everything, from typing to filing to running across to the Law Courts when it decided to rain and she had gone without her coat, book appointments, attend court with the clients, smooth ruffled feathers, especially hers, somehow the job spiralled out of being secretary to being all that, although that was not the way it was when I started there!

Island Girl

Thanks Dorothy. If this boss is a corporate big-wig (as in millionaire type big-wig) what do you suppose he'd have in the way of personal staff and what do you think they might do re my original question?

dorothyd

sometimes they are 'trophy' PAs, there to impress the clients/customers/other businessmen. The PA would do all the travel arrangements, right down to the taxi or limo to get him to the airport, probably be responsible for ensuring his dry cleaning is collected and packed, all that kind of minutae and of course the right papers for the meetings. He would have a couple of working secretaries, a chauffeur (in place of said taxi, probably) his own investment broker, accountant, general gofer type guy.

heather

I would say it can be virtually what you want it to be IG. There is a continuum from PA through secretary to typist, with a lot of blurring about the edges. A friend of mine worked for a big company and was classed as a secretary, but there were more junior people to type and file and she did things like appointments, booking flights for her boss and his family (both work and private), getting his wife's passport application rushed through when the wife had forgotten to do it, making sure he had the right tie/DJ etc for posh dinners, getting aviation licences for his guns when he went on shooting weekends etc etc. Most people would call this a PA!
I think it's the 'personal' bit that is important - if your character is doing things for her boss that only marginally relate to his work then I would call her a PA.

JoWalmesley

I agree with Heather. In a fictional situation a PA can be whatever you want her or him to be. it's a great character for a novel as PA's can be so powerful. They can usurp a wife,take over someone's life, or as we have see in a few fraud cases lately , become completely indispensable to their boss and with some clever fund-shifting feather their own nests very nicely thank you. Ooh the possibilities of a novel with an over- bearing PA as the central character are endless!

Carol

For what you want IG, putting her in the role of PA will be vital to the plotline- and of course he can manipulate stuff she will need to arrange for him as his PA.

Mutley

Essentially IG you expect a PA to be able to keep things going for you (thinking for themselves, learning the way you do things), a secretary would undertake the work you alot them but you expect less in the way of initiative. For example, I would aska secretary to book me a train at 7pm from London to York. I would ask a PA to sort all the travel I required for the week beginning x - and not have to spoon feed what that entailed. This level of difference is only possible if you put enough effort into training a PA, they generally need to know a lot about your personal life as well as your work life to make it work. Once you get someone to this point then they are invaluable and you need to make sure you look after them very well and don't lose them. The training time is significant. However, once someone has been a true PA to someone, it is obviously easier for them to do that for someone else. They are more likely to go to things out of the office with you and in lots of ways they are an extension of the boss. I used to reckon with a good PA I could produce twice as much work as I could on my own. (Oh that other life that I left behind - sighs)

aeschylus

Evidently Mutley was Meryl Streep in the Devil wears Prada

Island Girl

:-)

cooper

Muttley's a mega star in Hollywood? She never told me that.

Island Girl

She's a dark horse, is our Mutley. You just never know about people do you.

Stan2

Hi IG - no experience of PAs or secretary - I do my own typing, filing etc. Well, the WIFE does some telephoning for me or answering telephone - without pay! All the best with the book.

Island Girl

Thank you Stan. I am happy to say I'm soon to get started on Chapter 7, and with a proposed twelve chapters for the story, I'm sort of half way through so I'm pretty pleased with myself at the moment. Of course the writing is all utter garbage, but for me to be able to just complete something would be an achievement I would cherish.

Stan2

Well done, you can revise later.

Island Girl

Oh, I do, believe me. I reckon I would have finished the entire thing a year ago if I wasn't constantly going over and over the bits I've already done - editing a word here, a sentence there, a paragraph here, a whole chapter there - but at the end of the day, it's still going to be tripe. :-) I don't care. I'm enjoying it.

Carol

It has potential IG, remember we all think our writing is bad- well I do :)
But come the revision pen it is amazing what happens.
And you'll enjoy it even more when you send it off (eventually) and get a letter in return asking for more. :)

Island Girl

If only. :-)

Hickey

I always imagined a PA would have her own secretary.
Does that help?

Island Girl

Yes and no, Hickey. I have a bit of a dilemma on my hands here. The boss is going away on a business trip and his temp PA is to go with him. I'm wondering what on earth her duties would involve while they were away together. I mean, does she take notes etc.? And what else? It's just that I'm thinking a secretary really would be the one to sit in on meetings and take notes so I now I'm not so sure what she'd be doing there at all. :rolleyes: I thought perhaps a secretary would have more to do so maybe she should be a secretary. (Or maybe I'm just being pedantic)

Carol

Well she might take the notes, transcribe them, and then send a copy back to the office for other people who might need to know, as well as the copy for the boss. Arrange dinner bookings, phone calls to other people and taking messages, sending e-mails.

aeschylus

i'm halfway through Operation Sunshine by Jenny Colgan. Plot- two doctors take their receptionist (the heroine) to a conference in Cannes, to take notes. She treats it like a holiday. End of plot.

Jan

[quote=Island Girl] wondering what on earth her duties would involve while they were away together. I mean, does she take notes etc.? And what else?[/quote]
The mind boggles :rolleyes: but if you don't know ..........

Island Girl

Actually Jan, all that happens and more in my story, but I have to at least make it LOOK as though she's being paid to do something businesslike!

Carol

:)

Grannylonglegs

Secretaries, forty years ago, were invaluable PA's and very often knew more about the boss's job than he did!
I saw many secretaries doing amazing tasks, for little pay, and their value was never fully appreciated until they left - or died on the job!
Many of these ladies never married and devoted their lives to the boss - I used to feel so cross at the way they were treated by men who could have never coped without their wives at home + their PA's at work.
I have one particular (tiny) lady in mind, who was bullied unmercifully by her boss and worked her socks off for him.
Thank goodness for Women's Lib!

louise

When I want to get an idea of people's jobs I go into my search engine as if I'm looking for such a job. Sometimes >blushes< I've applied (by phone) and have asked questions about my "duties". ooooh the things we can be just for research!! :D

Carol

:)

dorothyd

clever idea, Louise!!!!

Jan

[quote=Island Girl]make it LOOK as though she's being paid to do something businesslike[/quote]

Have, sort of, ignored this thread because good information seemed to be flowing. Now you have awareness of my money generating profession, should you consider there to be plot aspects in need of clarification, feel free to ask.

Mutley

GannyLL - i still know PA's who devote their lives to their boss (even where the boss is a woman). It is a sort of reflected power and glory thing.