What’s The Difference Between EA – Executive Assistant & VA – Virtual Assistant?
Understanding the difference between EA & VA is easy when you understand the corporate ladder. On this corporate ladder, there are a lot of titles for positions within a company. The more experienced & knowledgeable an employee is, the higher & more advanced the title. Therefore, in short, an Executive Assistant is a much more experienced & knowledgeable version of a VA who can handle more extreme responsibilities within the company.
The Virtual Assistant
- The executionist “DOer” who reports to an EA, Manager, or other high-level individual (depending on how many roles have been established in the company) versus the CEO or Small Business Owner.
- Takes on time-consuming easy-to-do individualized projects like forming the transcript from an audio recording.
- VA’s are reactive and require direct instruction of what projects to perform with no decision-making power on what’s best.
- Typically have up to 4 years of experience and focus on routine tasks + admin support tasks.
- If the VA is a contracted business owner, they typically charge by the hour.
The Executive Assistant
- The right-hand to the small business owner and directly reporting to the CEO.
- Takes on bigger more complex projects that require a lot of work from start to finish like customer service for an event launch & may oversee + delegate projects to the VA.
- They are management coordinators who organize teams to spread out the workload of complex projects to free up the business owner’s time & make sure everything runs smoothly.
- Executive Assistants are an authority figure who are masters of prioritization. They know what tasks are highest of priority to make the most of your time or handle the task themselves so things run smoothly.
- They are proactive and are able to forsee potential challenges and prepare in advance to prevent issues without constantly needing guidance or next-step instructions.
- An EA understands the CEO, Small Business Owner, or Service Provider’s responsibilities & is able to take over their roles while making decisions on their behalf and informing them of projress.
- Typically have 5-10 years of experience or more and focus on strategic planning and complex project management tasks that grow the company not just save time.
- If the EA is a contracted business owner, they typically charge a premium package price versus hourly.
Conclusion
While both roles can be beneficial to a business, the EA- Executive Assistant role is most beneficial in creating business growth. The biggest difference in the two roles is the EA is more experienced and charges a higher price because they take on a lot of management & decision-making type responsibilities within the company that really frees up the time of the business owner. Whereas, the VA- Virtual Assistant is just going to be told what the individualized project is & get it done to save the business owner a little bit of time based on one tiny project versus the bigger project that results in a big goal achievement for the company.
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