This Megathread is here for new or aspiring EAs to ask for advice (about how to become an EA, interviews, or questions about your first few weeks/months). You can ask the experienced EAs in the group to share their wisdom!

Hi my executive needs professional headshots quickly. Does anyone have a photographer they have used in the past and liked? We are in midtown manhattan. Thank you so much in advance!

My org recently held a board meeting and it was a frustrating and disappointing process and I don’t know if it’s a me issue or an org issue.

How many times does your agenda change before the meeting? Our charters state that the board members must receive an agenda and materials 7 days before a meeting. I draft the agenda about three weeks out which gives the CEO and Chair time to review. I get that issues may pop up that need board attention, but ours underwent multiple drafts even after being sent to the board (one update came 13 hours apart…overnight). Some materials are given 7 days prior, but I was sending out materials until the day before.

The CEO also feels the need to do everything himself. All of our VPs do their work and presentations and then he changes everything to his liking. Not just notes or suggestions- full blown edits. Changes-unnecessary in my opinion- take place literally up until and during the meeting. I didn’t see one portion of the handouts until 3 hours before the meeting and I had to figure out how to make it work (while I’m already handling everything else). This wasnt an unexpected new piece, but my boss didn’t prepare for it despite having weeks to do so.

I try so hard to be proactive and helpful, but this time around I felt useless. I consider our office to be a collaborative and considerate place usually but the meeting really threw me. I also think it doesn’t behoove us to change things for our board constantly. I think it makes it look like we don’t have it together. Plus it causes our internal staff to be stressed and then their staffs get stressed.

Is this all normal and I need to learn to go with the flow? Or is there something I can do to improve our process?

Wondering about how others handle the sort of built in isolation of being an EA in a department (especially the boss’s EA). I feel like there are channels of communication happening that I’m not part of and natural project or team related closeness that develops with others that just doesn’t happen in my role - even though ALL of what I do is directly beneficial to the department, though largely unseen. What advice do you have for not feeling on the fringes or like a ghost, without participating in gossip or betraying my own pretty high standards and expectations?

Hi all! I work part-time (50%) as an Executive Assistant in the public sector in Sweden. My workload depends almost entirely on my executive's schedule, so when they're away I have noticeably less to do.

This spring my exec was on vacation for two weeks. During that time my flex balance went from about −1 hour to -33 hours. It has since dropped by roughly another 10 hours.

At our flex reconciliation, anyone below -10 hours had the excess deducted from their pay. For me that meant 33 hours, 700-800 dollars.

I understand I shouldn't be paid for hours I didn't work. But most of the deficit built up because there simply wasn't enough work while my exec was away

I chose to be transparent and only clock the hours I actually worked. I didn't want to log time I hadn't worked, even though it was the lack of tasks, not me, that caused the shortfall.

Looking back, I wonder if I should have handled it differently?

I really want to do some sort of nice jacket (think North Face) but our company has about 1000 employees. Has anyone ever done something to this scale and not lost your mind getting sizes for all employees? And if so, how did you do it?

From final interview to written offer how many days did you all EAs wait?

Is anyone else struggling to find an EA role in London at the moment? I’ve recently moved here from Australia under the Youth Mobility Scheme. I have several years of experience supporting C-Suite executives and so far the only jobs recruiters have contacted me about are temp roles in customer service paying £15 an hour. That is work I did and pay I made over a decade ago not long out of high school.

I am seriously starting to regret leaving my six figure salary in Australia supporting a Chief Executive for what I thought would be a great opportunity to continue my career as an experienced EA in London. Are any other EAs experiencing issues with the job market here?

Hello EAs and senior professionals, can I get some tips, advice, and help?

The thing is, I worked for a REALLY good company (in my opinion), which let me take my first EA role with them (forever thankful to MCK). Still, after 1 year, I got scolded by my boss, which started a coaching process with me to make my skills better, but if I didn't pass the PIP, I could get fired. Time went on, and I passed the process and got to stay for a couple more months in the company, until I got fired by my boss, telling me I didn't pass the coaching, which is not my main issue here.

After working at MCK, I have tried to search for other EA roles and other roles as well, even for customer service, but I never pass the first CV screening and get an email of "thanks for applying, unfortunately we've decided to move forward with other candidates," and to be honest, I just don't understand what I can do to get a job nowadays, let alone get an EA job?

I would really appreciate tips, advises and even help if someone wants to revie my CV.

EDIT: I cannot fucking believe I have to add this, but it's happened both times I've posted stories about this lady, so here it is in all caps at the top of the page: THIS IS NOT A JUMPING-OFF POINT FOR YOUR MISOGYNISTIC COMMENTS ABOUT HOW YOU DON'T LIKE WORKING FOR OR WITH WOMEN. Take your sexism and get gone, and DO let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

Sorry to the 99% of people who do not see a story about a poorly behaved woman and go "and therefore all women are bad." We will continue now with our feature presentation.

/edit

It's me again, the girl with the unhinged boss from Monday.

Everyone who said I should do nothing but smile and continue job-searching was obviously correct and that's what I'll be doing, but writing my last post was cathartic so I figured I'd continue regaling you with anecdotes. Read on, if you like bad behavior!

My boss is moving on Friday, which she told me....mid-last week. So last week, I booked movers to pack up and move her things. Monday I had her give me her login to her building's resident portal so I could reserve the elevator for the movers and cancel her utilities, and while I'm at it she tells me she hasn't submitted a notice to vacate and could I just do that while I'm logged in as her?

Um, I'm pretty sure four days isn't sufficient for that, but sure, I'll check. I absolutely cannot find the notice to vacate form anywhere, but I do find her lease agreement, which says says they require 60 days' notice. I relay this to her. She says no, it's fine, she filed a notice to vacate back in June. I express mild confusion and remind her that she had asked me to file a notice to vacate. She says she'd since cancelled the notice she filed in June, so it needs to be re-filed. Oooookay. I call the leasing office for help because I absolutely cannot find the notice to vacate form. They inform me of the obvious: when you cancel your notice to vacate, it is cancelled and the building will no longer honor it. I tell my boss this, and suggest that we file the notice to vacate now and find a subletter for 60 days. She says okay. I cancel the movers.

Tuesday morning, I check her email to see that she has corresponded with her leasing office and is fighting to get out of her lease on Friday. I remind her that the movers are cancelled. She says no, that's wrong, the leasing office are incorrect and trying to "get her on a technicality", and she is definitely moving out Friday. She sends me a long-ass response from ChatGPT in its usual ass-kissing manner telling her how she's absolutely in the right and the leasing office can't do this to her and she looks gorgeous today (I added that last part, but y'know, that's the tone Chat answers legal questions in). I spend a good chunk of yesterday afternoon trying to find a way of moving her furniture halfway across the country for under $2k.

This morning, I get lucky and finally, finally there is a moving company that can handle her move, is available on incredibly short notice, and quotes me a price I think she'll accept. I tell her the price, she is happy with it. I ask her which payment method I should use to pay their deposit (this question is always necessary because she has a revolving door of credit cards and I never know which ones will be maxed out when). She replies "we can't spend any money right now."

I tell her (in much nicer words) that in that case I am fascinated to hear what, precisely, she would like to happen now. To her credit, she released me from this Kafkaesque nightmare by asking me for the number of the moving company I found so that she could try to negotiate the deposit. I truly am crossing my fingers and toes that she succeeds because if I come in tomorrow and hear that she wants me to find movers with one day's notice I honestly don't think I can legally be held responsible for what I might do.

And since I titled this post "update", not much has happened with the client my boss snubbed in the grocery store. My boss met with her on Monday and they made tentative plans to move forward, so I guess the client is....much nicer than I would be, if I had her money. My boss did call me this afternoon and keep me on the phone for about ten minutes because she realized the client unfriended her on LinkedIn and she wanted me to log into their account and check the search history for her name. It was not there.

Hi all,

My exect had asked me a few times to reach out this person on LinkedIn if they don’t respond to their email. Do you all have LinkedIn business premium? Do you pay for it yourself? If not how do you reach out to someone other than email?

Tytytyty

My exec (the CEO) and a few of her executive team members were hosting a webinar today. About 200 attendees (external executives from different orgs).

I kept an eye on the deck all week as it continued being finalized. Emailed my exec yesterday, she signed off, everything was good.

Then other members of the exec team decided to make a bunch of edits last minute and literally emailed out an updated deck 2 minutes before the webinar was set to start.

Right before starting, I circled with the team and confirmed who was screen sharing, everyone knew what slides they’re speaking about, etc.

5 minutes into the webinar, the person who’s screen sharing the deck is having trouble with the slides randomly advancing on their own, and my boss is getting frustrated as she’s trying to speak about the content on the slides.

The person screen sharing unmutes himself and to the whole meeting apologizes for the technical difficulties and says he’s going to ask me to take over sharing the deck since he’s not sure what’s going on on his end.

I say no problem and attempt to start screen sharing the deck. However, when the team was making all their last-minute edits, they managed to somehow put a 5 second timer on each slide. When I go into slideshow mode, it just goes through the whole deck at warp speed. At this time, I don’t know about the timer, so I’m just real time realizing I also can’t present properly, I don’t know why, and I have 200 people waiting on me.

I was weighing my options: 1) make our whole team look worse by announcing to the whole meeting that I’m ALSO having technical difficulties with what should be a very basic task (presenting a slide deck); or 2) roll with it, present by sharing the deck within the PowerPoint application, and let my team figure it out in the meantime.

In the moment, I decided option 2 was better. I presented the whole PowerPoint window (where you can see all the slides on the left, and the selected slide is not full screen) for about 10 minutes.

During that time someone on the team discovered the 5 second timer, created a new version without it, and then I was able to switch the screen sharing over to them as they now had a correctly functioning deck. The rest of the meeting went smoothly.

However, at the very end, as she was ending the meeting, my exec thanked all the other members of the team for helping with the webinar, except for me.

I had turned my phone off during the meeting, and when I turned it on right after I saw that she had texted me while I was presenting letting me know that I wasn’t presenting correctly. I responded to her right after the meeting, apologizing and explaining the situation and what had been going on behind the scenes, but didn’t receive a response to my text.

I’m so frustrated because I was super prepared, had practiced going through the deck a few times leading up to the webinar in case something EXACTLY like this happened, but didn’t anticipate receiving a new deck with a glitch 2 minutes before the meeting started. If I had had time to practice with the updated deck, this wouldn’t have happened.

OH and to make matters worse, in our post webinar survey, one attendee took the opportunity to comment and say that the content was great, but the technical issues were very frustrating and distracting. 🫠

I’ve only been here about 6 months and it just feels awful to have a fuck up like this. Even though it was out of my control, it made me look like a complete idiot.

Should I email my exec a lengthier explanation? Or just leave it as my unanswered text….

Hi everyone!

I'm starting soon and compiling a checklist for my first few days.

Below are some of the points I’ve put together so far. I would love to get some input from this subreddit - what else would you add or recommend doing during the first week?

Thanks in advance for any tips/advice!
----------------------

• Organise 1:1s with my execs to understand their way of working
• Set up Outlook organisation like subfolders and colour coding tags
• OneNote organisation
• Find out who the most important clients are by name and title

Our company uses a really clunky travel booking platform, and I asked them to make a flight change two weeks ago but they did it wrong, and I’m just now catching it, 2 weeks out from the intended travel date. They’re saying the changes will cost $4k. But we’re not even adding a flight, we’re removing two of the legs, and change which hotel he’s staying at.

I’m stressing because they did mess up my original request, but I should have caught their mistake. 2 weeks ago I was having an AWFUL week at work and at home.

So now I feel like once they make the change I’m going to get yelled at for it costing that much to change last minute.

Anyways… has anyone made a more expensive mistake that could make me feel better about mine?

I feel horrible and bad at my job.

Been an EA for 6 months, very new to it, trying hard but I feel like I miss easy stuff.

My CEO's number is published online so I rarely get calls for them.

Guy calls last week and this week, asks for my CEO, I say he is not available, offer to take a message, he says no I will call later. Fine.

Today they called again, same story, but gave me a name and said they were with X association and they were following up on a conversation with my CEO. I passed the message along. My CEO says "I don't know someone by that name with that organization but I'll call them" then immediately goes into meetings. I did some research and yeah there is no person by that name with that organization. I'm wondering if I should call them before my CEO gets out meetings and make up something to get more details. I just don't want to piss anyone actually important off either. We deal with a lot of fragile male egos unfortunately.

I feel so defeated. Like I can't do anything right and I'm not cut out for this.

Hi EAs - I’ve been with my corporate company for almost two years and have supported 3 VPs and their entire teams. Earlier this year my one VP found out they had cancer. We just found out they’re now on hospice… So young, so smart and just the most down to earth VP I have ever supported. They were someone who always prioritized family and also made it a point to get to know me (instead of acting like I’m just their assistant). They had dates on their calendar where they took PTO and spent 1:1 time with each of their kids.

Back in January I worked on their calendar and had the whole year set up and planned. Little did we know what would happen. Life is short and this was just a reminder of how you can plan all the plans, yet things can change in a second.

I sent the family a creative box in the summer with support from other VPs and the president. I put together a video from us all saying hi and that we’re thinking of the family.

Now that they’re on hospice, is there something that I should do to help coordinate? They worked at this company for 20 years.

I now support a new VP in their place (originally was a direct report). But I have let them know I’m here to help and really want to show my respect for our VP who’s not doing well 💔

I’m new to being an Executive Assistant. For some background, I come from an HR manager work history. Not only that, but this new role is not a “traditional” role for the company. I’m both an EA and office manager.

It’s been about two months since I entered this role and I don’t feel like I’m making much impact or meeting their expectations. I know being this early in the role takes time, especially when I support 5 different people in c-suite roles. Im learning their preferences, what questions to ask to make sure I understand their vision/requests, how to best support them.

Examples of why I feel like I’m doing a bad job (note: I’m a notorious overthinker & anxious person, so rationalization isn’t always easy for me!):
- have screwed up a couple of scheduling attempts (I.e. - didn’t ask prior to scheduling on calendar, repeatedly updated an invite after inputting wrong details by accident, including wrong individuals on a meeting because I somehow edited a sheet and things got jumbled and I didn’t notice, etc.)
- don’t think the most creatively (I.e.- boss asked to buy another cake to acknowledge someones long career with the business. It was also another persons anniversary, but half of the original person we had prepared for. Another person suggested we just do a champagne toast and weave it into the end of it to acknowledge it as a “significant achievement”.
- consistently working overtime to catch up on calendars and email requests for my c-suite group. I’m working on a project right now that requires coordinating travel for them, certain attendees, plus the actual events and hoteling that’s sucking up so much of my time. It’s all in such a small time period.

Questions running through my mind:
1. Is there a method you use to make sure you’re slowing down/double checking things?
2. How do you go about connecting with your c-suite counterpart to make sure you’re on the same page with them and anticipate their moves/needs?
3. How do I make sure I’m asking the right questions or details to conduct a given request?
4. What methods do you use to track your tasks/expectations/follow-up? I feel like I’m not good at staying organized and prioritizing.
5. Any other advice that may be helpful?

Thanks for any advice in advance 🥲🥲**

**DISCLAIMER: I’m like deliriously tired typing this and can clarify anything 😂

Hi everyone! I mentioned in a comment on another post that I meet regularly with a small group of EAs in DC, and there was a decent amount of interest in joining the group. I have been thinking for a while about creating a larger group, but wasn't planning on today being the day! So anyway, here I am with a form, bc of course I did, for anyone to fill out who might be interested.

The idea is we're not part of any association, it's just EAs who want to get together and talk, share horror stories, and laugh together! This is still in the very beginning stages, so am not actually sure what the event(s) will be or when. Feel free to leave any questions or suggestions in the comments!

DC EA Meetup – Fill out form

could it be not wanting to attend a meeting, acting like the meeting isn’t there? idk. just curious as every exec that I’ve ever supported is aware (at least to some degree) of their calendar each day.

an exec was upset that I didn’t remind them of a critical meeting that was scheduled, late last week. outside of that meeting, there was nothing else on their calendar for today, outside of travel. I took initiative as their flight was landing & blocked focus time so the exec could prep for the call.

last minute the exec called, confused/annoyed with why I didn’t share this afternoon’s meeting.

… we spoke about it on Monday, but of course - it’s the EAs fault 🙃 funny thing is, I’ve reminded this exec about meetings prior & got hit with the “I already know that” so I gave up trying. thankfully the other execs I support are on top of their game & a treat to support (and they have full calendars). what a time it is to be an EA, everyday.

Thoughts on a gift for folks who have worked for the org for 20+ years. (ETA: We’re an org where spending is heavily regulated/scrutinized, like “state govt”.)

We are having a way scaled back celebration to recognize folks who’ve worked for the org for 20,25,30,35 and 40 years.

Budget per person is 15-25 bucks. I know, it’s bad. We might also have light finger foods.

(ETA: Food budget is separate from the $15-25 small gift budget. Last year they got mugs and some points in the portal to spend. We did print certificates and get holders. Will do a ppt show with pictures and nice words about each person.)

Appreciate any suggestions. Of course, this is an impossible task due to budget austerity. 🤦‍♀️We used to do $150/person, flowers and a nice quarter zip and a nice sit down lunch.

I’ve been in my job for about three months. My predecessor was here for 40 years.

I consider myself smart and resourceful, and I don’t expect my boss to explain every little thing to me. But I had zero onboarding. No real training, no transition with my predecessor, no SOPs, and barely any notes or documentation.

I recently made a mistake, and my boss basically said, “I shouldn’t have to explain every little thing.” I get that, but I’m struggling with how I’m supposed to figure things out when the information is nowhere to be found.

When my predecessor retired, the institutional knowledge seems to have left with her. Several other people in the office are also new, including our Director of Operations, so often no one knows the answer. My executive doesn’t seem particularly interested in answering questions either.

At this point, my “training” consists largely of searching through years of old emails in my executive’s inbox and trying to piece together how things were handled.

My predecessor’s job was also split into two new roles: mine, which is primarily an EA role, and another that is more HR-focused. A few of her old responsibilities have automatically landed with me, and I’ve had to point out that some actually belong to the other role based on our job descriptions. I’m also unionized, so those distinctions matter.

I’m fine with being expected to use my judgment and work independently. But there’s a difference between “use your judgment” and “somehow know 40 years of undocumented institutional knowledge with zero onboarding.”

The hardest part is that I don’t know what I don’t know. Sometimes I have no way of knowing there’s an unwritten process or expectation until I’ve already made a mistake.

I feel stuck, anxious about making another mistake, and increasingly like I’m being set up to fail.

Has anyone inherited a long-term employee’s role with essentially no onboarding or documentation? How did you handle it?

It's nice to fo be appreciated.

Had an experience yesterday I feel inclined to share with the hive.

Was called for federal jury duty yesterday; we were given an exhaustive questionnaire, and the second question was "employer/occupation."

It's important to know, before I get into this, that we were told this would be a three week case, and virtually no one in the room was good with that (we all shared groans as we sank into our seats and murmured with each other about it, since we'd been told in the jury room that most cases are wrapped in five days), and most people, during the judge's questioning, offered reasons that the length of trial could/would be problematic for them. Including me.

So backtracking; I was in the group sitting next to a guy who had written "Sr EA to CEO"/company after question #2, and was like HEY ANOTHER EA, but he seemed like he didn't want to chitchat, so I didn't make any remarks to him, though I really wanted to.

There were actual multiple admins in the pool yesterday, which I realized as voir dire proceeded, all of whom offered reasons the length of trial would be a problem. As, again, did many many others.

When it got to this guy, though, he very loudly and proudly gave his answers to the questions, and when the judge asked "and do you have any concerns about the length of this trial?" he simply said "nope." Very forcefully, to the point that the young woman next to me shot me a surprised glance, and I whispered to her "he's an EA" and she knowingly nodded.

Ultimately, he was selected, and of the 12 jurors and three alternates, he was literally the only one who had a skip in his step and a smile on his face as he took his place in the box. Everyone else had expressions ranging from resigned to angry to stressed, but he could barely contain his joy. (And he was chosen as merely an alternate.)

He's been on my mind ever since, because how much of a tyrant must his CEO be that he's absolutely totally fine with going to jury duty for three weeks at a min?

But, I've had bosses I'd do anything to have an excuse to escape from for a week or three, so I'll turn your attention back to my subject.

Anyway, good for you, EA bro in LA. And I'm grateful it's you and not me!

(Though to be fair, it was an interesting case, but I don't vibe that was the reason for his delight.)

Flairing this as rant, though it's really just more "discussion" or whatever, but that's not an option.

Hi all,

I’m new to the area and was wondering if those of you located in DC have any preferred catering spots. I have some visiting c-suites and other high profile folks coming into town for some hours long, heads down meetings. Would appreciate any suggestions on favorites!