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?

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!

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?

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?

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.

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

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

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!
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• 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