Personal assistant

A personal assistant, also referred to as personal aide (PA) or personal secretary (PS), is a job title describing a person who assists a specific person with their daily business or personal tasks.

Duties and functions

A manager may have a personal assistant to help with time and daily management, scheduling of meetings, correspondence, and note taking. The role of a personal assistant can be varied, such as answering phone calls, taking notes, scheduling meetings, etc.

In business or personal contexts, personal assistants are people who provide services that relieve his or her employer from tasks that are associated with managing one’s personal and/or business life. They assist with a variety of life management tasks, including running errands, arranging travel (e.g., travel agent services such as purchasing airline tickets, reserving hotel rooms and rental cars, and arranging activities, as well as handling more localized services such as recommending a different route to work based on road or travel conditions), finance (paying bills, buying and selling stocks), shopping (meal planning, remembering special occasions like birthdays and anniversaries and purchasing gifts) and fitness (exercise monitoring and motivation, as a personal trainer may do).