What Is The Difference Between an EA & a VA?

If you’ve been following me for a while, you know that I love my team. If you’ve been following me for even longer, you know I love my EA. You’ll also know that she was my first full-time employee and I outsourced the hiring process to an HR consultant. I talk a bit about that process in another blog but I want to share the difference between a VA and an EA. 

VA → Virtual Assistant

Typically, a virtual assistant is not an employee, they’re a contractor and they can do a variety of different tasks. This means you could have a VA that only handles admin tasks, or social media tasks, or tech/operational tasks. There’s a lot of specializations that VA’s can have. 

EA → Executive Assistant

Typically, an executive assistant is an employee and they focus on administrative tasks. They are not usually doing anything involving social media or tech/operations. The administrative tasks that my eA handles are my calendar, my email inbox, customer service and travel.

So my EA has been with me for a few years now, and about a year ago she started handling my travel fully. From sourcing flights and hotels to booking and creating itineraries for me she does all of that now. After she had taken over fully, I was in a group chat with some friends and we were talking about a conference that we're going to in a few weeks. People in the chat were like:

"Did you book your hotel? Did you book your hotel?" 

Now I had shared what hotel I was staying at and that my room was already booked thanks to my EA and they were like:

 "Oh, we haven't booked it yet. Get it Erica, you're on it! You’ve already got your room booked.”

And I let them know that I had already turned over travel arrangements to my EA. That is one of the things I had to give up, because I can't be the teacher and the principal and the front office secretary and the custodian and the cafeteria manager. I had to give it up. 

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