how is an administrative assistant different from a receptionist or secretary?

Answer 1

Administrative assitant should take care of the perfomance of the controls over office administrative things such as taking care of the office supplies, the management of the maitenance of office equipment, some human resourses stuff like vacations programming of the employees etc. In the other hand the receptcionist will take care of the phone calls from outside, taking messages, tranferring them... she/he is the first contact with the customers so she/he have to be always nice and friendly.

Answer 2

An administrative assistant works a lot closer with the administrator or manager. There is a lot more work. A secretary will usually take calls, organize appointments and documents. A secretary is a title usually used when they are assisting one department or person. A receptionist will answer phones and take care of information usually at a front desk and assist an entire company or large department.

Answer 3

Many places actually use them interchangeably.

To me though, I would call an adminstrative assistant, somebody who works directly with an executive/manager, or a pool of managers and has the competence to do a variety of administrative tasks, from typing, to setting up business trips.

A secretary is pretty much the same thing, except they dont have as wide of level of competence. They may type letters, or take calls, but they dont input the data in to Excel.

Receptionists, to me, basically sit at a front desk or front window, and greet people/and or answer an incoming phone system.

Answer 4

Admin. assist. has to do with payrolls and paper works that involves administrative delegation. A receptionist is a front desk clerk who tends to the guests, answering questions, and giving information. A secretary takes care of bookings, meetings, memos and making sure that the coffee machine is loaded.

Answer 5

An Admin. usually works harder than anybody. Next would be the Secretary followed up by the Receptionist (sorry gals)....

Answer 6

Its simple, less answering phones and more work on reports, calendar management etc etc