You Want a $200,000 Executive Assistant… You Just Don’t Want to Pay for One.
Let me tell you about one of my favorite recruiting conversations…
An executive calls me because they need an Executive Assistant—and not just any Executive Assistant, of course!
They want someone strategic. Someone who can sit in leadership meetings, has exceptional judgment and emotional intelligence, anticipates what they need before they ask, can challenge them when necessary, represent them with senior stakeholders, protect their time, manage competing priorities, handle confidential information, solve problems without being told how, and somehow see in front of them, behind them, beside them, above them, and probably into next quarter.
They want “Donna, from Suits.”
(That’s in quotations because I can’t even count the amount of times I’ve literally heard that come out of an executive’s mouth.)
Then comes my favorite part.
I ask: “What’s your budget?”
They respond: “Well…we were thinking around $60,000.”
And this is where I need to have a little conversation with them.
Because the problem isn’t simply that Executive Assistants are underpaid. The deeper problem is that many executives price the role based on the tasks they associate with administration instead of the judgment, access, responsibility, experience, and leverage they are asking that person to provide.
Calendar = administrative.
Email = administrative.
Travel = administrative.
Expenses = administrative.
Therefore, in their minds, the person doing those things must be worth an “administrative” salary.
Except that isn’t remotely how senior Executive Assistant work actually functions..
You aren’t paying someone to put meetings on a calendar.
You’re paying someone to understand which meetings should happen at all. In what order. And how many times you’ve already canceled it.
You aren’t paying someone to “do emails.”
You’re paying someone to recognize what requires your attention, what can be handled without you, what could become a problem three days from now, and which relationship absolutely cannot be ignored.
You’re not buying tasks.
You’re buying judgment.
And I hate to break it to you, but good judgment is expensive.
Here are four reasons your expectations might be skewed.
Problem #1: You Want Donna on a Bargain-Bin Budget
If you’ve watched Suits, you know Donna Paulsen.
Donna knew everything.
She anticipated Harvey before Harvey knew what Harvey wanted. She understood the personalities, politics, relationships, priorities, threats, opportunities, and probably everyone's lunch order without writing any of it down.
She had extraordinary EQ. Extraordinary confidence. Extraordinary judgment.
And virtually every executive who references her to me says the same thing: “I want a Donna.”
Great.
Then you have to pay for Donna.
Because if Donna were a real person operating at that level, my bet is that she's making well over $200,000—probably somewhere near a quarter of a million dollars.
She sure as hell isn't making $60,000.
I recruit senior administrative professionals, and when companies truly want someone operating at the highest levels, the job description looks very different from “manage calendar and book travel.” These positions ask for intellectual horsepower, executive confidence, discernment, Board-level presence, the ability to challenge a CEO, exceptional EQ, complex stakeholder management, and years of progressive experience.
That's Donna.
And here's what makes this bizarre: executives understand this concept perfectly well everywhere else in the organization.
Take finance: You understand there is a difference between a bookkeeper, an accountant, a controller, a VP of Finance, and a CFO.
They may all touch financial information, but that does not make them interchangeable.
You would never say: “I need someone who can advise me on capital allocation, communicate with the Board, challenge my thinking, understand our financial position, and help guide the financial future of the company.
Budget? “Eh, what does a bookkeeper make?”
You understand that experience, scope, risk, authority, and judgment increase as someone progresses through a profession.
Administrative professionals have levels too.
Offshore virtual assistant.
Onshore virtual assistant.
Receptionist.
Office manager.
Administrative Assistant.
Executive Assistant.
C-suite Executive Assistant.
Executive Business Partner.
Chief of Staff.
The titles aren't perfect. Organizations use them inconsistently. Growth doesn’t always necessarily look like the order outlined above. In fact, companies routinely slap “Executive Assistant” on jobs that bear almost no resemblance to one another.
But the careers still progress.
The expertise still develops.
The scope still increases.
Because—stay with me here—
being an administrative professional is a real job.
Problem #2: You Don't Treat This Like a Real Profession
People still act as though being an assistant is something any person can just… do.
Your best friend's 22-year-old daughter just graduated from college? She's organized. She's personable. “She likes people.”
Perfect! Make her the CEO's Executive Assistant! Set her up next to the most important person in the whole company.
But you wouldn't hire your best friend's 22-year-old finance major as your CFO because she's “really bright and knows Excel.”
Why? Because being a CFO is a profession.
Experience matters.
Pattern recognition matters.
Judgment matters.
You expect someone to grow into that level of responsibility over years.
Guess what? So do assistants.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics itself distinguishes executive administrative roles from entry-level administrative work and notes that executive secretaries and executive administrative assistants typically need several years of related experience.
Yet somehow, when organizations look at administrative professionals, they see one giant bucket: “Assistant.”
Same thing, right?
*Please read that with heavy sarcasm.*
An Executive Assistant with two years of experience is not the same professional as someone with 15-20 years sitting beside CEOs, managing Boards, navigating high-stakes personalities, handling confidential information, protecting relationships, making judgment calls, and learning how businesses actually operate.
Our titles may not change very much, but our expertise does.
Problem #3: You Haven't Actually Researched What the Talent You Want Costs
This one continually amazes me.
Executives call me to recruit an assistant, and when I ask about compensation, I can practically hear the number being invented in real time.
“Uhhhh… $60,000? $70,000? $80,000?”
How did you come up with that number?
Did you look at the market?
Did you compare salaries for similar positions?
Did you consider the experience you're requiring?
Your location?
Your industry?
Company size?
Whether this person is supporting one executive or an entire leadership team?
Whether you expect them to be available after hours?
Whether they'll attend Board meetings?
Whether they're managing projects, employees, events, operations, or your personal life?
Often, the answer is no. It's just a number that sounds like what an assistant should make.
For context, $60,000 annually is about $28 an hour based on a 40-hour workweek.
Current estimates put the average In-N-Out associate wage in California at about $23 an hour. (And before anyone sends me an angry letter: I love In-N-Out. This is not an insult to the incredibly hardworking people making my Double-Double.)
It's simply a reality check.
You're telling me you want someone sitting inches from the C-suite—reading sensitive communications, managing access to the CEO, representing your judgment to other people, attending senior meetings, protecting relationships, making decisions in your absence, and keeping your professional life from flying off the rails…
…and you're offering roughly five dollars more per hour than that? Explain that math to me.
Especially when executives constantly talk about what their time is worth.
“My time is worth $500 an hour.”
“My time is worth $1,000 an hour.”
Great. Then why are you trying to bargain-shop for the person whose job is to protect that time?
If your assistant gives you back ten hours a week, prevents you from wasting another five, keeps you focused on revenue-generating work, protects important relationships, and makes sure commitments don't disappear into your inbox, you're not buying calendar management.
You're buying executive capacity. Crunch the numbers and see what that’s worth.
That is exactly the distinction executives told me they need to understand: the value isn't “administrative support.” It's leverage—how investing in the right support allows a leader to spend substantially more time where their contribution actually matters.
Problem #4: You Think the Job Is Easy
This one gets me.
Particularly because some of the most brilliant executives I've ever worked with would make terrible Executive Assistants.
Simon Sinek—whom I supported for nearly a decade—would tell you himself that he could never do my job. And that's not an insult to Simon.
He has his skill set. I have mine. That's the entire point.
Great administrative professionals have extraordinary abilities in prioritization, organization, communication, diplomacy, emotional intelligence, resourcefulness, pattern recognition, follow-through, and decision-making.
We are absorbing hundreds of pieces of information while simultaneously determining:
What matters now?
What can wait?
Who needs an answer?
Who is upset?
What did the executive promise three days ago and forget?
Which meeting should move?
Which one absolutely cannot move?
What information does the executive need before walking into the next room?
What problem can I eliminate before they even know it existed?
And here's the cruel irony: The better an assistant gets, the easier the job looks.
This may be the single biggest reason elite administrative work gets undervalued.
You see the meeting start on time.
You don't see the three scheduling conflicts, two personalities, missing documents, incorrect dial-in, late executive, last-minute request, and quiet diplomatic intervention that made that possible.
You see a flight.
You don't see what happened when you decided to take the fully-booked “earlier flight” while already in a taxi to the airport.
You see the Board meeting.
You don't see the hundred details required to make sure you walked into it looking prepared.
You see a calm day.
You don't see the fires that never reached your desk.
You're not seeing less work. You're seeing mastery.
I've written before about executives asking for “chaos tamers,” “mind readers,” “magicians,” and “unicorns.” The reality is much less mystical. Great assistants aren't magical. They're highly skilled professionals whose speed and instinct come from years of experience, context, resourcefulness, and relationship-building.
Still think it's easy?
Follow your assistant for a week.
Not an hour. A week.
Track every interruption, reschedule, judgment call, follow-up, competing priority, difficult personality, confidential conversation, missing piece of information, and tiny-but-enormously-huge disaster they quietly resolve.
Then let's talk.
And Yes, We Do Need to Talk About Gender
We cannot have an intellectually honest conversation about administrative compensation without acknowledging this.
In 2025, 93.5% of executive secretaries and executive administrative assistants in the United States were women.
That’s more than nine out of ten.
Work historically associated with women—organization, coordination, communication, relationship management, emotional intelligence, caregiving, and support—has too often been treated as something women are simply good at rather than expertise organizations should pay for.
And I have a very hard time believing that if this were a male-dominated profession sitting this close to power, handling this much confidential information, exercising this much judgment, and directly protecting the capacity of the highest-paid people in the company, we'd still be having conversations about whether $60,000 sounds generous.
There. I said it. And I welcome the debate if you want to bring it.
The Truth is: You Get What You Pay For
I want you to understand: There is nothing wrong with having a $60,000 budget.
Just make sure that when you hire the best $60,000 role you can reasonably find in your market, you:
adjust the scope
adjust the experience requirement
adjust the responsibilities
and adjust your expectations.
There is also nothing inherently wrong with location affecting compensation. New York and Des Moines are different labor markets.
But geography does not erase seniority.
A twenty-year administrative professional does not magically lose fifteen years of expertise because she moved to Iowa.
And you also don't get to keep the $60,000 budget while demanding $200,000 capability.
You don't get to ask for ten steps ahead, strategic thought, Board experience, executive presence, ruthless prioritization, impeccable EQ, after-hours availability, high-level stakeholder management, complete discretion, outstanding judgment, and the confidence to tell you when you're wrong…
…then act shocked when the candidates who can do all of that cost more than a fast-food worker.
You're not hiring a list of tasks.
You're hiring capability.
You're hiring judgment.
You're hiring experience.
You're hiring someone who can protect and expand your capacity as a leader.
You're hiring a professional.
This is a real job.
And just like every other real job in your organization, there are levels to it.
So before you write the job description, decide what level you actually need. Before you decide the salary, find out what that level actually costs.
And if what you really want is Donna from Suits? Wonderful.
Just don't hand me a $60,000 budget and ask where she's hiding.
Because I’ll just tell you: you get what you pay for.
P.S. Once you’ve determined the salary range, here’s why being transparent about it in the job posting is a non-negotiable.