Interview: Sonia Vanular (continued)

"It's not an easy profession. You must be intelligent and perceptive. Nowadays there are people who don't want to do menial tasks - or what they see as menial tasks. However, I'm afraid it's all part of the job. Don't they realise how potty it is to get a highly paid senior manager to make his or her own cup of tea? Not that a really good boss wouldn't make a busy secretary a cup of coffee at times…"

Vanular feels that less brilliant people have a very difficult task. "There are so many jobs that are really not that interesting. The use of technology has often removed the human element. If you compare people who work in tele-banking as opposed to the old-fashioned high-street branch workers, there's little human contact."

She rejects assertions that the secretarial role has become more interesting with the introduction of computers. "I suppose secretaries are doing more research now that most of them have access to the Internet. It seems to me that secretaries are becoming more and more like printers, collating information and turning it into beautiful documents. It's better than the traditional typing job, but it's hardly revolutionary."

Sonia is concerned that nowadays secretaries and PAs reach the most senior level at a much earlier age than was traditionally the case. She muses it must be stressful for them, because they haven't had the change to gradually grow into the job. "Any mistake will have much bigger consequences than it would have had at a less senior level. Management support requires a tremendous amount of judgement and personal qualities. Without the experience of dealing with mistakes over a period of years, young senior secretaries and PAs can hardly be expected to know how to minimise the impact of their mistakes."

Over the years she has seen many examples of well-presented young women who appeared very competent but lacked the necessary perception. "Insight comes with age. It's something you learn as you go through life. In essence, management support isn't exactly rocket science; it doesn't require academic qualifications. You do, however, need to make mistakes and learn from them. Experience is not about what you have done; it's about what you have learned from what you have done. We mustn't be too hard on people for making mistakes, unless they fail to learn from them."

Sonia Vanular commands a rare position in European management support, pioneering cross-border secretarial networking well before the introduction of the Internet and continuing to motivate new generations of support professionals to take charge of their careers. Over the coming months she hopes to finalise proposals for formal recognition of skills learned through work in voluntary organisations such as EUMA. "If someone successfully runs a sizeable international organisation for a number of years, that should be reflected in some kind of formal qualification. Employers have very little idea of what their PAs have achieved in their spare time. Local EUMA members organise our very successful European conference every year, a massive task for which they get very little formal recognition at the moment." Despite the challenge, and her own admission that it will be difficult to administer a fair and objective system, Sonia feels positive. "I'm not the least bit nervous. I am in reasonably good health and I have no intention of taking early retirement. We all need to support Life Long Learning."