Differences in the duties of a director, manager, coordinator and assistant

Have you wondered how various roles differ from each other? Most young professionals developing their career start as an intern or assistant. The process of going through various roles, from an assistant to a coordinator, manager and director can take anywhere from three to 15 years.

Assistant

An assistant is someone who helps in a particular job. The word assistant comes from Latin, and means helping, or supporting. An assistant may perform a variety of tasks and may have a heavy workload. He or she receives instructions from his or her supervisor and doesn’t define the tasks on his or her own.

Coordinator

A coordinator, as the word itself points out, is a person who coordinates or organizes a particular issue. A coordinator does not expect instructions, instead, he or she determines the subtasks necessary to complete the assignment or the project. The Cambridge dictionary defines the word coordinator as someone whose job is to make different groups work together in an organized way to achieve something.

Manager

A manager is an individual who is in charge of a certain group of tasks, or a certain subset of a company. A manager often has a staff of people who report to him or her. A manager is in charge of leading a company or a department without full executive power, and is accountable to the director.

Director

The director of a company has the executive right. He or she does not expect anyone else to make important decisions, and is committed to leadership either of the entire company, or in any department - for example, public relations or marketing. The director guides the managers and controls a company as a whole, or his or her respective department.

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