1 It's a portable career. You can travel on the job - organising a meeting in New York and going along with your boss to provide invaluable support - or working and living abroad: 'Wanted! PA in Geneva, fluent French, required for immediate start...'

2 Practically every company has one. Whatever your interests, most organisations and companies have PAs. If you love wine, get a job as a PA for a wine merchant. If you adore art, work for an art gallery. The role allows you to combine work and your passion!

3 Build the skills you need. The role is what you make of it and, best of all, you can find and develop a role to suit the skills you want to use on a job. Do you love putting together presentations? You can find a role where presentations are frequently required! Enjoy organising business travel? Out there somewhere is a job where co-ordinating trips is 80% of the role. It's so flexible!

4 It's a privileged position! Especially at a senior level, you have access to a great many confidential things that others don't. You know what's going on. Often the boss asks you for your view on what's going on and what he should be doing. You can influence the team, the atmosphere, and set the tone!

5 You can specialise! For example, you could be a medical PA, educational PA, legal beaver, bi-lingual assistant or agricultural secretary! The choice is yours!

6 You can create your own working week! Many PA roles are full time, but then you can also find those which enable you to work one or two days a week, 15 hours a week, term time only, job share, late at night, through the night - the choice is endless.

7 Career promotion is there for the taking. All you have to do is to be sure of what you want to achieve in your career and the world's your oyster!

8 It's people based. You're constantly dealing with people from dawn to dusk and where there's people, there's interaction, fun - and a challenge!

9 There's huge variety in the role. The job is what you make of it - the more responsibility you choose to take on board, the more variety you can have.

10 Then there's the relationship with the boss. There's nothing quite like it - accounts assistant to accounts manager is just not the same as PA to their manager. When it works, it's a tremendous buzz, as you help each other through the work as partners. Chemistry is key. Without it, the relationship doesn't work.

11 The role provides great insight into different careers and organisations while you're deciding what to do. Temping is a fab way to start your career as you experience different companies, cultures, values, people, corporate fits. An oil company Monday, an investment bank Tuesday, a recruitment company Wednesday and Thursday, and a retail outlet Friday...

12 You can be a PA anywhere, from a capital city - Paris, London, Madrid - to a rural area - the Outer Hebrides, Sark, the outback in Australia.

13 You can set up your own business as a virtual PA. Well, why not? You've seen the boss at work and you know you can do what he does for yourself.

14 You learn a heck of a lot about organisations and how they function (or don't), and people and what motivates them, drives them and upsets them. There's no training ground for life like it. You learn to handle any situation and respond to it calmly and logically.

15 You can handle change better than anyone. "Angela, I'm not going to Hong Kong tonight now. I'm going to San Francisco instead tonight. And next week, the MD wants to talk to me about restructuring the company. I know, third time this year."

16 You know how to organise things and to provide for all those "what if" scenarios... This is why your conferences and business trips are always superb and stress free. And don't forget - these skills are as valuable in your personal life as in work.

17 Your IT know-how is second to none. You're on top of the latest technology and how to use it to your best advantage.

18 You see better than anyone how an organisation holds together and how people support it and make it work, from the top to the bottom. After all, you pull it all together.

19 You possess fabulous qualities such as mind-reading and a wonderful sense of humour, thinking ahead of people and tact. You know what the boss needs even before she does.

20 You can enjoy the challenge of ensuring that your role evolves with the times. After all, if PAs hadn't evolved with the times, they would now be extinct. Take full confidence in your ability to continue to go with the times and meet the challenges which lie ahead. PAs have done it before and we'll continue to do it in future. Long live the PA!