Dear Rachel,
I recently started for a major East Coast agency. I was hired as an intern for my graduate studies requirement. After my three months expired, I was offered a position. They had no real room on existing teams, so a position was created specifically for me--director of special projects. I am supposed to handle all media training, work on campaigns, etc., answering directly to the agency CEO. Recently, however, there has been a shift in my responsibilities that includes far more administrative assistant duties like scheduling the CEO's appointments and downloading personal documents for him. Just recently in our Monday morning meeting he announced to the entire agency he wants all phone calls to go through me. Obviously, this has dire career implications for me. And it's not the position I agreed to. How do I handle this situation? I have now been at the agency five months and realize that it would reflect poorly on my resume if I left now. It is a well-known agency and I would want it on my resume. But by staying I am not increasing my skills or value at all. I have several years' experience as a marketing coordinator for a multi-million dollar company, as well as experience as a journalist, web content writer, advertising executive, event planner. etc.-- Feeling Stuck 
 
Dear Stuck,
 You could take it as a compliment that the president respects your judgment and trusts you to do his work efficiently. But that's little consolation if it's not the work you signed up to do. It's also not particularly encouraging that he didn't ask you if you wanted these new responsibilities.

There are several ways to look at the situation, but only one solution: Get out of the administrative role.

While you say that you are working at a major shop, is it a global leader, employing several thousand? If it is, speak with human resources and find out how others working in that position fared in the past.

"He may have a history of treating his assistant as more of an ‘aide de camp’ and moving that individual quickly through the ranks," says Donna Renella, who was head of worldwide hiring for Hill & Knowlton before starting her own New York recruiting firm last year.

"In that case, evaluate your options and delay any move while working hand-in-hand with the president. If you do not want to do the administrative work, ask the HR person if you can be transferred to a different role when one opens up."

However, if you work for a boutique firm that employs less than 100 professionals, and none of them in a human resources role, you’ll need to navigate the waters alone.

Speak directly to the president. Let him know that while you appreciate all the agency has done for you (giving you an internship, creating a full-time position for you) the job you accepted is not the one he has you in.

"Explain to him that you have much to offer and that the functions he has you performing, while important to him, can and should be done by someone at a lower salary level who truly is looking to support such a successful executive," Renella says.

"Offer to help him recruit an assistant and get a time line to move back to the position originally created for you."

If he doesn't agree to this, you need to move on, and quickly. Start looking for another job.

While you are doing it, look back on your months working at the agency and try to pinpoint what might have gotten you moved off the projects you enjoyed and into that administrative role.

Sometimes these things just happen.

Harried executives move people around willy-nilly to fill holes because they are short-staffed. It might have been one of those cases, and no one explained it to you because no one stopped long enough to think about it.

In that case, it's no reflection on you or your work, and is in fact a compliment. You're really part of the team and they didn't think they had to explain because they expected you to understand.

But it also might be the case that your work wasn't up to snuff and that you were not heeding the signals. Rather than sit you down and explain all that, your bosses took the easy way out and pushed you aside.

You may want to talk with people you worked with to try to puzzle this through. You don't have to ask directly, but you can certainly ask the right questions in the right way to get a sense of what happened.

It may not matter for where you are now, but it could matter a lot where you land next.