An administrative assistant performs routine office work such as drafting letters on behalf of their boss and being the first to answer any income telephone call to the manager's main line. Another characteristic role of admin assistant jobs is sending and receiving packages and correspondence, maintaining their manager's calendar by making sure no appointments for the manager and with the manager clash. The admin assistant will also be called upon sometimes to entertain clients on behalf of or in the absence of their manager.
There are a number of skills and attributes that anyone seeking to enter the administrative assistant world will need to have. First, excellent communication skills both written and oral are a must. The admin assistant will have to draft memos, customer letters and meeting minutes on behalf of their boss and any error may have repercussions not just on the manager's standing but also the company's brand such as where the document is meant for clients. Spelling and grammar must be impeccable. The only thing that the manager would need to occasionally correct is tone, content and meaning. Good oral communication is vital too. The admin assistant is the first point of contact for persons intending to see their boss and communication must be done with clarity, coherence, assertiveness but at the same time respectful. A competent admin assistant should represent the best face of the company towards the clients, suppliers and colleagues.
Closely tied in to communication is the need for advanced interpersonal skills. The role of the admin assistant makes them the de facto gatekeeper for the manager's office and they will need to interact well with all sorts of persons from suppliers, staff, clients, relatives and friends. The ability to say no to persons coming to see the boss without appointment is vital in making sure that the manager's diary does not spiral out of control. The administrative assistant will also be called upon to sit in senior management meetings either to take minutes or to represent his or her boss. The assistant must carry themselves with confidence even during such high level meetings and always be adequately prepared to give a brief of that which had been tasked to them.
Successful administrative assistants are usually characterised by meticulous organizational skills and attention to detail. Administrative work is about never taking your eye off the ball. It is taking cognisance of the fact that every action in the office most probably feeds into and has a direct impact in another process. Time management skills are critical to ensure that everything works like clockwork and high priority items are assigned more time and resources. Except for unexpected circumstances, each task must be completed on time.
This cannot be overemphasized given that the admin assistant will often be expected to juggle numerous tasks all of which are important though not necessarily urgent. The need to see everything in the context of the ‘bigger picture' is vital since the manager may not be always available to provide minute by minute instruction.
One of the first things that an admin assistant must master is how the office environment functions. He or she needs to know how basic office equipment (e.g. fax machine, photocopier and printer) works. This does not mean that they would need to have deep technical knowledge on how to repair them but rather it means knowing how to use them. With the emergence of more sophisticated phones using VoIP technology, the admin assistant must familiarize themselves with the vital functions such as checking voice mail, holding calls, saving an auto response or out of office message and call forwarding.
Even more importantly than just the equipment, the admin assistant must be well versed in modern desktop software applications such as Open Office, Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat as most of their job will likely revolve around the use of these applications to generate and manipulate office documents.
