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By becoming an executive assistant, you may put your organisational and people skills to good use in the corporate world. This is a rewarding career choice. Find out how to get into the industry, how to advance your career within it, and how much an executive assistant makes.
An executive assistant is someone who works directly with the top leaders of a firm or organisation, providing high-level administrative support while also doing routine administrative responsibilities.
What Is An Executive Assistant?
Executive assistants serve a key role in every organisation since they aid top-level managers with administrative tasks and facilitate communication. Executives place a high value on their executive assistants’ capacity to act as a go-between with clients, partners, and subordinate staff, therefore working with them directly requires secrecy and organisation.
Executive Assistants: What they Do?
Depending on the organisation and the boss’s demands, an executive assistant’s day may consist of a wide range of activities, including scheduling, memo writing, social interaction, and record keeping. Their responsibilities may include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Taking care of paperwork including answering emails, making notes, and composing letters
- Keeping meticulous records and generating reliable reports
- Managing Payroll and Other Accounting Tasks
- Setting up appointments and sending out reminders
- Providing fast and useful responses while answering the phone
- Greeting and greeting all visitors to the workplace as the company’s representative
- Keeping the executive team’s schedules, meetings, and trips well-organized
Skills that Executive Assistant Courses Will improve
Employers seek for job prospects that can multitask well and juggle many assignments at once. Working as an executive assistant may be a good match if you’re good at juggling many tasks at once and setting priorities. Skills like these may be sought after by potential employers for this position. Let’s find out the skills that you can improve by taking executive assistant courses.
Effective Scheduling and Punctuality
The executives’ and your own time will be under your watchful eye. Meetings, appointments, and trips must all be planned in advance. Executives are freed to concentrate on their jobs and maintain steady productivity in this manner.
Time management on your own behalf is just as crucial to your success as controlling the time of executives. The firm relies on you, so it looks good if you have a history of showing up on time and doing tasks on schedule.
Oral and Written Communication Skills
Tasks like sending out emails, drafting reports, and making phone calls are commonplace in a typical workday. As a result, an executive assistant is required to have excellent written and vocal communication abilities. Taking executive assistant courses as part of your training can help you in improving these skills. Maintaining professional and executive connections are often aided by using a clear and consistent tone.
Strong Organisational Skills and the Capacity to Multitask
Because you will be responsible for noting a huge quantity of information in your function, an organisation is a vital ability. Filing, classifying emails, sorting mail, and screening phone calls are examples of administrative and organisational chores. Calendars, appointments, reports, and budgets all need to be organised in some way, and leaders are responsible for making that happen.
Problem-solving and Initiative
Another awesome skill that executive assistant courses can improve is your ability and your initiative to solve problems. Hiring an executive assistant may help a company’s top brass get more done in less time, set priorities, and delegate more effectively. To do so successfully, you must make choices on your own. This requires self-assurance and a high degree of strategic thinking. You must also be able to examine a project proactively, forecast a broad variety of probable outcomes, and create contingency measures.
Interpersonal Skills
In this work, you will come into touch with individuals of varied personalities, both external and inside the firm, thus patience and politeness are essential. An executive assistant is often the first point of contact for angry customers and in-house staff, thus the ability to soothe problems before contacting bosses is crucial. You have the power to set the tone for the whole office since you speak for the executives and the company.
Persuasion
Executive assistants must be as skilled at closing deals as executives. Perhaps they need to get the boss sold-out concert tickets or negotiate a catering bargain. Perhaps the assistant has to form a group to organise an event or rally colleagues behind a major organisational move. Persuasion abilities may be used to silence opponents, persuade potential partners, get special favours, and keep operations operating smoothly.
Conclusion
Assistants to executives are seldom in a mundane position. The responsibilities go much beyond making phone calls and filing papers. As a matter of fact, assistants serve a diverse clientele and deal with a broad variety of situations, some of which are beyond the purview of their official titles.
Though the finest personal assistants can do a little bit of everything, they still benefit from honing a few key abilities. You may be able to get work as an executive assistant if you possess the aforementioned abilities. However, if you don’t have these skills now, don’t worry; you can learn them and become an invaluable asset to your company with enough practise.
