Career-boosting tips for administrative assistants
Four ways you can get ahead in the office
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You have dreams of a corner office with a view, but your job as an administrative assistant feels about as far away from that office as Earth is from Mars. Is there any possible way you could work your way up the corporate ladder from where you are now?
You can, but it won’t be easy. What you may not realize is that even if it isn’t always glamorous, your administrative assistant job is teaching you a lot about how a company is run. That means you’ve got to take advantage of the opportunities you have now in order to find yourself in a corner office later.
Here are four things you can do now to prepare yourself for success.
1. Be organized
Answer the phone, type an email, and collate and staple 700 copies of this afternoon’s presentation. Now do it all at once. As an administrative assistant, you’ll be required to take on more things than you think are humanly possible. The only way you’ll be able to do that successfully is by being organized.
Use a calendar, your email task menu or even post-its to keep yourself organized and on track. If you can’t stay organized, you may not succeed at your job as an administrative assistant, let alone get a promotion.
2. Be on top of things
If you want to impress your bosses, then you’ll need to be the kind of administrative assistant who is able to solve problems before they happen. If you know your executive has a habit of being late to meetings, set reminders for her. If you know your boss hates checking his email, get permission and check it for him. It might not always be fun, but keep in mind that stopping a crisis before it happens is always easier than cleaning up afterward.
Anticipating your boss’s needs not only shows you know your boss, but demonstrates that you’re a team player who is dedicated to the success of the company.
3. Ask for additional responsibilities
Once you’ve mastered your everyday administrative assistant tasks, it’s time for you to ask your manager for more responsibility. A good boss will sit down with you, find out what you’re interested in and then let you take on additional work. Ask to be in charge of organizing meetings, or see if your boss will allow you to write up the department’s monthly status report. Even if it doesn’t seem like a lot, any additional responsibility is good. It shows that you are ready for bigger and better things and more importantly, that you’re taking initiative.
4. Never stop learning
The business world is a fast-paced one. If you can’t keep up with current trends and technologies, you’re going to get left behind in the dust. Make it a point to subscribe to industry magazines and newspapers. Take any computer training classes your company might offer and join a local business networking group.
If your company has a tuition reimbursement program, you should use it! Getting a business degree or taking a certification class is one of the best ways to show your bosses that you’re ready for that big promotion.
With a little bit of luck and a lot of effort you can work your way up to senior administrative assistant, office manager or even, depending on where you work, paralegal or sales representative. Then before you know it, you’ll be in that corner office.