You might be walking into a role that is well established. What is expected of you may be written very clearly in the form of a job description or handover notes. You might be flying blind.
Here are my top tips about things you can put in place to make sure you are providing the right kind of support to an employer.
1) Answer the phone in the right way. If you're not sure - check out this article. It's one of the first things you're likely to have to do and it's always a great way to make the right impression.
2) Find out about the existing arrangements for diary management. This can be done in a number of ways. You might be wholly responsible for the management of someone's time, either all of it or during office hours. It's likely that you will deal with appointments, meetings and invitations straight away. Familiarise yourself with the existing system as soon as you can. Most offices use Microsoft Outlook and give you direct access to your boss's diary - this is also a tool that they can see. For any electronic diary system it is important that any appointments that you confirm are added to this in a timely manner. More on this here. If you walk in to the stone age and are faced with a big leather book (trust me - I know that this still happens) that lives on your boss's desk then you'll have your work cut out for you. just ensure that the lines of communication are as open as possible and you will learn the true meaning of "I'll pencil that in".
3) Contacts need to be managed well. Outlook has an efficient and straight forward provision for this. Ensure that these records are kept as up to date as possible. It is easy to cut and paste or enter a new phone number or other details as an when they come up. There can be a bump in the road when you stock pile business cards handed to you when your boss comes back from a meeting if you don't enter them straight away. Typically, if they have met someone recently then they are likely to want to contact them soon. They'll want to know why, when they come to send the email they've been thinking about for a couple days the person's details aren't in their contact file. Check out this article for more info on contacts management in Outlook.
4) Filing is still an integral part of the "paperless" office. Regardless of medium, this system should be as navigable as possible. Thankfully electronic filing is made a lot easier in this day and age than physical filing due to the ability to "search" documents you have correctly labelled. This is true too for emails. If you can get something again then don't keep a paper copy of it, unless your boss has made notes in the margin. I had a boss who was very keen on his noted copies of meeting agendas... made for a laborious filing system - but I managed to find everything... eventually! See this article for more info on filing and ways to approach it.
5) A Bring forward file is a useful tool when you need to pass your boss tickets or invitations at a later date. It's also useful for keeping papers relevant to meetings in the right place to pass to them to read the night before a meeting. Just remember to check it! See here for notes on how to set-up this simple system.
6) Having a dedicated signature book might seem old fashioned. Signatures are still required in the real world though! If you are working for someone in a position of authority in a firm (and most people with an Assistant generally are) a dedicated file of documents that need to be signed is useful. You will know where they are and you will be able to work out a good time to ask for them book to be dealt with. Make sure you know what the documents are though as it's often quite embarrassing to be asked a question you don't know the answer to. If you have any correspondence relevant to the document then it's worth printing them off an clipping them under the signature page for your boss's reference. If you don't - then ask the person who requires the signature to send you a short email summarising the reasons they need the signature.
7) Template letters are very useful and if you arrive in a role and can't find any then it's useful to set them up. A standard thank you letter (see here for an example) that you can personalise to the occasion/individual is a great one to have for those blanker minded days. As you progress in the role you will become more familiar what is and isn't relevant.
8) It is essential that you have a working knowledge of Microsoft Office packages. You need to be familiar with the way they work. The whole of Microsoft office is very similar. If you know how to use Word then using Outlook, Excel and PowerPoint is more intuitive. If you can't use the packages, get some training. At the risk of showing my age, this wasn't something I actually had lessons in at school. I taught myself all my Microsoft Office skills on the "job" as it were. University was my main training ground on Word - I soon learned to double line space an essay that was required to be a certain number of pages (!). Excel is difficult to learn if you don't have a purpose for it. It's brilliant for anything financial, but it's also fantastic for creating easily negotiated lists. I use it for address databases (mainly to use the mail-merge function in Word), invitation lists, basic budget planning (though it is much more capable than me of doing very complicated stuff ). Outlook is very intuitive and the help function is always useful. If you're scared - train. Pay for it if you have to. It will be a great investment. If you're coming into the sphere of the PA through an agency you will have to complete tests on these packages - so don't lie! :)
I have worked in a lot of different offices over the years, and for some very busy people. You might be surprised to learn that even though I have called this website "Shorthanded" I don't actually have shorthand, not at a level good enough to put it on my CV anyway. I also don't touch type... I have tried learning - but my three finger method seems to work out at about 50 words a minute which has been good enough so far. My point is that even if you didn't go to secretarial college, then that shouldn't be an obstacle to you getting a good job in the admin world. Don't get me wrong, I think having proper secretarial qualifications is very useful and I often wish I had formal training. However, I've done okay with what's between my ears and a willingness to show willing!
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