Secretaries perform many tasks during their work hours; from data entry to attending calls and customers to filing and handling mail. They handle a lot of responsible tasks and should be really quick and agile in their performance. Secretaries are available in all types of organizations including business, government and nonprofit entities.
Job Functions and Skills
Secretaries control the front office of any organization and come in direct contact with the customers and hence they should be always presentable and smart and should be willing to assist the customers. Office automation has to a large extent simplified and limited the scope of secretarial jobs these days when the machines took over man. In many medium sized organizations, Secretaries are being entrusted with administrative or sales tasks as well as there is less paper work these days.
Large organizations may have multiple levels of secretaries with distinct division of labor. There are many online education and secretarial courses that would help the prospective candidates in taking secretary job description up this career. Secretaries should have at least high school education though many employers are hiring graduates of administrative support schools. Word processing and typing skills are preferred in most cases.
Benefits and Salary
The salary of secretary might vary from case to case depending on their job functions. Legal secretaries draw the highest salary in the range of around $40,000. In addition, full time employees are entitled for other benefits like paid holidays, life insurance coverage and other fringe benefits.
Working Conditions
The scope and nature of any secretary job can vary drastically and hence one can come across variety of requirements in secretary job description. Secretaries may work in plush independent settings or in a large room in a group. Secretaries need to be well organized as the job requires a high level of precision.
As the job involves meeting people and coordinating the various office functions apart from interacting with the bosses, a certain degree of work pressure can be expected. Typically secretaries work thirty-five to forty hours per week, while some offices have flexible hours or shift timings as well.
Promotional Scopes
Depending on their performance, secretaries can become administrative managers or a more responsible post in a larger set up. Employment opportunities for legal and medical secretaries are expected to be more than general secretaries, whose job positions are threatened by the increasing office automation processes.