Administrative Assistant Career

Introduction

A high school diploma, good typing and word processing skills will gradually get

you to your suited job: as Administrative Assistant

(http://www.careercruising.com/jobdetails_print.asp?LoginID=647926865110602&OccName=Administrative+Assistant March 25 2004).

An Administrative Assistant can be categorized into two types: One that may work in an educative environment or one that may work for a business in an office.

An Administrative Assistant that may work in an educative environment (school) will basically deal with handling special administrative tasks, student and parent responsibilities or duties, as well as dealing with computerized tasks.

An administrative assistant that may work in a business type office will generally deal with the administrative assistant providing secretarial support to a staff of eight as well as providing assistance to the Executive Unit staff of five to six people. The administrative assistant will perform various duties that may include maintaining office information systems, legal files and forms, helping in preparing reports; updating legal materials in the agency or business’ office library, recording and distributing incoming and outgoing mail, a ensuring that expenses related to incoming and/or outgoing mail are properly submitted to the fiscal department (http://www.careercruising.com/jobdetails_print.asp?LoginID=647926865110602&OccName=Administrative+Assistant, March 25 2004) The career of Administrative Assistance is a jam-packed employment field and is a position that is in demand.

History

1941 was the year that various federal officials, including the Prime Minister had urged the federal department to set up a comprehensive study of administrative studies. This administrative study was set up to lead students of the subject outside of the Government. The study of administrative studies was actively carried on from the summer of 1941 to the summer of 1942. Working as an administrative assistant in Canada, instead of having the usual 15 assistants, directors carried on the bulk of the work with four or five assistants because this was a new type of study to the economy. As years went by, the amount of administrative assistants has decreased to 5 or 6 in an office at a time (http://www.taxbase.ro/THP/civilization/Documents/Treasury/hst23727/23727-3.htm March 25 2004). In 1952 a new annual event started originally called “National Secretaries Week” by the National Secretaries Association (now known as the International Association of Administrative Professionals) in conjunction with public relations executive Harry Klemfuss and a consortium of office product manufacturers. This event was established as an effort to recognize secretaries and there hard contributions on the workplace, and also to get more people interested in the administrative/secretarial careers. In 2000 IAAP made an announcement for a change in Professional Secretaries Week and Professional Secretaries Day. They now changed the name to Administrative Professionals Week and Administrative Professionals Day in order to keep pace in with new changing job titles and making the responsibilities of today’s administrative workplace bigger (http://www.iaap-hq.org/apw/apwindex.htm March 25 2004).

JOB REQUIREMENTS

Many of the training, education and experiences an administrative assistant positions require you to have is only a high school education and strong word processing and typing skills. Also an office administration course can give you a very competitive advantage when you are applying for a job. Just like the education and training, many of the qualifications are basically alike (http://www.careercruising.com/jobdetails_print.asp?LoginID=647926865110602&OccName=Administrative+Assistant March 25 2004)

Also going to community collages and business schools offer you many certificate programs for just basic training in the field, just as well as more in-depth executive training (http://www.careercruising.com/jobdetails_print.asp?LoginID=647926865110602&OccName=Administrative+Assistant March 25 2004).

While you are enrolling in these types of programs you will learn many different things such as, procedure skills, word processing, spreadsheet and database software programs, written and verbal communication skills, and finally math and accounting skills. Some of the programs offer you placement opportunities in that business field. These placements let you experience hands on, while making contacts and maybe if you’re lucky enough get hired upon the completion of the placement.

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