Administrative Assistant's Update

7 Administrative Assistant's UPDATE Credit: Phovoir (Shutterstock) The EA as business partner: Start early, have a plan By Staff As receptionists and administrative assistants rise to become executive assistants and senior executive as- sistants, they gain not only stature but a diverse set of skills enabling them to broaden the scope of their potential career moves. The actual responsibilities that ac- company titles such as administrative assistant, executive assistant or senior executive assistant may vary widely even within the same title. However, EAs and senior EAs are generally more likely to be viewed by their executives as business partners, a status that admins may aspire to achieve. For EAs whose jobs have focused on meetings, travel arrangements and expense reports, the prospect of becoming a business partner to an executive can be attractive. That sort of move may be possible within the EA's current organization, especially if it's a large one, or may call for the EA to identify other firms where execu - tives are known to look to EAs for higher level responsibilities, including decision making ability. Laying the career path Ideally, says Office Team's Lara Dodo, the groundwork for enhancing an admin's career path is laid in the early days of employment. If an organization aspires to retain top talent in a highly competitive market, it means ongoing career discussions need to take place. "Sometimes career movement doesn't mean a change into another de - partment or another company," Dodo says, "it could simply mean working with someone's job function and giv- ing them expanded responsibilities within the current role and letting them have an organic growth program." If the organization is not already actively supporting career develop- ment for its administrative profes- sionals, it may be up to the admin to open communication channels in that direction. It could be as simple as the admin asking to understand what have been characteristically the career paths for administrative professionals in that company. "Is the company open-minded to lateral moves, or taking someone out of a functional role such as EA and repurposing them into more of an operations or any other role in the company?" says Dodo. Is a lateral move possible? So career development for the admin may take her or him laterally to posi - tions outside the normal AA or EA sphere, such as project management, or it may lead to increasingly challeng- ing positions as an EA and business partner to one or more executives. Meanwhile, the admin's skills development should include an advanced working knowledge of Mi- crosoft Excel. "The ability to slice and dice data very fast in Excel is increas- ingly very important and almost an assumed skill that an assistant should have," Dodo emphasizes. Database experience is also a plus, although experience with a particular system such as SAP or Epicor is not as important as generally being systems-savvy through having worked with some sort of CRM (customer relationship management) or ERP (en - terprise resource planning) software. Social media management is now high on the list of skills that can help an administrative pro land a challeng- ing and rewarding position. It's not on the "assumed" list yet, says Dodo, but social media skills may well put the job candidate ahead of those "who haven't adapted to it just yet." Skilled admin's potential 'limitless' Overall, the potential for highly skilled administrative professionals "really is limitless," says Dodo. One's adaptabil- ity will mean learning new roles "that probably haven't even been created yet, because you're not boxed into a certain defined skill set of being a bookkeeper or a tech-support profes- sional."

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