Do you want to get an administrative assistant job? Then read our guide to give you the best chance of achieving your goal!
We’ll share our advice, tips and tricks, to ensure you’re on the right track to getting that dream job as an administrative assistant.
Let’s get started…
Get qualified
A relevant qualification delivers a double whammy.
An administrative assistant certification course will teach you a great deal, which will give you skills and confidence in your new job, but it is also highly attractive to potential employers.
When they see you’re a fully qualified administrative assistant, they can rest assured that you’ll know what you’re doing, and you’ll be competent, without requiring a huge amount of training.
Whether you take a course at a local college or join us online here at the Administrative Assistant Institute, you should easily be able to find a relevant course that will teach you the skills you need, on a schedule that fits in around your other commitments and results in a certificate that you can proudly feature on your resume.
Keep adding to your skills
Once you’re a qualified administrative assistant, don’t stop there!
Many other applicants could also have that same level of qualification, so why not take things a level further and learn a range of complementary skills?
In such a varied job, there really is a lot you can learn that may be of benefit in your working life and will impress potential employers. Taking your skills with administration software to an advanced level will always come in handy.
Increasing your English language skills will help with creating professional correspondence and report writing.
You could learn additional skills such as social media management, PC maintenance, or public speaking.
The list of ways to increase your skills really is endless. This will all make you look extra useful to any business, and it’s a good way to add substance to a resume if you don’t have a great deal of experience.
Become a great communicator
Communication skills are invaluable to an administrative assistant.
Whether this is in person, via email or on the telephone, becoming a better communicator in all its forms is a very worthwhile skill.
You can increase your typing efficiency, improve your spelling and grammar, and learn some good customer service techniques.
It can help to record phone, or in-person conversations and listen back to them. Do you convey your message in a way that’s easy to understand? Do you talk too fast? Are you polite enough? Be critical and learn from your mistakes.
Or why not ask others for their opinion? You may not realize that you talk a little too quietly, or you come across as too brusque.
These are all things you can improve on when you know about them.
Create the perfect resume
A poor resume could get your application thrown out at a single glance, so it needs to be excellent.
You can search online for professional-looking resume templates, and find guidelines to ensure it’s well laid out, and that you’ve included all the information you need.
We suggest you spend a lot of time on this, as it could make or break your application. Keep it relevant, don’t fill it up with extraneous information.
Make sure the most important information is clear and obvious. Your college degree in IT needs to be featured more prominently than your love of dogs, for example.
As much as you hope for a fair chance at the job, it’s likely that the person in charge of recruitment is not going to carefully read every word of every resume that lands on their desk, so bear this in mind when you’re putting yours together.
Quickly glance at it. Does it make a good first impression?
Master the art of the cover letter
As with the resume, your cover letter is incredibly important.
While your resume lays out the facts, your cover letter gives you the chance to convey a little more about your personality.
You can briefly highlight the most important aspects of your education and experience, touch on why you want the job, and give details that can reassure an employer such as your immediate availability.
Again, keep it a reasonable length or you may find it doesn’t get read at all!
Then, most importantly, make sure it is perfectly written, with no mistakes.
For both your cover letter and your resume, it’s always a wise idea to have someone else take a look at it in case there are any spelling or grammar issues you may have overlooked.
Get experience
If you’ve previously worked as an administrative assistant, then your prior experience is going to look great on your resume, but what if you don’t have this experience?
You know your application is only going to be one of many, and how can you compete against people who have already worked in this field?
Your skills and qualifications can partly compensate for a lack of experience, but nothing really beats that on-the-job know-how.
The key to overcoming this problem is to gain experience! Easier said than done? Well, perhaps it’s time to think outside the box a little.
While you may not score a full-time administrative assistant position with a large salary right away, maybe you can get that all-important experience as a volunteer or an intern, or by working a few hours to help out a friend or family member who runs a small business.
Any experience is good experience, and it will all help your resume stand up against other applicants with a longer working history than you.
Watch the job boards like a hawk
They say the early bird catches the worm, and this can in some cases be true with regard to scoring your dream job as an administrative assistant.
While some positions will state a closing date for applications, sometimes the company will need someone as soon as possible, to fill in for someone off sick, or to replace someone who left suddenly.
It’s also true that when the first applications come in, they could well get a little more attention than later ones.
So register with online job websites and set up alerts so you’re one of the first to hear when a new administrative assistant job is posted.
You’ll have your resume ready, and a draft cover letter, so all you need to do is fine-tune them and tailor them to the specific position you’re applying for.
Don’t forget to double and triple-check both documents for errors, then get your application in quickly.
We wish you the very best of luck!