Career Advice E.g. nurse, resume, interview, sales... Explore careersJob huntingWorking life A high-level organisational role working closely with a company executive or senior manager to provide administrative support An Executive Assistant (EA) plays a key organisational role, handling everything from managing an executive’s personal schedule to organising executive board meetings. You may even be asked to represent the executive you support in meetings or other communications. Depending on the company you work for, you may have one or more assistants to support you in your role and you will need to manage their tasks and delegate assignments to them. Executive Assistants must be highly organised and dependable and be able to prioritise a busy workload. As well as having superior interpersonal and communication skills, you must also have managerial competency and be able to support the objectives and values of both the company and the executive(s) you work for. Take advantage of The Great Job Boom Search jobs
See all related jobs on SEEK Executive Support Judgement and Decision Making Multitasking Time Management Prioritisation Proactive Attitude Communication Skills Resilience Microsoft Products Sign in or register to add skills to your SEEK Profile Roles where your skills are commonly valued by employers. Sign in and add skills to your SEEK Profile, to see roles that match your skill-set Did you find this helpful? Source: SEEK job ads and SEEK Profile data Job market trends for Executive Assistants Source: SEEK job ads and SEEK Role Reviews Latest reviews from 132 Executive Assistants surveyed on SEEK Executive Assistant is a powerful pillar of any organization Master of Business Administration Executive Assistant is one of the most confidential and trustworthy job. Being an EA we will get know the most confidential matters of the organisation before anyone get to know. The loyalty to keep ... The role of a executive assistant is the most challenging one, wherein you have to win the trust of most of the people around you, you should have extra ordinary communication & interpersonal skills a... Technology and the world have changed rapidly, so has the role of an Executive Assistant. An EA is a partner to his/her manager. Master of Business Administration Medium (20-199 employees) Being an Executive Assistant to senior management, it gives me opportunity to partner with the senior executives I support and manage his/her office for him/her. It is rewarding to see when they can ... Throughout my career, I have had the opportunities to work with and for different senior executives. Each has his or her own management and leadership style. It can be challenging when your manager ... Source: SEEK Role Reviews
Reprint: R1105E As technology has transformed the workplace and organizations have downsized, companies have sharply reduced the ranks of administrative assistants. But many firms have gone too far. In their zeal for cutting administrative expenses, numerous organizations now count on highly paid middle and upper managers to arrange their own travel, file expense reports, and schedule meetings. Some companies may see a type of egalitarianism in this assistant-less structure—believing that when workers see the boss loading paper into the copy machine, it creates a “we’re all in this together” spirit. But as a management practice, that approach rarely makes economic sense. Generally speaking, work should be delegated to the lowest-cost employee who can do it well. Yet while companies seem to have embraced that logic by outsourcing work to vendors or to operations abroad, they ignore it back at headquarters. In this article, Duncan, a longtime recruiter of C-suite executive assistants, argues that a good assistant is a crucial productivity booster for a busy executive—one that offers a solid ROI if he or she is deployed correctly.
Among the most striking details of the corporate era depicted in the AMC series Mad Men, along with constant smoking and mid-day drinking, is the army of secretaries who populate Sterling Cooper, the 1960s ad agency featured in the show. The secretary of those days has gone the way of the carbon copy and been replaced by the executive assistant, now typically reserved for senior management. Technologies like e-mail, voice mail, mobile devices, and online calendars have allowed managers at all levels to operate with a greater degree of self-sufficiency. At the same time, companies have faced enormous pressure to cut costs, reduce head count, and flatten organizational structures. As a result, the numbers of assistants at lower corporate levels have dwindled in most corporations. That’s unfortunate, because effective assistants can make enormous contributions to productivity at all levels of the organization. A version of this article appeared in the May 2011 issue of Harvard Business Review.
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