Personal Secretary Career Information

A secretary plays a vital role in the smooth functioning of the office. You'll perform the role of a coordinator, taking away the drudgery of routine work from the top bosses. This allows the directors, CEOs and others to concentrate more on the managerial aspects of their jobs and to stay focused to their strategic roles. Secretaries may be referred as Personal Assistants, Private Secretaries and Executive Secretaries.

Your job profile as a Personal Secretary involves:

• Answering telephone calls and channeling the calls to the right person

• Taking messages, answering e-mails, voice mails and snail mails

• Operating office equipments like fax, photocopiers, printers, etc.

• Taking care of the routine paper work

• Maintaining files, going through documents and identifying the relevant portions for the managers to see and comment, fill out forms

• Scheduling appointments

• Arranging travel and tours of the corporate executives

• Keeping track of important work matters in the absence of the corporate executives

• Co-coordinating with the suppliers and maintenance people

Wait, we are not done yet. As a secretary it's your job to find out relevant data from different sources like Internet, print media, etc. to help the executives make business decisions. Some also co-ordinate the functions of various tops managers on behalf of the executive with whom they are working.

This job calls for frequent late nights and good presence of mind. You have to be alert all the time.

Job Opportunity

As a secretary you will work in:

• Various corporate organisations

• NGOs

• Government departments and agencies

Secretaries with foreign language skills can easily get a job in international organisations, consulate, embassy offices etc.

Career Prospects

Well, career growth prospects may not sound very high profile in the beginning. But of course, your salary and other perks will grow as you gain more experience. And so will your duties and responsibilities in the company.

If you perform very well, your chances of being promoted are high. These promotions may take anywhere between 3-7 years or more. If you gain considerable skill in using computers, you may be promoted to EDP/MIS (EDP is Electronic Data Processing and MIS is Management Information System), etc.

But there is a flip side to the story as well. With increasing automation in the office place and with companies cutting down their work force some human resource experts predict that the need for personal secretaries will actually reduce in the coming years.