Personal Assistants & Other Secretaries

Personal assistants and other secretaries provide administrative and secretarial support to individuals, departmental or management teams within organisations.

Tasks

• Acts as a first point of contact for a manager or team with colleagues and people from outside organisations, fields telephone enquiries, takes and passes on messages
• Arranges appointments, keeps business diary, organises travel arrangements, makes reservations and organises a variety of functions
• Opens, sorts, distributes and files correspondence (in hard copy and electronic) and deals directly with routine correspondence
• Uses appropriate software to produce correspondence, memoranda, reports, presentations and other documents from drafts, handwritten copy or by transcribing dictation
• Arranges and attends meetings, takes minutes and prepares records of proceedings
• Translates documents and liaises with overseas clients and suppliers.

Entry Requirements

There are no minimum academic requirements, although entry to professional secretarial courses typically requires GCSEs/S grades. NVQs/SVQs are available in Administration at Levels 2, 3 and 4.