If you are an administrative support professional or one that hires you will want to read this – Landing Point’s Corporate Services team specializes in placing administrative professionals at all levels and across all industries and the team has gained valuable insight from admin professionals themselves and admin hiring managers as to how to navigate the career path going forward.
Based on our conversations, three top skills have emerged as critical for administrative professionals to have and use daily in order to thrive in the new world of remote or hybrid work environments:
- Proactive – In the short term many administrative professionals have had their responsibilities cut in half since executives aren’t traveling as much leading to fewer expenses and a need to update internal databases with contact information for leads. However, those who are proactive in finding other ways to be an asset will survive and advance. Examples of this are working to own all Zoom call scheduling or offering to attend in order to take notes in meetings while also providing valuable follow-up information. This can also be an opportunity for administrative professionals to help out with subject matter tasks depending on what their manager does such as investment research.
- Tech-savvy – With the majority of office workers being remote or in a hybrid environment, it’s imperative to be comfortable with video conferencing technology and other productivity tools. This is an opportunity to also help make a company/processes more efficient whether that be researching scheduling software that avoids the back and forth or project management software and becoming the expert on that.
- Forward, big picture thinking – This goes hand with the above, while some assistants may sit around and wait for work to come, that mindset won’t work in today’s times. To continue to be seen as an asset, assistants need to find ways to not only be great with the details, but also think big picture about how they can make someone’s life easier. That could be thinking about creative ways for your executives to make a great impression on a potential new client beyond the traditional meal, such as sending a virtual experience and finding new ways of doing what they have done for their managers in the past – this will make you indispensable.
It was only a little over a year ago we wrote a post on how to find the right admin position and while that is all still true, there is so much more for administrative professionals to think about right now in order to continue to demonstrate that they are essential to the business.
The Point: While the outlook for administrative professionals right now looks a bit uncertain on the surface, this could also be an exciting opportunity for administrative professionals to take action and flex other skills to continue to be a valuable asset to those they support.
