Secretarial & Administration

In a business many job descriptions overlap. Blue Lynx has for the past twenty years provided candidate and clients a wide and varied service which many industries term office support.  Blue Lynx is the preferred supplier for many international organisation providing staff for over 15 years within this skillpool.

In order to prevent any confusion about this vast and sometimes confusing sector of business we have added the following descriptions of both secretarial and administrative professions - source Wikipedia.

While administrative assistant is a generic term, not necessarily implying directly working for a superior, a secretary is usually a personal assistant to a manager or executive. Other titles describing jobs similar to or overlapping those of the traditional secretary are office co-ordinator, executive assistant, office manager and administrative professional.

At the most basic level a secretary may need only a good command of the prevailing office language and the ability to type, and may spend a large part of his or her time filing and fetching papers (or the equivalent regarding electronic files and database information) or answering telephones.

A more skilled executive assistant may be required to type at high speeds using technical or foreign languages, organize diaries, itineraries and meetings and carry out administrative duties which may include accountancy. An executive secretary / assistant may also control access to a manager, thus becoming an influential and trusted aide. Executive assistants are available for contact during off hours by new electronic communication methods for consultations.

The largest difference between a generalized secretary and skilled executive assistants is that the executive assistant is required to be able to interact extensively with the general public, vendors, customers, and any other person or group that the executive is responsible to interact with. As the level that the executive interacts with increases so does the level of skill required in the executive assistant that works with the executive. Those executive assistants that work with corporate officers must be capable of emulating the style, corporate philosophy, and corporate persona of the executive for which they work. In the modern workplace the advancement of the executive assistants is codependant on the success of the executive and the ability of both to make the job performance of the team seamless whereas the job place evaluation is reflective of each others performance.

Executive assistants are normally required to maintain job skills at the current state of the art. It is a normal requirement of the executive assistant to be required to complete continuing job education on their own time, with reimbursement for tuition and class supplies.