A career as a personal assistant is exciting, rewarding and no two days will be the same. If you are interested in training to be a personal assistant then you will need to have a high level of organization, great administration skills and you’ll also have to be exceptionally computer literate. Personal assistants are gatekeepers and they will have daily communication with some very important people so it is important that they maintain a high level of confidentiality at all times, and they will also have to be very polite and professional. So what exactly are the daily duties and responsibilities of a personal assistant? Read on to find out more:
Diary Management
One of the most important jobs that you will have to do is to manage your boss’s diary. This means that you must be able to use online diaries efficiently. You will be responsible for organizing meetings and making sure that the key personnel are in attendance. You will also have to decide whether your boss’s attendance is really necessary for some meeting invitations and learn how to decide between the essential ones and the non-essential ones. After all, your boss’s time will be in very short supply as he or she will have a lot of demands on it. Running a diary is a very skilled task and there is no margin for error – getting appointments wrong can lead to catastrophic results.
Answering Communications
When you are the PA for a busy person you will be inundated with letters, emails and telephone calls. You will need to be able to manage this influx on a daily basis so that everything gets answered. You should be able to pull out anything of important that your boss needs to see, and you should also have the initiative to be able to answer many of the enquiries yourself. You will manage his or her email inbox and be responsible for filing and replying to many different queries on a day to day basis. This can get very daunting so you need to be able to manage your time adequately so that there is still plenty of time to get your other jobs done too.
Booking Travel
An important aspect of your job is to organize and manage your boss’s travel plans. This means booking flights and hotels as well as working out logistics along the way. They will have a very demanding travel schedule so you will need to make sure that meals and breaks are worked in along the way, and you will also need to book train tickets or manage their company car issues. You may well end up working alongside a specialist business travel company who are experienced in all aspects of travel, and in this case they will need to be briefed and managed effectively so that nothing can go wrong.
A personal assistant’s role is varied and extremely stressful at times, but it is also very rewarding and you will have a great deal of respect from your colleagues. You can also expect to be paid very well for your role.
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License: Creative Commons image source- License: Creative Commons image source
- License: Creative Commons image source
Dan Andrews, the contributor of this article, works with Teplis Travel Service, a specialist corporate travel company. Dan loves to play baseball and on weekends provides training to the youth.
