Are you looking to hire a secretary for your company?
This is a lot more challenging than you may think! A secretary has to know how to make appointments, handle conflict, prepare documents, and assist you with your work.
You need someone who has a strong work ethic and who knows how to multitask. You need someone who is a self-starter and can work autonomously.
So how do you go about hiring a secretary?
Here’s what you need to know:
- What Are Their Responsibilities?
The first step is to decide what the different secretary tasks should be. For example, if you learn more about company secretary, you’ll learn about some of the tasks that secretaries work on.
When interviewing secretary candidates, you want to ask them about the responsibilities they’ve had in previous roles.
In most cases, you want someone who can meet these skills:
- Fast typing
- Preparing documents
- Scheduling appointments
- Researching or assisting with research
- Handling conflict between the boss and employees/clients
Look at each candidate’s previous secretary experience to make sure they meet these requirements. You want to make sure they can handle the challenges of a hectic workplace.
- Assess Their Professionalism
As strange as this may sound, professionalism isn’t something you can expect from all your candidates.
The first assessment is to see if this candidate can demand respect at the workplace. You want to make sure that your employees and clients will naturally respect your secretary.
If your secretary cannot command this respect, then this is not an ideal candidate.
You also want to make sure that the secretary is assertive when needed. It’s ideal to have a secretary who’s friendly and personable. But you also need one who knows how to put their foot down when needed.
- Trial Run
You might want to consider a trial run with a secretarial candidate. You can consider hiring them on a probationary period.
Another option is to have role-playing scenarios during the interview session. Whatever you choose, you want to assess how the candidate can handle themselves in your workplace.
Here’s what you should look for:
- How do they handle themselves when dealing with an irate employee/client?
- How fast can they type a document?
- How do they research a topic or find information?
- How quickly can they find the information?
- How confident are they around the workplace?
- Assess their interpersonal communication and their public speaking skills
With this trial run, you’ll have a great idea of whether this candidate will make a good secretary!
Start Hiring a Secretary
Now you can use this guide to go about hiring a secretary for your company. Make sure you assess their skills and their previous secretary experience first.
Next, you’ll want to assess their professionalism and see if they can command respect in your workplace. You want to ask them how they handled conflict in their previous jobs.
You might want to give them a trial run before onboarding them completely. Once you find a great secretary, you’ll soon see how much efficiency they bring to your company!
You can find even more tips on hiring and recruitment on our blog.