r/AdminAssistant

Worked for an insurance company as a csr for about 3 years and got exhausted from the stress of people being awful over the phone. Now I'm trying to transition into admin roles or receptionist roles, but everywhere I apply, I'm not taken seriously due to having no past admin experience even after pointing out transferable skills like organization, communication and documentation. I've have a bachelors degree in Info Science. If given the chance I definitely can handle admin/receptionist roles but no one is willing to. I do see some entry lvl receptionist roles that are paying low, I mean dirt low to the point If I apply and get the job, I won't be able to fully afford rent and bills. These receptionist roles are paying like 20-30k annually while my previous role was paying close to 40k. I honestly don't wanna go back to pure csr roles again but I'm running out of savings as I apply and wait for admin jobs or receptionist roles to come by that pay somewhat decently. Any advice on what should I do? Should I undervalue myself and just go for lower paying roles to gather some experience?

last week i forgot to follow up on an important email for like 3 days because it got buried under newsletters, random notifications, calendar invites, and other operational stuff

made me realize how much small businesses/founders basically operate off inboxes + memory

curious how other founder-operators handle this kind of thing day to day

not really talking about strategy/growth more just the operational side:

• customer/client emails
• follow ups
• scheduling
• approvals
• reminders
• trying not to let important things slip

do you actually have a system for this or does it mostly just live in your head?

would genuinely love hearing about stuff that slipped before and caused stress/problems

Currently working as the first assistant (ever) for a founder/CEO in creative. Unfortunately can't help that I'm assisting an individual who's at this time, finally trying to transition out of constant office presence/accessibility. But no one is used to me yet, and I think having a new gatekeeper is rubbing them the wrong way.

I don't mind taking the heat for last minute changes or complaints - that comes with the territory. It's just an awkward time for a team who's always had an accessible boss, and I'm the person responsible for there being less of that.

Anyone have tips for not creating unnecessary enemies at work - but also maintaining gatekeeper status in order to give my exec the ease of life they've built all of this in order to have?

I work as an admin assistant for a small consulting company and scheduling has honestly become one of the most frustrating parts of my job. Between reschedules, timezone confusion, double bookings, and reminder emails, I spend way too much time just coordinating calendars. Every executive has different preferences too, which makes it even messier.

We tried using calendar integrations, but they still require a lot of manual follow-up. I feel like there should be a better way to automate appointment scheduling without losing flexibility for last-minute changes.

Hi all!

So I'm an executive assistant at a law firm. I'm only 24 and this my first job,

So far I've been doing good but..

I wanna level up. I wanna learn more and gain more knowledge.

What courses should I take to improve my skills? To be good at what I do and demanded by the market?

I have a bachelor degree in business and been thinking of starting a law diploma, don't know if this even possible.

Thoughts? Tips? Advice?

TIA!

Out of curiosity how much is a Chief of Staff salary in NYC? Specifically finance/PE? Being encouraged to take on the position while also being office manager and keeping my EA responsibilities to the CEO and team.

Hi all,

So, for some context, I graduated with a degree in criminology, and finding a job in the field is quite challenging atm. I have two casual jobs, and my dad has been pressuring me to get part-time or full-time work. He suggested I start with some administrative office jobs. I know I have plenty of transferable skills (organisation, data entry etc) but have had no luck in getting an admin role. Any advice?

Hello! I have been subbing for the admin (secretary) at this school for about a month, and they want me to apply to be the full time admin assistant. Theres an application, but I also have to take a test that will be held over zoom. I was looking at online resources, but theres a bunch of different information about what to study. Is it a standardized test or does it depend district to district, state to state etc. I went to school for art, so I'm a little out of my depth.

I took a position at a company as an administrative assistant recently and well they don’t seem to know what to do with me. The company was recently bought by a bigger one in the UK and I am the first higher of the UK for their new subsidiary (my company). Most of the first interviews were with the UK by videochat and so I didn’t meet anyone until my first day. I was told this position was an entry-level bilingual administrative assistant but I’ve received very little to no training or feedback in the last three months.

During my very first meeting with the General Director I was told I was pretty much for diversity hire (my area recently put in place language laws and I am local so I speak the companies and the areas languages). Which fine, the job market is bad, I don’t care but truth is I am bored to tears.

The only constituent tasks I have is answering the phone or the door, keeping track of the hourly pay, once a month I organize bills and paying the delivery invoice every week. That’s it. Nothing else to fill my days. And it’s an in-person position.

The only time I will get instruction is when they give me a task and then ignored most of the time. I try to stretch out the task but even then it will take me about a day or two (if not one hour) to get it done. Most of days are completely empty. Ive tried to help with the office administration but the purchasing manager refuses to even let me put coffee out, she won’t tell me where the office supplies are so I can’t even get papers when it’s out and I am trying to create a task for myself and the CEO won’t let me administer even the basic email asking what the company does.

I’ve created task for myself: I keep a log of calls (daily, monthly and yearly) and contacts, I’ve created crafts on employees vacation and translated marketing information. Hell the other day one of the executive asked if I could figure out why his insurance didn’t work and then I was able to keep myself busy by figuring out the government regulation for the company cars.

I don’t want to complain because I know how hard the job market is right now but fuck I’m bored. There are days where I spend the whole day staring at a phone that doesn’t ring. I keep going to them once a day and asking if they need anything and it’s always “no”. The other day I cleaned the floor because I was so bored.

And also I don’t want to lose this job, but with nothing to do I find myself reaching for my phone more and more and I know that looks bad but what else am I suppose to do.

I am not sure if I am asking for advice or just venting. Is there any advice to be given in this situation.

For context, I completed a 2 year diploma in Architectural Technology 3 years ago and have been employed at a Land Surveying company as a drafter for legal land surveys since. I was excited to work in a related field and I do like drafting, but the pay isn't great.

I've seen office admin jobs around me (especially if you work with emergency services or the municipal gov.) offer 30 an hr and that's starting pay. I already do a large amount of office admin alongside drafting currently, so it'd be an easy transition to a purely admin role. The college near me is offering an Office Admin. 8 month certitificate and a post diploma Human Resources 8 month certificate with a co-op work term.

My questions are:

Can you stilll be qualified for Office Admin roles with a background in Human Resources?

I'd feel so much regret if I studied human resources to not even be able to work in office admin after.

And is it worth it to pursue a certificate in office or HR just to have it on paper?

I already do a large portion of office admin in my everyday work and after a few years I feel pretty competent of my skills in that role, but I've hesitated applying for those positions because I assume they'll reject me with no formal education in administration.

If anyone whos worked in Office Administration or Human Resources could tell me a little about their experiences in their careers that'd also be really appreciated. Any guidance or advice is welcomed.

Nurse manager of a 38 bed unit. Finally got a real recognition budget approved this year after fighting for it for two cycles. Hospital procurement is a 12 week nightmare so I'm going around them and running this myself. I'm not sorry about it. Top 5 platforms I tested for unit recognition:

Snappy. Recognition-first design with a polished recipient UX, smaller catalog overall but the moments feel considered. SwagUp. Solid for batch recognition orders, kit-builder works fine, less optimized for the individual recognition moments that come up between formal programs. SwaggyMed. Best healthcare-specific fit, catalog built for clinical staff with scrub-compatible layering, individual ordering replaces the sizing spreadsheet. Sendoso. Enterprise option with strong logistics, more capability than we need at unit scale and the pricing reflects that. Custom Ink. Bulk-order vendor that's decent for a single batch, not really built for ongoing recognition use throughout the year.

Nobody warns you about the timing problem with nursing recognition. Procurement at our hospital takes 11 to 12 weeks. Recognition that arrives three months after the moment has passed isn't recognition, it's delayed appreciation that lands flat. Speed beats catalog depth for unit-level work.

Our company keeps hosting team events, leadership offsites, and client meetups and somehow it always gets dumped on people who already have full-time roles.

We’re juggling rsvps, dietary restrictions, last-minute attendee changes and endless email chains.

Anyone with a better way to stay organized?

I am currently an administrative associate. Pay range is 18.35 - 29.50. I make 20.35 (came in at 19.70)

My current job tasks are:

Physician Admin Support:

• I support 7 doctors one of which is high leadership (Deputy Director/Chief). 3 are very low maintenance as they are night shift.
• I do calendar management and meeting scheduling for 4 of them.
• I handle reimbursements for all of them (license, travel, etc)
• I handle some medical records that come in
• Write patient letters/schedule peer2peer reviews (pretty rare that these come through)
• Update CVs as needed
• Clinic closures for my MDs that are in clinic for various reasons (rounding, time off)
• Requesting materials for my research MDs

I also admin for 65 Advanced Practitioners (CRNPS, PAs)

• Reimbursements
• Onboarding tasks for new APPs. (The last year I've had atleast 1-2 new APPs onboarding every month)
  • This includes ordering their coats, setting up their headshots, getting share drive access, badge access, classes that need to get set up
• Clinic Closures - They make up a majority of my clinic closures and sometimes I have more than 5 in a day. This also include submitting for master template changes or setting up blocks in the templates for things like pumping (breastfeeding). I do not create their templates but I do fill out the forms for them to be changed. This can be time consuming depending on the complexity of the change
• Assisting with setting up meetings and teachings including speaking with vendors and pharm reps to help coordinate lunches and overseeing their flow/helping with tech support
• File management - this is a big one. I handle a lot of their HR files and am responsible for keeping their files organized and up to date. This is like keeping track of their clinic closures that are less than 30 days, any license updates, collaborative practices, etc. We have a digital share drive this all goes onto and I have to make sure to put each persons stuff in their right place. I usually get somewhere between 10-30 files a week
• I am responsible for helping to plan APP Appreciation week in the fall. This is helping to set up lunches and compiling appreciation e-mails to the APPs from their support staff.
• I help coordinate their annual evals - This is a big task that usually takes a couple of weeks as its coordinating 65 people across 5-10 doctors for their evals.
• Sometimes help schedule interviews with new APP candidates

Misc other tasks:

• I help with recruit days
  • This is usually walking new MD candidates around and showing them to all their meetings. Its an all day ordeal.
  • My supervisor has let me know she has created an SOP for me and another coworker who helps assist with this to take over the recruitment process when she is out of office. This includes coordinating travel, itineraries, dinners, etc.

Other info: I've been in my position for almost 1.5 years and finishing up my bachelors in healthcare management this summer (doing my internship at my current position). My coworkers are a level below me (according to what I've been told) and the expectation with my role is that its a more advanced role with more responsibility but I get paid more. Most of them do similar to what I do but just for physicians. I am the only one over the APPs. Some of them also have responsibilities like creating inpatient schedules and setting up tumor board meetings/grand rounds.

What do you guys think? Am I in line with what is expected? Would another title fit my position better?

How to find a job in the role of admin assistant?. Because I already worked three different types of jobs, one was as an admin invigilator (support) at Pearson co. Another one was at Virgin mobile call centre as a customer care representstive, the final job I had was with company in the export import where the boss used to sit with me and I would type in the things he needed for sales in excel and also do sales and marketing which were like whenever I am free for some extra money outside the salary. What I want to know is am I fit for admin assistant job?. Where do I look for remote admin assistant jobs?. How and where do I look for these jobs in my local area? Finally, looking at how people are feeling bored in admin assistant job I just want to know is it worse then a customer care rep job?

I was thinking about this the other day. We often talk of relaxing jobs. While the role of a job has an impact into whether or not a role is relaxing, other factors such as decisions from leadership, company culture, proper onboarding, having a knowledge database, the "landing" you're given to figure out your tasks, etc. also play a factor.

Additionally, what you are certified in may also play a role. It may open up jobs to you that have a higher tendency to be more "relaxing" or "boring" without micromanaging, timelines changed on a whim, no knowledge base, etc.

So what certifications will be able to provide one with a higher statistical chance of being in a "relaxing" or "boring" job?