Receptionist And Secretarial
Receptionists and secretaries are utilised in many different businesses across all different types of sectors and industries. For those considering a career in this line of work, remember that there are various types of roles available to you. You may find the requirements for some of these roles more straightforward than others. Here is a list of a few of the most commonplace ones that employers are hiring for in today’s jobmarket
Medical Receptionist
A professional medical receptionist welcomes patients, passing along any relevant information and instructions. They will present any relevant forms, ensuring these are properly completed and explaining anything the patient may be unsure about in regards to this. They are responsible for booking appointments, and when required, discussing relevant medical information with patients too
Dental Receptionist
A dental receptionist has many important duties, these include maintaining patient records, dealing with dental insurance issues, ensuring the proper forms are filled out before seeing the dentist, and co-ordinating referrals from the dentist and any other practitioners, such as the orthodontist. They will review insurance plans, deal with payments, and handle cash. In addition to these functions, a dental receptionist will perform telephony duties, including follow-up calls on patients and collection calls on past due accounts, and will perform other functions on top of this, such as assisting patients with forms and answering the queries they might have
Hotel receptionist
A hotel receptionist’s duties include dealing with bookings, assigning rooms and handing out keys, preparing bills/ taking payments, and receiving/ passing on guest messages. This will be in addition to more commonplace duties like answering telephones and welcoming guests
Office receptionist
An office receptionist will perform many different types of duties in their day-to-day functions. These include meeting and welcoming guests, issuing badges and visitor passes, and answering calls and relaying messages. They will also perform other useful office functions such as sorting mail and managing emails, along with more miscellaneous duties such as printing, faxing, photocopying, and other ad-hoc office duties as are required
Personal Secretary
A personal secretary, also sometimes referred to as a personal assistant, is an employee whose duties revolve around assisting a specific person within an organisation, or revolve around assisting a specific individual while working for them under their own private employ.
Whether employed in an organisation, where the person they work for will almost always be high ranking, or working under the employ of a private individual, as their personal secretary they will perform a variety of essential tasks for that person, in essence acting as a valuable support mechanism for them. The majority of these tasks will normally be perfunctionary, everyday things, including duties such as meeting, greeting, and acting as the first point of contact for visitors, clients, and other members of staff, filing documents and taking memos, answering and screening phone calls, arranging appointments, managing diaries and schedules, making travel arrangements, managing bookings, taking dictations, researching, compiling reports, and dealing with incoming mail, faxes, and printing, to name but a few. They may also sometimes be called upon to provide assistance during presentations, make decisions and delegate work to others in their supervisor’s absence, and perform other ad hoc duties as required
Office Secretary
An office secretary provides an important support function for a department or business. These may include many of the same duties a personal secretary might perform; such as meeting, greeting, and acting as the first point of contact for visitors, clients, and other members of staff, filing documents and taking memos, answering and screening phone calls, arranging appointments, managing diaries or schedules, making travel arrangements, dealing with incoming mail, faxes, printing, or performing other ad hoc office duties as required
Remote working assistants (receptionists and secretaries)
Lots of businesses nowadays, both for safety for practicality purposes (especially small to medium-sized ones), are hiring a live remote receptionist or secretary in place of an actual in-house one.
Remote receptionists and secretaries will deal with most of the same things normal ones would. By utilizing modern technology such as webcams and 2 – way video technology, it can even enable people working in these roles to do things that would’ve been previously impossible before, up to and including greeting visitors remotely as they enter the premises
6 WAYS TO DO WELL IN THE JOB
1 – Always keep a pen and notepad close by for notetaking
2 – Always welcome delivery personnel the same way you would welcome any other customer or visitor
3 – Noting information down is a very important part of receptionist and secretarial work. Whenever you take down a message, you should always repeat the message back to verify what you have written down is correct
4 – Try to answer the telephone by the 4th ring. This may not seem a lot for an ordinary call, but for a professional business greeting this is an appropriate length of time
5 – Make sure you have a well organised workspace. This means contact numbers, documents, filing system, etc. Most of what you use will probably be stored on your computers desktop. Make sure it is orderly and readily accessible
6 – Handle one task at a time. While this goes against the principles of multi-tasking, you should try your best to stick to one task at a time where at all possible. If you’re updating a schedule, do your best to stick to that task and that task alone, if you’re sorting through mail, again the same thing applies, try and stick to that one singular task and nothing else – aside from the other essential functions of the role you’ll need to perform, like welcoming customers and answering the phone…
Basically, the principle here is, when working in these sorts of roles you want to give each task your undivided attention whenever you can. The reason for this is simple, in any role you perform, one of the most important things to an employer is that you are reliable and do not make mistakes. By giving each task your undivided attention it prevents you from noting down the wrong name, telling someone the wrong place, or giving the wrong appointment time. While the ability to multi-task is highly sought after and one of the more challenging aspects of these types of roles, and while you’ll want to give your interviewer the perception that you have the ability to multi-task easily and effortlessly whenever it is required, try and keep the times that you actively use it in the job itself to a minimum
The ’Must Have’ Skills needed for the Role
While you should always refer to the job description in the first instance, when interviewing for receptionist and secretarial roles there are certain skills you should be emphasizing, some of the main ones include the following:
(Pick 2 or 3 of the most relevant ones to for the job to highlight in your next interview from the list below)
Strong multi-tasker, ability to prioritise, good time management, self-starter, great attention to detail, great I.T skills, great communicative ability, great listening skills, smart dresser, professional, polite, pleasant demeanour approachable, team player
Also
How you might be perceived by customers is one of the most important considerations for an employer when deciding on who to hire for these sorts of roles. That’s because in receptionist and secretarial roles you are one of the first people their customers will come into contact with. It’s also why your appearance and attitude are of utmost importance and is not only why you should always pay particular attention to your appearance going into the interview, https://interview-professional.com/interviewing-attire/ but is also why you should make building rapport with the interviewer a priority in these sorts of interviews too! (If the interviewer gets on well with you, their much more likely to be convinced of your ability to make a good first impression with that organisations clientele! And that will put you much closer to landing the role)