Today, the responsibilities of secretaries and administrative assistants are wide ranging as compared to several years ago.
They are responsible for many administrative and clerical duties necessary to run a modern office efficiently. They are actually the focal point for every information and communication management flow of a business office.
Some of their duties today may include:
1. Schedule meetings and plan appointments
2. Organize paper work and maintain electronic files such as presentations and spreadsheets.
3. Manage databases and create reports.
4. Manage information by using the telephone, fax and mail messages.
5. They also may handle travel and guest arrangements.
In fact, the administrative assistant job description changes side by side to the advancement in technology and therefore, the job interview questions for administrative assistant reflect these changes and focus on the nature of work for the said job position.
This article provides administrative assistant job interview questions and answers.
For your convenient, the article is divided to two sections: general questions and technical questions.
Note that – admin assistant sometimes titled – office assistant.
Today, for being successful as an executive assistant one must have a broad level of competencies such as interpersonal communication skills and technical office applications skills. He or she must be creative enough in managing new office technologies and handling complex situations.
Sample Interview Questions for Administrative Assistant & tips on Answering
• Please describe your previous duties as an administrative assistant in a business office?
• Were you responsible for noting and correlating executive meeting events into documentation?
• Are you secure in handling confidential paperwork?
• Do have any public/human relation experience, or have you attended classes dedicated to this field?
• Are you familiar with hiring processes?
• Have your previous administrative positions involved customer service experiences?
• Concerning office policies and procedures have you ever been responsible for mentoring others?
• How do you organize your daily schedule?
• Have you needed to handle sensitive or confidential tasks in the past and were you comfortable performing these tasks.
• What do you believe your superiors would say regarding your administrative strengths?
Answering these questions:
The employer wants to know how you’ve handled a very demanding or exciting business office in your previous jobs.
What is you background? You may describe how you organized your workday and even provide success stories of situations such as tough/high volume of workload.
You can also demonstrate the methods you utilized for meeting deadlines, handling employers’ requests and monitoring customer service work.
The most important social skills that you have to highlight are your organizational skills, teamwork abilities and personal communications skills.
Technical interview questions for administrative assistant position
• Describe the office applications that you used? What type of documentation did you prepare?
• What is your knowledge depth in computer applications such as MS Word, Excel or PowerPoint?
• How often have you prepared spreadsheets, data graphs or items using these applications?
• What messaging system and calendar programs did you use?
• Describe the company proprietary/specific software base application that you use for monitoring work tasks?
• What types of faxing applications, copier, printer and scanner have you most recently used?
Tips on how to answer the above questions:
Do you feel your technical skills are competitive to meet the cutting edge technologies used in the market today? If you do, do not hesitate to describe your technical skills confidently.
No one is perfect – you may not posses some technical skills and always can tell that you are willing/easy to learn new software applications used in the new job if required.
Therefore, provide a brief summary of your related technical knowledge and demonstrate your interest and motivation for learning new things.
