Retraining as a secretary

[coffeewithchips]

I have a degree but I would like to retrain in Administration, Secretarial and Office skills as this is the area of work I'm hoping to move into next year.

I've seen a Legal Secretary diploma with ILEX qualification that I'm interested in as it teaches all office skills, shorthand and legal skills. I'm not necessarily hoping to go into the legal admin area (a general PA/secretary office job would be fine too.) Would I be able to apply for secretarial jobs outside law with this diploma or would I be limiting myself?

The Ilex will teach you the basic office skills as well as specialist legal stuff.

Agencies may be able to help you to get some experience when you qualify to help when applying for proper jobs.

I find that though my secretarial job does pay the bills, I've taken a lower paying job in a small firm in order to have an interesting non minion role! For me, small and personal with a £12K salary wins hands down over a larger corporate firm any day no matter what salary they're paying!

The EA's at my employer are working around the clock and they are not valued like they should be. It really grinds my gears but think twice about going into a role like this.

If you like doing admin have you thought about project management? IMO, most project managers are male EA's who are paid twice as much without the 24/7 hours.

I'd suggest speaking to some local agencies with knowledge in your area before starting any qualifications. Unless you specifically want to be a legal or medical secretary, to be honest I'd just look for an entry-level PA role and work your way up - I've been a PA for years and just have a degree, a very positive attitude and the ability to multi-task - IMHO, experience is vastly more important than qualifications, in this line of work. Also, make sure your CV is grammatically perfect and well-edited (not too rambling).

FWIW, I've known legal secretaries with no specific legal qualifications - not sure about medical though.

Very good points, Supermum!!

Thanks for your advice so far.

I'm unsure what to do. I have applied to a few basic admin roles but have been rejected straight away because I don't have the necessary qualifications. I tried really hard on the applications and proof read them several times so it was disappointing.

I have had a few short term admin roles but they don't seem to get me anywhere and I feel like there are lots of doors that are closed to me at the moment. I will look at project management too as I know nothing about it yet.

What kind of admin roles have you applied for, OP?

Do people still use temp agencies?? That's how I got all my admin and secretarial experience until I was able to get permanent jobs.

I've applied for university admin roles so far (only a couple but it's a bit disheartening as the jobs only required GCSEs and basic admin experience and they still rejected me.)

I may try my local council temp agency and see if I'm more successful there.

Re agencies: dress up, treat it like a massive interview. They've got to sell you, make it easy for them. When I was younger I would go in and do all the tests, then I would just sit in the office. They always sent me out on a job the same day because I was THERE and obviously willing.

It used to be that university admin roles went to insiders. I don't know if that has changed but it wouldn't surprised me if it hasn't.

I would consider starting with temp agencies, your ideal role being a maternity cover for 1 year. Once in that role for 6 months start applying for other positions and go from there.

Oh and if you want to go into project mgmt get a six sigma workshop certificate. Honestly you will laugh when you find out how simple it is. Why anyone would need a certificate is beyond me. I remember when I managed the six sigma project for the fixed income operations group at the bulge bracket investment bank. Did it in addition to my other work. When they saw what I had in my pipeline and was coordinating with others, they took the role off me and hired someone FT to implement when I was promoted to front office. They also wanted someone who had a six sigma certificate. I had read 3 books on it and the research papers. Of course the person they hired was male, over 35 and paid way more than I was. He added nothing to the pipeline for 2 years!

One of my six sigma projects was to move income faxes to a pdf reader so everything received was automatically saved into the electronic doc retrieval system in readable format. So incredibly simple....

That's really helpful, thanks. It's a shame that uni admin roles go to insiders as that line of work interests me.

What exactly does project management involve?

Basically my project management involved identifying projects, keeping track of them, making sure resources assigned to complete said projects were working on them and making progress plus communicating issues or if there were budget overruns or other issues that needed senior management to get involved. I provided oversight of projects, ie identified what I wanted to change (suggestions were made by others and some were made by me), got management buy-in, found the right people to do the work in-house, talked their bosses into working on my projects, made sure everything was done right and on budget. Other project management roles are lot more involved and they normally want someone technical to run them. However there are PLENTY of project mgmt roles that don't require someone technical to run them. If you have half a brain, which you certainly come across as having, you are more than qualified to do it. I had lots of exposure to senior management who loved me because I asked what they wanted and didn't waste their time. I was able to filter the information for them and present it to them so they could make a decision on the spot and move on. I then executed their decision. I would make powerpoint slides which were always hijacked by the senior management for them promoting their accomplishments. I am no whizz on PP but I spent ages thinking through how things were laid out and what was included so each slide had max impact.

This is almost the same thing as that secretary does for their boss but on a project basis whereas a secretary will provide this on a more detailed level (much more work IMO). Secretary roles are dying out because stupid people (normally middle management people at consulting companies) think that its a very effective use of time to have senior management booking their own flights. Senior management in turn have gone on rename these roles so they can pay the people doing these vital jobs a proper salary. I think secretary roles are vital to any company and am I just shocked when I see the payroll. Project admins often make double that of a secretary yet what I witness when auditing the company is that the secretary is adding 3x or more value to the company through freeing up senior management to work. This is especially true in revenue generating areas.

And yes meetings can be a PITA but as the project manager you chair them and can control them. I had a timer and kept to the agenda, never including 'Other business'. I also sent out a weekly update with projects in red, yellow and green. We only discussed red and yellow projects in meetings. Green projects were discussed over the phone and via email.

That was my way of running things.

Look on indeed.co.uk for 'Project Admin' and jobs in your area. You will be shocked at what comes up. I would think 2-3 years in this role would be plenty enough for you to be promoted to project manager.

Look in the local paper for small companies/charities advertising for admin, get the experience and then apply for university roles in a couple of years.

I retrained to work in admin a while ago. I did a year long course, but you could do a 13 week basics course if you wanted. If you do decide to do an admin course, get yourself some voluntary admin experience whilst you do. We had to do a 2 week placement (I did it in my local university - a foot in the door there, and ended up getting a full time job in a different department) but I also volunteered and spent a few Saturdays in a friend's solicitor's office. It gave me two admin references to use when applying for admin work, along with former employers, and made my experience look a whole lot more current/relevant.

You need RSA level 2 in word processing and audio transcription to be considered for most admin jobs. There's also text production/processing. Pitman training offer them but I find their fees high. Look at your local colleges they often offer them as evening courses :-)

Thanks everyone.
I have seen a secretarial course at my local college (the one I mentioned in my OP) and I think it would be useful. It's 1 year full time, fees are paid by student loan and it teaches all basic admin skills with the option of work experience placements during the course. I'm going to phone them this week to find out more about it. Do you think that's worth doing?

The course is a Level 3 Legal Secretarial course. Would this be appropriate for a general admin environment too? It includes shorthand.

Hm, not sure. I would ask serious questions about leavers' destinations. Training in shorthand sounds useful (I have always regretted not knowing shorthand) but I can't believe someone with a degree can't work out an admin job, the problem is getting one, surely. I think temp work is more likely to help you, perhaps with an evening class/online course in shorthand like these chaps? I would also ensure your Excel skills are good as you can manage with formulae, charts etc, Powerpoint of course, and would take an Access database course as I never really mastered that. But it's a while since I did an admin job.

I've never regretted having a proper typing qualification either but this was a million years ago. So perhaps the course would be helpful - teaching you to lay out letters and other documents etc, still quite useful IMO.

No, don't do it. Go the project admin route as suggested above.

I've been a PA a long time, have worked at very senior level for a long time and have a degree. It's the road to nowhere. The role has changed, fewer jobs are available, workloads are much heavier and salaries have stagnated.

It's a very misunderstood and undervalued role. A good PA will literally be running the company. I know that sounds laughable but they are seriously the glue that holds it altogether.

I built up experiencing by temping as an admin to start. If you have an ounce of sense and can do twenty things at once it's not too hard to step up to a PA role. Please note that it is far easier to work for one person than a large team!!!

Uni admin roles don't all go to insiders, I got one a couple of years ago and was working for the NHS at the time. I had worked in an FE College before though so the experience with students/exams etc helped me.

Saying that, I only got the College job as I had worked at the Uni previously for 6mths via an Agency, no experience or qualifications were required for that and it got my foot in the door.

I'd agree with wobblebobble I'm now a legal secretary/PA and everything she says in her 2nd para is true.

To be honest what I'd think of doing is maybe a payroll (Sage) and HR basics course and apply as office manager as higher salary.

A few places outsource their typing now to NZ (office above us does this).

Shorthand is outdated hardly anyone I know uses it. You need good MS office skills. What I would train in is Word/Outlook/Excel and Powerpoint.