NHS career advice

[megrob]

As an Executive Assistant what roles can you develope into? What skills should you gain or enhance in order to move on to another opportunity?

Lots of different possible paths for an EA - business manager/office manager/project assistant or project manager/corporate governance roles/ business or data analyst roles/ general management roles are some of things that come to mind - depends a lot on your skills, qualifications and preferences IMO. The nice thing about some (not all, tends to depend on the director) EA roles is the scope to get involved in lots of different aspects of the director and directorate's work, particularly if you are willing to be flexible and take on things technically outside the scope of your job, doing some basic project management work for instance which can give you the basis for moving more into that field permanently if you like it. Look out for secondment opportunities too and don't be afraid of a sideways move, sometimes EA roles are graded quite highly compared to other admin and that can lead to people getting a bit 'stuck' if they're always after a promotion.

To turn the question around, what kind of job would you like in future? As an EA you come across lots of different people and different jobs in the course of your work, whose job have you thought 'ooh I'd like to do that one day' - maybe even ask to shadow that person for a day and have a chat with them about their career path and how they got where they are, the answers might surprise you!

@maxelly Fantastic response thank you! What type of Corporate Governance roles are out there? I do quite like the idea of a Project Manager but being totally honest, not entirely sure what is involved. I would need to shadow someone in this role to see truly if it is for me. But I assume an EA would be involved in quite a lot of project work therefore this to me seems like the easier move upwards to do? but would need to find out a bit more about it. I just dont want to get too comfortable as a EA. I want to be looking where and how I can develope next and as quickly as possible so that I dont become too comfortable

Corporate governance, well there's board secretariat roles which is essentially admin but for the board, so meeting agendas, arrangements, minutes etc but also expected to advise the board on governance matters so need to have a really understand of statute and law and things. Also some trusts include IG under corporate governance, and some will have roles for monitoring policy and strategy approvals, that kind of thing. Can be interesting work but especially at smaller trusts there may be only 2 or 3 roles per organisation so a bit 'dead man's shoes' waiting for one to come available.

Project management much more widely applicable, there's no mystery to it, it's being responsible for ensuring that 'projects' (which can be something as small as changing a single process or bringing in a new supplier or piece of equipment, or as big as building a new hospital or implementing a new IT system) are delivered on time and on budget and do what they say they are going to do. At the lower levels again it's a lot of admin, organising meetings, putting data into trackers or files, doing progress reports, following up actions, that kind of thing. At the higher levels there's various techniques and processes for things like project initiation, project evaluation and so on but it can be learnt on the job, although ultimately if you go down that route for your career you'll want to get certified (Prince2 still what's used in a lot of the NHS although more agile/software development inspired styles are becoming more popular). Your trust might have an introduction to project management training course or materials if you ask and would likely be applicable to your current role too so a good place to start.