Interview Help - School Secretary

[Nidy]

Hi all, I hope you might be able to help me out with some advice, and it would be greatly appreciated!

I have been working in office management, administration, and general day-to-day business operations for the last 15 years. After some thinking recently, I have decided that I think I would really enjoy working in a school environment. Jobs don't come up that frequently, but I spotted one near where I live recently, applied, and I have an interview for next Wednesday. Brilliant! However, I am very unsure about the interview. While I have business experience, I don't have any specific secretarial experience.

They have provided a list of areas that the interview will cover:

 Suitability of Qualification and Experience
 Key Skills and Competencies
 Flexibility and Potential to be a good Team Player
 Presentation, Communication, and Performance at Interview

Can anyone help with what the questions might look like? What should I practice over the next few days? Any tips or resources would be amazing.

Thanks so much!

Make sure your grammar, spelling, basic maths and written communication is as near to perfect as you can get. Team work is vital - if it's a secondary school, you could be doing lettings, letters, dealing with parents, sending out information, covering reception, admission queries etc etc and in primary, you could be called to do all that and more.

Your skills and competencies will depend on your career so far - so office management but in what field - can you think how that might apply to a school. And look smart, smile and be friendly to everyone, you might not know who has decision making authority til later on so assume everyone has a say in whether or not you get the job!

Good luck!!

PS and of course, safeguarding - spend time finding out exactly what this is - students are your priority at all times...

PPS and if you do get the job, join a union - invaluable support in school.

Suitability of Qualification and Experience
Key Skills and Competencies
Flexibility and Potential to be a good Team Player
Presentation, Communication, and Performance at Interview

It depends - are you primary or secondary?
Is it P.A. to the head or supporting the Business Manager or general receptionist/secretary?

Go over the person spec with a real-life example for each one that you can adapt to a school situation.
As the pp said, a safeguarding question is inevitable, I would also expect a question on GDPR (although you could mention the latter in relation to the former too), mention equal opportunities in one of your answers and the need to be calm, unflappable, able to prioritise.
You might be given scenarios - what to do with angry parent/defusing a conflict situation/prioritising when you have x + y + z.
Offer to be trained up in first aid to add value.

Reception:
Phone - Taking phone enquiries, passing on messages, putting through to SLT (senior leadership team) when necessary, fielding cold calls from supply agencies, dealing with ParentPay queries
Visitors - checking signed in/out, sat in designated area if waiting, locating their children when needed for appts, checking and copying their DBS if supply/volunteers
Post - franking daily post, addressing praise postcards, collecting daily post and delivering where it needs to go
Minutes - typing up minutes of staff briefings and emailing to all staff. Possible minutes of governors' meetings or SEN meetings, depends on sector
Twitter - tweeting and retweeting social media activities/positive PR for school if in your remit
Monies - collecting for trips/fundraisers/lunches etc if in your remit, depends on sector
First Aid and illness - recording of incidents and treatment, calling home when head injury, handling children in sick bay, liaising with HOY
Attendance - passing on absence messages to attendance officer/HOY
Pupils - Signing in late, letting through to door to classes, dealing with lost property, phoning home when necessary, looking up their timetables on SIMS or Class Charts, contacting On Call if truanting or missing, Contacting On Call if teacher needs assistance, passing on messages from home, signing in and out wrt appointments
Photocopying/printing - copying of whole school letters and getting them out, copying of teacher materials/resources, depends on sector, printing of attendance lists for fire drills, printing of classes/timetables/resources for supply if supporting cover manager
Typing - minutes (see above), whole school letters

As you can see - wide and varied job

I would look at the comments about working in a school office - particularly if it's a Business Managers job as you end up doing lots of hours for free and the level of responsibility is extreme for the pay. Ask if you will be responsible for processing all of the Sept admission applications as these takes 10s of hours - normally done in your own time as a Secretary