• Answer phones and greet visitors
• Schedule appointments and maintain calendars
• Schedule and coordinate meetings
• Collate and distribute mail
• Prepare communications such as memos, emails, invoices, reports and other correspondence
• Write and edit communications, from letters to reports and instructional documents
• Create and maintain filing systems, both electronic and physical
• Manage accounts and perform bookkeeping
• Decision-making: administrative assistants need to make independent decisions on a daily basis, addressing the best way to handle specific tasks.
• Communications and collaboration: An administrative assistant must collaborate with other administrators and support personnel, management and clients on a regular basis.
• Organizational skills: The ability to maintain order helps ensure executives don’t miss appointments or deadlines.
• Writing: Their emails, letters, documents and social media posts reflect upon their employers, so they need to know how to write professionally, using proper spelling and grammar.