Administrative Assistant
She followed a rare, straight line career path while learning a major lesson: more money doesn’t always mean more career satisfaction.
FAMILY BACKGROUND
MD is the oldest of two sisters. Her father was a truck driver, starting with a dump truck, then moving to heavy equipment operator. When MD and her sister were older, their mother worked outside their home, as a bank teller.
CHILDHOOD THOUGHTS OF A CAREER – A RARE STRAIGHT LINE!
MD always pictured herself working as a secretary in an office.
HIGH SCHOOL
Among required courses were math and science, neither of which were interesting to MD but she was sufficiently self-disciplined to pass them with respectable grades. She enjoyed both English and grammar courses.
Despite a guidance counselor’s recommendation that MD apply to colleges, college was never an interest or a goal for MD, who thought investing time and money for two or four more years of education after high school, would be an unnecessary postponement of getting started in the working world. So, MD focused her high school academic attention on courses she believed would be useful for her eventual secretarial career: typing (now called “keyboarding”), business math, bookkeeping and shorthand.
PART-TIME EMPLOYMENT SERVES AS AN INTERNSHIP
Editor’s note – Experiencing any adult career as a part-time employee or as an intern (either paid or volunteer) is an excellent opportunity to observe adults in the workforce performing their specific daily tasks. The intern learns a little bit about that occupation and how a person can earn a living as an individual or as part of a business. The result can be to either follow that path or decide to avoid that path.
During her high school summer vacations, MD found part-time employment as a bank teller. She enjoyed interacting with adults as co-workers or customers and she was sufficiently capable of dealing precisely with deposits and withdrawals but a career as a bank teller had no long term appeal.
RANDOM EVENT LEADS TO A JOB OFFER – WAS IT LUCK?
Editor’s note – Recall (from the Introduction to The Career Stories Project) that for this collection, LUCK is defined as “preparation meets opportunity.”
At a year-end holiday party for all the bank’s employees and the law firm which represented the bank, MD was introduced to attorney BT, who politely asked what was her job at the bank? MD said she was there part-time until high school graduation, six months ahead, in June. BT asked what were her plans then? MD responded that she hoped to work as a secretary somewhere. By coincidence, BT, a young lawyer, was looking to hire a full-time secretary but was willing to wait till June if MD was interested. They deferred discussion of details such as starting salary and benefits until after the holiday party.
MD’s experience (with typing and dictation equipment plus general office procedures) had just met opportunity (someone’s need for that experience).
JOB INTERVIEWS ALWAYS INVOLVE ASSUMPTIONS OF TRUST
In addition to two topics for which there were direct statements of fact (prospective employee’s described experience and prospective employer’s described job duties), each of the individuals had to make quick assumptions about the other and then trust that their assumptions were correct.
During the brief discussion between MD and BT – which turned out to be an informal job interview – each had a brief opportunity to assess the personality of the other. BT correctly assumed that MD had been a reliable and capable bank employee. MD correctly assumed that BT, as a member of the law firm with an excellent reputation within the bank, would have earned his share of that good reputation. Thus, we see that even an informal job interview involves immediate assessments of personality and reputation plus trust that initial positive impressions will prove accurate over the long run.
FIRST ADULT JOB IS NEVER A LIFETIME CAREER COMMITMENT
Following her high school graduation, MD began full-time employment as a legal secretary. She had to learn the basics, including forms for real estate, contracts, wills, estate administration and court filings. Fortunately, both BT, the attorney from whom she received her primary assignments and CW, an experienced legal secretary, were patient teachers within the small law firm’s cultural equivalent of a working family.
MD enjoyed this initial job experience for several years but wondered whether she could earn significantly more money by working as a legal secretary within a large corporation. She began reviewing news of corporate, legal secretary job openings and found what she thought would be a good career move. MD was conflicted about leaving her first job but had to find out for herself “whether the grass was greener in another pasture?”
HIGHER INCOME DOES NOT GUARANTEE HIGHER JOB SATISFACTION
It didn’t take MD longer than the first few days at her new job for her to want to quit and return to her first job. She immediately disliked the unfamiliar, big corporate atmosphere, specifically the cavalier attitudes of the attorneys she would be working for, their rigid procedures, the formality of getting into and out of the building and the lack of immediately friendly co-workers.
MD was severely disappointed in her decision to value higher pay and better benefits over the everyday working culture of her previous employment. Thus, it was only one week later that MD arranged to meet with her former employer, BT, to confess her mistake and hope to be re-hired. Unfortunately, BT had just hired a replacement for MD and there was no other job opening available within her previous law firm employer. BT counseled MD to be more patient while adapting to her new circumstances and perhaps she would grow to like it or at least tolerate it while being more highly compensated.
MD had wisely not resigned from her corporate job when she sought to return to BT’s law firm so for the moment, she had no alternative but to continue working within the corporation. MD persisted despite her unhappiness, hoping a better job opportunity would soon develop but realized that jumping from a serious adult job after only a week or even a few months, might be difficult to explain at a future job interview so since there was no immediately compelling reason (such as being harassed or discovering employer’s illegal conduct) to abandon her better paying employment, she persisted with her corporate employment for a full year.
RANDOM EVENT – MORE LUCK?
After a year in the same unhappy but well-paid job, MD was having lunch with a friend who was still a legal secretary at MD’s former law firm. The friend mentioned that KS, a law partner with her previous employer, BT, was looking for a legal secretary. MD couldn’t believe her luck and immediately called KS to say she was interested in returning to her favorite law firm as a legal secretary. KS already appreciated MD’s excellent professional reputation and hired her during that extended phone call.
VARIED DAILY ACTIVITIES OF ONE ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT
KS, the new employer of MD, was a law partner and social friend of BT so returning to the law firm to work with someone else was less awkward than it might have been. This was fortunate because the law office was relatively small and by coincidence, MD’s desk was located close to BT’s office, who was glad to welcome MD back to the law firm.
While the two lawyers (former employer BT and new employer KS) were partners within the same law firm, their law practices and outside business interests were different: BT represented primarily individuals and corporations, without much involvement in litigation. In contrast, KS represented individuals involving occasional litigation but also a real estate title company and was significantly involved in zoning issues plus his personal ownership of apartment buildings. So on any given day, MD would be spending time producing varied legal documents or bookkeeping entries for KS’ role as a landlord.
CAREER CHALLENGES
Editor’s note – When MD began to plan for her career, office secretaries were still sitting across the desk from their “boss” while taking “shorthand” notes (illegible to those without shorthand training) in small notebooks, from which the secretary would later translate into typewritten words. Then electronic technology was introduced into offices, including dictation equipment to enable the words creator to talk into a microphone, which recorded the narration on a disc, which was later inserted into a machine at the secretary’s desk for playback through earphones to the secretary, who could listen and type at the same time. Over time, the technology continued to develop, including electronic spreadsheets and printers available at each desk. Secretaries were able to do more sophisticated work, more efficiently and more accurately and thus their job titles were rebranded as “Administrative Assistant.”
An on-going challenge for any administrative assistant is to keep up with the continuously progressing technology. MD did keep up.
Another challenge for MD was having to periodically follow her attorney employer to new law firms, located in new buildings or having to work while contractors were noisily engaged in office upgrades during the workday.
With some degree of amusement, MD must placate clients who think each deserves prompt attention from the attorney, whose time is limited by the number of hours in the day and thus cannot possibly respond to every client with the speed they often expect. MD has mastered the art of “polite politics” to assure each client that indeed, the attorney is working hard on their important matter, and you will be hearing from him soon. But sometimes she must be more forceful with the attorney, reminding him that “This is the 6th time Mr. X has called so you really should get back to him today!”
CAREER SATISFACTION
* Taking pride in producing the highest quality documents every day
* Serving as the liaison between the attorney and the client, keeping each informed and as calm as possible
* Pushing herself to keep up with constantly evolving technology
* Having the wisdom to choose to work in a supportive, professionally friendly business environment instead of being a well-paid cog in a sterile, rigid corporate setting
* Understanding both ends of the client relationship so she can prioritize projects and track them through conclusion
* Earning the respect of co-workers and managers for her daily work products
