Top 15 Personal Assistant Skills to Stay Top of Your Career

This post presents a list of important personal assistant skills and qualities you need to develop to boost your effectiveness on the job and achieve success in your career.

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Assistance is one thing that everyone needs at one point in time or the other.

It is needed in all phases and facets of life and business is not left out of it.

Due to the stress associated with some positions, organizations deem it necessary to assign personal assistants to some employees in the organization to help them make their job easy.

Who is a Personal Assistant?

A personal assistant is one hired and assigned to a particular individual to assist him or her in rendering some sort of services to the organization; the role of a personal assistant is to render assistance.

Top 15 Personal Assistant Skills to Stay Top of Your Career

Here are important skills and qualities you need to have as a personal assistant to be a top performer on your job and succeed in your career:

Time management
Ability to work independently
Professionalism
Problem solving skills
Organizational skills
Confidentiality
Diplomacy
Technological skills
Financial management skills
Communication skills
Administrative skills
Discretion and tact
Listening skills
Willingness to learn
Interpersonal skills.

Time management

Your employer is very interested in your time management skills as a personal assistant.

You cannot afford to do things whenever you like and expect to excel in your job.

You have to be time conscious about the job you have and the time needed to accomplish the task.

So this means that you have to be good at time management.

Understanding that the era of underestimating the value of time is far gone behind us.

This era is an era where everybody is on the move; everybody wants to accomplish much within a short period of time.

So, organize yourself and your activities for the day to be able to save and allot the right time for the different activities you have.

It is not in your interest to overlook the importance of managing time. It can tell on your job.

Ability to work independently

Working independently should be something that not only you should boast of but your employer also.

It is an impressive skill to have and something that can endear your to your boss or employer.

No one would baulk at the idea of having a personal assistant with the ability to work independently.

Your boss will not like the idea of always putting you under surveillance just to ensure you do what you are paid to do.

It is not something you should wish for. You should be at your best whether you are being monitored or not.

Also, this entails that you should be a quick learner in your job.

Sometimes employers complain about staff or employees who do not learn fast.

This leads employers to putting such employees under strict surveillance to make sure that they make no mistakes.

If you can learn quickly, then you are good to go.

Professionalism

Professionalism is behaving and acting according to the requirements or demands of your job.

There are some behaviors associated with your job as a personal assistant.

This is where your work ethics is brought to the limelight.

As a personal assistant, you should act within the confines of your job description and ensure not to behave in any way that is not befitting for anyone in your job.

This means that you have to be certain about what is expected of you and know how to go about it.

Unethical behaviors will only be a dent in your job and your personality in regards to the job you have been given to do.

As a personal assistant to someone, you must adhere to the instructions and demands of your job without personal feelings attached to it.

Problem solving skills

There are problems you are meant to solve in regards to the kind of job you have in your hands to do.

This is the problem of what your employer demands that you do which he/she may not be ready to handle at that moment.

You have to solve the problem at hand and give it your best shot.

Problem solving skills should be your thing and something you should be eager to exhibit always in your job.

You have to anticipate challenges and brace yourself to handle the problems as they come.

It is your business to solve problems for your employer.

Note that your worth before your employer is how much of problems you can solve, not necessarily what you have in your resume or CV.

Though those achievements are good, however, they are not necessary the yardstick to measure your usefulness to your employer.

Organizational skills

Part of what you should know how to do well is to organize files, documents, and other relevant things regarding your employer.

You should be able to do this to ensure that your employer has a smooth activity for the day.

You are more like a secretary to your employer so you should be able to relieve him/her of the pressure of arranging files, fixing of meetings, and making necessary arrangement for your employer to have a smooth day at work.

If you can’t do this, it means that your organizational skills are quite low.

Also, you must learn to organize your own working documents and tools and get them in good shape to make sure you don’t experience unnecessary difficulties at work.

This is definitely what you will need to do to have a smooth day at work.

Confidentiality

To be a good personal assistant, you should be quick to hear but slow to speak.

Though talking is part of communication, however excess of it is not good.

You should talk only when it is absolutely necessary and not as you wish.

One bad effect of talking often is the revealing of secrets. You have to be disciplined with your mouth and also be sure not to leak confidential documents not meant to be shared with the wrong people.

This means that discipline is highly needed by you to be an excellent personal assistant.

You have to be guided in your conducts and be careful not to be careless with whatever that has to do with your employer within and outside the working place.

Diplomacy

Diplomacy is always a good way of resolving conflict in the workplace.

This means the absence of retaliation or hard way of resolving conflicts.

This is a skill you should have and work with every day as a personal assistant to your employer.

When addressing the clients of your employer, use diplomacy to follow them and don’t be rash or harsh in your assessment or judgment.

Be peace loving and present yourself to be a friendly figure rather than a nagging and hard person to deal with.

When you imbibe the spirit of diplomacy, you will not only win over the heart of your employer, but you will also win over the hearts of the clients of your employer which through their good reports about you will give you a boost in your job.

Technological skills

Most job descriptions today have one thing or the other to do with technology.

If you want to have a boost in your job as a personal assistant, then you have to be ready to involve technology in your job.

You have to find out the best technology that suits your job description and can help you run a smooth job always.

There are many ways to apply technology to your job.

For example, if you are to book a travel or appointment for your employer, you may not necessary go to the transport company to make your booking, you are expected to visit the website of the transport company and make your bookings.

This will save you time and the cost of transporting yourself down to the transport company when it is not time for the travel.

Financial management skills

You are not only tasked with the duty of managing your employer’s schedules, flight, and other things.

You are also sometimes put in a position to manage your employer’s financial affairs. This is also part of your job.

This suggests that you should have financial prudence as time of appraisal and assessment will definitely come.

You need to be wise in financial affairs and this entails financial prudence.

There is no way your employer will be pleased with you if you are careless in financial affairs.

You have to be wise in spending and shrewd in money matters.

You are more or less a steward and should be mindful how you carry out financial transactions on behalf of your employer.

Cut unnecessary expenses and don’t be a source of waste to your employer.

Communication skills

Do you really need to be an excellent communicator as a personal assistant?

The answer of course is yes.

Top notch communication skills are one of the basic skills you will need to succeed in the role of a personal assistant and until you work hard in this regard, you might be endangering your job.

One of the ways you maintain a good and transparent rapport with your employer is to be effective in the place of communication.

You shouldn’t be found wanting in this department.

You should be able to communicate with your employer on time to make sure that he/she keeps to his/her appointments and schedules.

Failure to be a good communicator will certainly endanger your job and also affect the way your employer sees you in that job.

It is wrong for your employer to remind you of what should be done; it’s actually your duty to do that.

So, you have to be good at communicating with your employer always to help him/her do what he/she ought to do.

Administrative skills

Administration is more or less an organizational role, meaning that you are expected to organize stuffs that have to do with your employer.

You have to be sure that things are done when they should be done and the ideal way they should be done.

This entails working out the schedule and events of your employer and keeping things in order.

Safekeeping of documents and maintenance of routines should be paramount in your every day job.

Routines shouldn’t be broken except for good reasons.

Also, be sure that you are time conscious in whatever you do.

Don’t be so involved in one activity that you forget to pay attention to other important ones.

Discretion and tact

Discretion is more of intuitive analysis while tact has to do with carefulness.

These two qualities are important for you to have and apply in your job.

You have to combine them to be able to manage your job and look after the affairs of your employer.

On the issue of discretion, you can sometimes be faced with abnormal circumstance which is not part of your job description.

You are to use your intuition to do what is in the best interest of your employer rather than watching things go wrong.

And also, carefulness is demanded in your job so that you don’t make rash decisions that can affect the affairs of your employer negatively.

You have to watch for this because any wrong judgment could have a bad effect on your job.

Listening skills

Listening is a special skill that some people are not blessed with. This is true as some mistakes seen and experienced in the work place are products of inability to listen carefully to instructions or opting to do what one likes rather than what is required.

If you must avoid acting unprofessionally in your job, you need to try to be disciplined enough to listen to what either your employer or other people are saying to you.

You can’t afford to ignore what people say because their suggestions can play out to your advantage.

To be a good listener means that you are patient enough to grab the main details of what you are listening to.

It sure requires patience and discretion to be able to listen to instructions from your employer or suggestions from people out there.

Willingness to learn

Part of your growth on the job as a personal assistant to someone is your tendency to learn and adapt quickly.

Your ability to adapt quickly to your role is also dependent on your willingness to learn as it is not possible to act beyond your knowledge.

With or without the help of your employer, you need to develop yourself to match the expectations of your employer.

If you are willing to learn, you will learn with extraordinary pace, but if you are not willing to learn, even the effort by anyone to improve you won’t work.

So, you have to be determined to improve in your job.

There is always room for you to do better than what you are already used to.

This is what will bring you more responsibilities or promotion in your job.

When you learn more, you are developing your capacity to handle more responsibilities as they come.

Interpersonal skills

This has to come into play some time in the course of your job.

The need for some skills for personal development will be needed if you really want to be effective on your job.

This means that you need to have basic idea of some of the interpersonal skills you will need to succeed in your career.
Some of these skills and qualities include human management skills, which you need in order to relate well with people.

It is not only your employer that you interact or relate with in your job.

Understand this and make sure you are good in building lasting relationships with people around you.

So, to be effective in your job, you will definitely learn to work with people as veritable tools you will need to succeed in your job.

Trying to sideline the opinion of other people in your job could be catastrophic and damning if you do not watch it.

Personal Assistant Skills for Resume

If you are making a resume or CV for the position of a personal assistant, you can apply some of the skills and qualities highlighted above in making the Skills Section of the resume/CV.

By showing in your resume/CV that you have the right skills and qualities for the personal assistant position that you are seeking, you stand a better position to get hired.

Conclusion

Working as a personal assistant is one job that looks easy on the eye but requires a lot of professionalism and good work ethics.

It demands discipline and your ability to adhere to instructions to the letter.

The skills and qualities highlighted above will help increase your effectiveness on the job and boost your career.