Postal Sorting Officer
What the work is
Receives, sorts and dispatches mail in a post office or postal sorting centre.
Would you enjoy the work?
These are the main tasks in the official description. Mark how each one sounds to you.
- Receives and sorts incoming mail
- Operates sorting machines to categorise mail
- Prepares mail for delivery
- Identifies mail requiring special handling or additional services
- Maintains records of mail received, sorted and dispatched
- Assists customers with enquires about postal services
- Investigates complaints regarding lost items
Try it
A simulation and a case study from this kind of work, set in a fictional postal sorting centre, with a mailroom for a large office building next door. They are fictional.
The kind of days you could have
Good days
- A mountain of parcels is sorted, loaded and gone before the trucks have to leave
- A letter with a smudged address finds its way to the right person
- A quiet shift with the machines humming and every bin empty at the end
Hard days
- The busiest week of the year, when every tray seems to arrive at once
- A machine jam with the dispatch truck already reversing in
- Standing for hours on a concrete floor, doing the same movement again and again
Written by Career Calling as a general guide. Real roles vary by employer and place.
Work a mission
Step into a simulated workplace in this field, with a brief from your manager.
Description and tasks: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Occupation Standard Classification for Australia, 2024, Version 1.0 (opens another site), occupation 599332, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. The skill guide above is our plain English summary.