Secretary (General)
What the work is
Performs secretarial, clerical, organisational and administrative tasks in support of daily office operations.
Would you enjoy the work?
These are the main tasks in the official description. Mark how each one sounds to you.
- Assists with document management, archiving and file maintenance
- Organises and manages appointments and schedules
- Manages enquiries, calls, messages and document preparation
- Welcomes and directs visitors and clients
- Assists with copying, scanning, emailing, notetaking and booking travel
- Performs other general clerical duties as requested
- May manage petty cash, maintain office supplies and coordinate equipment maintenance
Try it
A simulation and a case study from this kind of work, set in the front office of a family-run engineering company with about thirty staff. They are fictional.
The kind of days you could have
Good days
- You make the diary work, and a director says the week ran perfectly
- A visitor leaves saying how welcome the office felt
- Someone asks where a document is and you can find it in one minute
Hard days
- Three people want the same meeting room at the same time
- A job that was meant to take ten minutes grows into an afternoon
- Being interrupted twenty times when you were trying to finish something important
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 522131, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. The skill guide above is our plain English summary.