“Your Career Advisor” is responding this week to:

• What to do in light of the age limit for secretaries? And what salary should I expect?

All reasonable questions related to careers, skill development or employment related issues – sent to advisor@skill-link.com - would be addressed in this section every week.

Q1: What to do in light of the age limit for secretaries? And what salary should I expect?

I am 32 years old female, I have 10 years experience in the fields of administration, executive secretary and customer relations. This experience has been gained during my employment with four different companies.

I start always as an executive secretary - the most available work in Egypt - than usually I take more responsibilities and my title changes.

The problem is that I have to restart all over again every time I leave an employer !

What is the salary I should expect as an executive secretary? (10 years experience with excellent PC/ typing skills and good French/English background). Knowing that I believe that executive secretary has a limit age range and I don't think that I will be suitable to search for such a job when I become over 38/40 (I think the job owners will prefer a younger fresh graduates females- it is already difficult enough currently).

What courses could I take or learn to prevent start all over 4 or 5 years from now if I faced this situation again as I don’t like the usual secretarial work and I want a more stable career and more creative work.

I noticed from your responses that you don't recommend the MBA, do you recommend that I start taking courses in Marketing or should I take something in the customer care? What you will do if you were in my place?

S. D. (Egypt)

Replying:

Dear Ms. D. 

Let us start by defining what an executive secretary is, we will borrow our definition from a reply to a one year old related question on “Your Career Advisor”. Let us start by saying that there are no scientific definitions as such for this job. Our experience with hundreds of companies demonstrates that they each vary from one place to the other. The same job may vary depending on which manager is in charge. In all cases this particular job is closely related to the person the job holder reports to; more than any other position in an organization (eg. accountants, sales officers etc..).

However, most likely, our observation is that a well-utilized smart and competent executive secretary should do most of the following:

She (more often than he) is usually a secretary for a senior executive (Managing Director, President, General Manager etc…) who in addition to being responsible for the regular secretarial tasks (such as: correspondence, receiving / placing phone calls, filing documents, scheduling appointments etc.); she is given more decision making / responsibility in assessing the importance of correspondence, following up with various department managers on tasks previously assigned to them by the boss, handling travel arrangements or social events (eg. the annual company dinner, a reception of key customers etc…). In some small professional firms and companies (or branches) she would also handle other responsibilities that would have been performed by the Administration Manager in larger entities. Examples of those tasks could be: overseeing support staff and drivers, monitoring premises (maintenance, cleaning and security), procurement of office supplies and office equipment; simple bookkeeping etc…

Based on the above, the job could range from being routine to exciting, involving many aspects of the company’s operations. It prepare the jobholder to move to a number of positions; such as: administration, public relations, human resources, customer services and in some cases sales or marketing support. We have hundreds of resumes on skill-link.com that witness such a career progress. You are a case in point.

Now, with regards to age, we tend to disagree with you, that at or around 40, a female executive secretary is not wanted. It may be the case for receptionists and junior secretaries, where a higher salary (that goes along with the age) and the looks play a key role. For busy senior executives; efficiency, the ability to solve problems and resourcefulness are key. These skills develop over years of work. We can attest to numerous cases where executive secretaries were in their late forties and fifties. They have become indispensable to their boss. In a recent survey conducted by skill-link.com we found a number of secretaries with 20+ years of work experience as secretaries.

What salary you should expect as an executive secretary? Our extensive survey of secretaries with over 10 years of experience is presented below. It compares a number of sectors (or groups of sectors). In this category, figures include secretaries with a very wide range of experience (anywhere from 10 to 30 years). You will notice that in this experience bracket, salaries tend to be very close across sectors.

Again, the above are averages! The highest earning ten surveyed secretaries in this category had an average experience of 16 years and were earning an average salary of LE 4,470 per month.

By now we have addressed the job and its income expectations at length. If you do not really like doing it on the long run, your way out is to get into another function and become indispensable in it. After a few years (say in HR or other) you should only be looking for – and accepting – jobs of the same nature. For instance if you spend a few years in Sales Administration or Procurement, these are the fields you should be looking forward to continue in. Cement your skills in that area by attending relevant courses in it, and supplement it by readings.

As you said, you are another case where we do not see the expenses and effort invested in an MBA are justifiable. As to what courses are recommended, it is difficult at this stage to make any objective suggestions unless you are already in a field you like or you would indicate to us, one or two that are near and dear to your heart J

Thus we look forward to a Part II of our reply, once we get more information from you.

We hope the above was of some use to you.
Good Luck

Note from the editor: 
Employer names and inquiry sender names were withheld for confidentiality

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