A secretary is basically an administrative assistant in a business organization. Traditionally the duties which were involved with the secretary were mainly related to correspondence. One of the examples is typing of letters. The coming up of various softwares related to such applications has drastically decremented the time such duties actually require. With the result of this many more jobs and tasks have come under the supervision of the secretary. Some of them are managing of budgets; they might have to do bookkeeping, regularly check the websites and even make necessary arrangements for travel related work. Secretaries also have the important job of taking care of the administrative particulars of organizing a hi profile conference. There are many chances in which the heads may ask his secretary to write original documents for surveying. Secretaries may often be involved in tasks which involve personnel paperwork( human relations function). They should also have a general knowledge about the visa and immigration rules.

The executive assistant must have a variety of skills and should be creative and spontaneous in handling any kind of situation. It is prominent from various research studies that secretaries spend almost 40% of their time in text processing and on the phone. To execute these tasks in the stipulated time and in an accurate manner the writing and typing speed should be very high. This is a very important secretarial skill. In today’s competitive job scenario all such skills would definitely help a person to reach his success. Its often a case in which secretaries have to do multi tasking. These days the work which the secretary does keeps varying from company to company. It depends on the size of the organization, special skills possessed by the secretary etc. in big companies there are many levels of secretaries, and it can be around 4 to 5 levels. The secretaries working at the higher levels are called executive secretaries. The title given can vary from one organization to another.

The most basic requirement to become a secretary is to have a proper high school. But these days many companies are preferring graduates from that respective background. If one has a proper secretarial training its even better. The knowledge of handling computers is becoming very important along with a good command over one’s communications skills. These days the employers are themselves providing the necessary training for their particular job. In large organizations there is a nice possibility that the secretary might be recognized by his work and be promoted to posts like administrative assistants etc.