Online Executive and Admin Assistant Training

July 30, 2009 at 01:27 PM | (0) Comments

Instead of posting in our blog series, “What We Can’t Teach You” (WWCTY) today, there’s been a change of plans. Yesterday I came across a very interesting bit of information about what the newly combined William Morris Endeavor Entertainment agency, William Morris being my former employer BTW, is paying their assistants so I just couldn’t wait to post about this… and rest assured, we’ll continue the WWCTY series next week.

Every year, college and graduate school grads make their way to Hollywood in search of the Holy Grail—a career in “the biz”.

MBAs, Law Degrees, wanna-be agents/managers/writers/directors & any other fast talking/ambitious person with some chutzpah and love of everything in lights are all part of the mix and competing with each other for the limited number of executive assistant and administrative assistant positions that dot the map known as Los Angeles and New York. As you can imagine, the competition is fierce and thus the pay for these positions can be next to nothing (as you’ll see shortly) as any number of people with just as good or better qualifications are standing behind you to take the job that you don’t know if you can afford to take.

Welcome to Hollywood.

Nikki Finke of Deadlinehollywooddaily.com is one of the most keyed-in reporter/bloggers to cover “the biz” and in her recent scoop, she gets the goods on how the newly combined William Morris Agency and Endeavor are setting the pay scale for their assistants. Here’s the break down from her scoop:

So here’s what begins August 1st:
Under 1 year - $11/hour
1 - 2 years - $12/hr
2 - 3 years $13/hr
Over 3 years - $14/hr
The pay increases $1/hr for every year over 3 that the assistant is employed.
Any raises from the end-of-year reviews have been taken off the table.
Official hours are from 9-7 PM and a 50-hour work week is expected.

Whatcha think?... could YOU live on that in either LA or NYC WITHOUT help from Mom, Dad or a trust fund?

CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE

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All Posts, Tales from the Trenches,

Summer In The City… and what NOT to wear @ work!

July 28, 2009 at 03:13 PM | (3) Comments

Summer in the city…the season for vacationing bosses, happy hours, and summer Fridays. It is also the time of year when people tend to forget the office dress code and foray into questionable attire.

We’ve all been there. It’s 90 degrees and humid and you see that sundress calling your name from the closet. You ask yourself, “Can I get away with this today… my boss isn’t even in.” If you have to stop and ask yourself if it’s office appropriate, it isn’t.

I watched an episode of Mad Men (love it!) recently to which I really related. Joan (the redheaded office manager with the killer hourglass figure) had to confront Mr. Draper’s new secretary about her wardrobe. She marched over and in her most charming voice simply told her to cover up her “decolletage” because she had more to offer than that.

I have been an office manager for four years and part of my role is supervising two receptionists. I have been forced to have this same difficult conversation, but sadly couldn’t put it quite as succinctly as Joan. I had noticed the particular offender, whom is also a friend, wearing leggings one day. The next day she was in capris and flip flops. I wanted to scream, “This is an investment firm, not the beach!”

How could she wear that to work?

Instead, I pulled her into a conference room and reminded her how important her role is at our firm. She is the first face the investors see and the last voice they hear as they walk out the door wondering if they should trust us with their money. I told her it is time to step it up and act like the professional young woman that she really is—and the face of our firm. It was a tough conversation, made all the more difficult by our close friendship.

But she got it. And since that conversation, she has really stood out as the star employee that she is in her new sheath dresses and pumps. She is Mad Men worthy, 2009 style.

For more advice on what works and what doesn’t work in the wardrobe department FOR work, check out Yahoo’s recent article on what not to wear.

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All Posts, Tricks of the Trade,

What We Can’t Teach You - Blog Series Intro

July 23, 2009 at 03:37 PM | (3) Comments

Here at ProAssisting, we’re all about supporting and training executive assistants, administrative assistants and personal assistants. That’s what all four parts of our training and support program were designed to do.

And in terms of the work and office interactions our members encounter as assistants, through our membership forum, our goal is to point them in the right direction and lay out their options based on our 20+ years of experience.

From how to fix the copier machine to how to ask for that raise, answer that interview question or resolve a dispute with a peer, we know we’ve got the experience to cover their back and tell it like it is straight up at the same time. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have put our hard work, our names, a significant time commitment and our money on the line with this venture of ours.

But here’s the funny thing… The most important parts of succeeding at your job or in a lifelong career, whether that is being an assistant or in another position, we can’t teach you!

And the dirty little secret is… no one can.

There are traits, characteristics and attributes that you need to make a conscious choice about in your own head in terms of what they mean to you should you want to be successful in the working world.

I can hear you asking now…

“But do some people get by on their wit, looks, charm and without taking these traits into account or even caring about them?”

Sure. But that’s not us and this blog series isn’t for them so if you do get by on your wit, charms and looks alone, you can stop reading right now and be on your merry little way.

Through this blog series, we’re going to describe these universal attributes so you can give yourself an honest assessment of where you stand on each. Only once you assess your grade can you make changes to improve and thrive.

Even though these posts will be written from the viewpoint of the working assistant, they also will resonate with anyone who has succeeded in the past or has a desire to succeed in the future.

The first one up is “your work ethic & taking pride in your work”. We’ll be posting that next week so sign up for our RSS feed right now so you don’t miss it. Photo credit: Anyaka

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All Posts, Organization, Stress Management, Tricks of the Trade,

Find Efficiencies in Everything

July 09, 2009 at 03:59 PM | (5) Comments

Finding efficiencies is the name of the game in many different fields of work but especially important when working as an assistant. In today’s “high speed” and “always on” working culture, being able to complete your tasks in as few steps as possible clears the way for you to do more work while being less stressful.

To help put this in perspective, let’s take a look at the definition of efficiency:

ef-fi-cien-cy [i-fish-uhn-see]
-noun, plural -cies.
the state or quality of being efficient; competency in performance. 2. accomplishment of or ability to accomplish a job with a minimum expenditure of time and effort: The assembly line increased industry’s efficiency.

The words that stick out to me in that definition are “ability to accomplish a job with minimum expenditure of time and effort”. As you can see in the picture we chose for this blog post, that can be as simple as having all of the right programs open and ready for use on your computer desktop throughout the day.

Other examples include using an online system to make reservations instead of calling and being put on hold OR going to the register in the back of the drug store at the pharmacy counter when there is a line up front OR only walking to the other side of the office to drop stuff off after you have multiple things TO drop off.

My first job was working as a waitress and during my stint serving drinks and food, another more experienced server gave me some great advice: Take as few steps as possible to complete the maximum number of requests from your customers. That advice still holds true for me today as I assist the CEO of a multi-billion dollar hedge fund; he might not be able to put his finger on exactly what he appreciates about my multi-tasking, namely my efficiency, but he appreciates it nonetheless and your boss will too.

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Happy 4th of July!... belatedly…

July 06, 2009 at 03:55 PM | (0) Comments

Howdy! Even though the 4th of July has come and gone, we still wanted to wish everyone a Happy 4th. I mean, it’s the day to commemorate the birth of our country, right? And given all of the changes that have been going on behind the scenes here at ProAssisting, the last couple of weeks have felt like a “birth” for us as well.

I’m not going to go into all of the gory details but suffice it to say that we’ve been workin’ our butts off (in all fairness, mostly our genius programmers MenWithPens were doing all of the heavy lifting) to transfer our site from one content management system to another that will present a much better experience to our members! And this, I’m pleased to say, is my first post on this new platform but please note that it’s going to take a wee bit of time to conquer the learning curve with this new system so if you notice anything “off”, please don’t hesitate to let us know.

Lastly, I wanted to let you all know that we’re in the process of putting together our “beta members” for a two week test run before we open our doors to the public. We are very pleased that the “beta members” are being gathered by our friends over at AdminSecret. I’m sure this group of working Executive and Administration assistants will put our training and support forum to the test so we’re sure to be ready to go when our doors open. We’ll keep you posted on our progress and we hope you enjoyed your 4th of July holiday with friends and family. Photo credit: B. Yarowitz

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