Long time lurker, first time poster. Please be gentle! (if this isn’t the right forum, please accept my apologies!)
I am looking at a career change on a radical scale. I was a liberal arts major in college, so there is no business/accounting/marketing/data analysis/what have you experience to speak of, officially. I took some courses on some of these topics, but, I am not an economics major and I don’t have a BBA.
I am looking at entry-levels job at a larger corporation as an administrative assistant. Yes, secretary. Not glamorous, I know.
I don’t mind starting at the bottom, but I don’t know if administrative assistant experience is transferable to “non-secretarial” positions, or if they even count as relevant experience for that kind of work (e.g. if you work as an admin assistant in a marketing department, in 3 years will you have “3 years of experience in marketing”?) if you’re ever looking at another job with another company.
So, I’m basically looking to see if administrative assistantdom is a good way to get in on the ground floor in an endeavor to make a career change.
How promotable you are depends a lot on the particular company’s culture.
What I can tell you is you will get a great education on how the business runs. Just like Sargents run the army, admins run companies.
Good luck!
thanks for the reply, Rick… does that “great education” translate into accepted “business experience” for purposes of subsequent resumes/job requirements at other companies (if the original company’s culture does not promote admin staff)
Generally, the answer is “no” without some additional education. Admins and receptionists are typically not considered part of the “professional staff” at most large companies. The reason for this is that answering the phones, filling out expensie reports and other admin tasks have absolutely nothing to do with marketing, law, finance, accounting, petroleum engineering, airplane manufacturing or any other industry the company is in or service that supports that business.
I work in a marketing department for a large financial services company, and generally even for an entry level marketing assistant type role we’d be looking for a marketing degree. Admin assistants are increasingly rare in my experience (more senior managers get an EA, but that’s a specific job) - and I can only think of one example recently where someone has been able to transition between one role to another. I know a few people (me included) who transitioned from a call centre role to marketing, but again most had a marketing or business degree under their belt.
That being said, smaller companies may offer greater scope - sort of an ‘all hands on deck’ kind of place, which would allow you to have some hands on experience, which you could leverage into a junior marketing role.
I would say there are exceptions. The start up where I work hired an administrative person. She isn’t “entry level” though. We wanted an experienced admin who could take on a lot of the administrative, operational work that is outside our core business. Recruiting, office management, stuff like that. The idea is we could have hired anyone to be a phone answerer and greeter. Instead we decided to go with someone who could potentially grow and build up some of those services as the company grows.
I don’t think you will have much success as planned - working as an admin assistant for a large company and leveraging that experience to get a more professional job at another company.
Instead, why don’t you try to work your way up from within. Getting a job at a small or medium sized company will probably be better than a large company as they’re more likely to have a culture where people pitch in and do whatever work is needed.
For example, get a job as an admin for the HR dept. Prove yourself reliable and take initiative to take on more work, gradually start doing more HR work in addition to clerical work. Seems totally reasonable for you to someday get promoted to a legit HR position at that company. But if you work as a admin for 2 years and look for a new job elsewhere by telling them you mostly did clerical work but also did some HR stuff… that’s not really very compelling story to me as an employer.
Also, you’ll probably have more or less success depending on what area you want to break into. For example, as a dept. admin assistant, you might have an easier time getting an HR dept. to trust you with HR responsibilities than getting a marketing dept. to trust you with marketing duties… just as two contrasting examples.
Generally speaking, EA’s where I work (major consulting firm) don’t advance beyond EA. However, there are exceptions. The most common path I’ve seen is for them to move into HR, or into Project Management roles. Also, if they work closely with their execs, often those execs will find a role for them within the company. I wouldn’t want to say it happens often, but it definitely happens. The EA really needs to have their act together, though; lots of the EA’s don’t take any steps to really improve their business skills to the point where they can really sell themselves to other parts of the company.