Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

I am currently involved in getting a sporting goods company started. There are several of us working togetther with our very own task. I am the secretary of the CEO for the company. I am very much familiar with secretarial and office occupational tasks with more than enough experience but I am not quite sure on how to handle a retail tasks....Dealing with equipment, employess, meetings, etc. If you have and advice, thoughts, and or experience of your own please share them with me.

How would  you describe what you`ve been doing as a secretary in the past, as to specifically what`s different in this new environment?

The reason I ask is that there`s a distinction between a secretary and an administrative assistant, office manager, and executive assistant.

Okay- I just reread the question! The secretary for any of the high level officers: CEO, CFO, COO, ect. Their duties are basically all the same. Phone call montoring, meeting scheduling, executive babysitting. You basically keep track of where you boss is everyday, all day. Your job is to make sure he stays on schedule and keep people at bay who might mess up his schedule. They might give you job tasks that they should be doing but don`t have time to do it. You might even have to make arrangements for lunch to be deliverd when there`s a big meeting or dounuts when investors come in. I`m sure there are CEO secretarys out there that have more important job duties than what I have described, who work closely side by side with their boss to the point that they know more of how things are really running than their boss. What I have given you is very general- it`s what ever your CEO expects out of you.

Another important aspect of executive secretaries is meeting planning, scheduling, and trip planning. That last would be to set up out-of-town trips. You`d have a travel agent, get tickets, book hotels, rent cars, and so forth. Then present the "boss" with the whole package. All she or he would need to do would be get in a limo and go.

In a retail situation, particularly only a single store, your job would mostly be keeping track of the "things going on each day."

Suppose the financial officer needs to have a meeting with the CEO. How long will that meeting go? You`ll have to ask the financial person to estimate. Then you`ll have the CEO`s schedule, and see if you can find an open slot. But suppose the CEO is busy all day? Then you`ll need to figure out a slot.

Now suppose the financial person is saying it`s an emergency. Your job would be to shuffle meetings around, based on their priority, and to call everyone to let them know the new time. So maintaining schedules would be a major part of the job.

Screening phone calls, as crazychix mentioned, is also critical. EVERYbody wants time with the CEO (or whomever is your boss). Without careful screening, they`d have no time to actually run the business. So you would need to have a good sense of what`s important, what`s fairly important, and what`s not so important for right now. That means you`d have to also have a sense of how the business runs, and what matters to the executive "decision-makers."