As an executive assistant, it may be your responsibility to keep a number of calendars and schedules in addition to your own. While this can be an enjoyable and productive activity that helps keep people on time and where they need to be, you must be careful with your “power.” While you may be thinking, “That’s just silly. I’m the lowest on the totem pole. I have no power at all! Everyone orders me around,” in reality, the knowledge of where people are and what they are doing is a serious and sought-after commodity in many offices. Do not be careless with this information or it could end up costing you your job.

The best rule of thumb when it comes to other people’s schedules is to say as little as possible. This means that if someone calls for Jen, the associate down the hall, do not say, “One second, I think she has run to the doctor but I’ll see if I can catch her.” That is way too much information that the person calling simply does not need. Instead, simply say, “One second and I’ll see if she is available.” If Jen has, in fact, already left for the doctor, then do not convey all the details. Just let the caller know that Jen is unavailable and offer to take a message or transfer them to voicemail. How Jen handles the call from that point and how much information she divulges about her absence is up to her.

In many cases, you will receive direct requests for information from one employee about another employee’s whereabouts. While this may seem harmless, you must remember that the employee in question may not want the office to know what they are doing. Unless the question comes from a supervisor with the authority to ask these questions, you should simply pleasantly remind the questioner that you could lose your own job for disclosing other people’s calendars and refer them to the employee in question or human resources, if appropriate.

The key to successful and effective office calendar etiquette is simple: keep your mouth shut. In time, you will find that your employers and co-workers respect you for the respect that you show their private affairs and your position in the company will likely benefit as a result.

Although everyone seems to be in agreement that Facebook should play an important role in your business, the sad fact of the matter is that most people just do not understand how to use it effectively. Even the best email marketers out there who have thousands and thousands of “friends” and “fans” have publicly expressed frustration at their inability to turn those individuals from acquaintances into clients and sales. Having the ability to effectively utilize Facebook in your business is one of the best ways to make yourself stand out from the rest of the crowd and is often worth a hefty pay hike in the bargain. You will find that it will pay off for you fast in just about any administrative or other position if you can make money for your business using Facebook.
 

One of the most important things to remember when you are using Facebook or other social networking sites for business is that they are, at heart, social. While you may not actually consider every single person on your friend list a personal friend, you need to provide a social context for your communications. To some degree, you need to have a real relationship and rapport with the people that you are targeting via social networking in order for your efforts to be effective. This means that you need a picture of a person rather than a logo, for example, as your profile picture. It also means that you should generally post in the first person and post periodically throughout the day, in real time, instead of just once or twice on a schedule.

Next, remember that the big advantage of social networking is that you can elicit action. However, that action may not necessarily be making a purchase. What you can do in a reasonably predictable manner is move people – literally. For example, some retail companies offer their “friends” extra coupons or special sales that take place only if you work through Facebook. Sometimes you even have to go to the store in person at a certain time and show you are a friend by displaying a coupon. This might get you a free item or a good discount. The important thing is that the people are inside the store and exposed to the merchandise.

Social networking and social media are highly effective forms of advertising in addition to being great ways to stay in touch. However, you have to have a light touch or people will feel that their trust in you as a “friend” has been violated. Always tread lightly with social media and take care to be considerate and your marketing will have greater effect.

We’ve all met this person. In fact, there is one in pretty much every office. Sometimes it’s the lady with the twenty pictures of her dog and the gilded stature of her dog’s paw print and the 3 stuffed dogs on her desk. Other times it is someone who is a little too loud, a little too nosy or a little too outspoken. Regardless of what this person’s personality traits are, they fall in the category of quirky. However, since they do a good job or haven’t done anything terrible (depending on how the employer runs the office), they continue to work there and do quirky things.

While some people make their idiosyncrasies work for them, generally as an administrative assistant it is best to avoid falling into the “quirky” trap. While it will make you easy to remember, it also diminishes your professionalism. As the first line of contact with the outside world – and all the customers and potential clients in it – being quirky can be a greater liability for you than it can be for people who do not work as directly with clients. In fact, if you are overly quirky, it can even prevent you from being lined up for projects or getting a job in the first place.

This does not mean that you should not show any personality whatsoever. Having a picture of your family or even your dog on your desk does not hinder your professionalism. Even letting some of your slight eccentricities show will not hurt you – as long as you keep them in their place. The important thing is to make it very clear that you are fully professional when it matters, and not be one of those people who the rest of the office warns people about before they ever set foot inside. If you let your “funny” habits get the best of you, then you could find that they end up getting the best of your job as well.

As an administrative professional, you will often be the first contact for people who wish to work with your employer or with whom your employer wishes to do business. As a result, you will get a wide amount of exposure and likely have a number of contacts – or at least contact information – that many people would kill for. Now, ethically – and legally in many cases – you are bound contractually not to reveal that information to other people, and if you leave the company you may not be able to take that information with you. However, this does not prevent you from doing some highly valuable networking for you and your boss while you are doing the company’s work as wel

When it comes to initial contact, first impressions are everything. This is obviously not news. However, what you may not have considered is that you can make just as good an impression of yourself on someone while you are promoting your company as you can for the company. A professional demeanor should, ideally, cement a company in a new or potential client’s brain as an asset. However, if you are friendly, knowledgeable and interested (within the bounds of reason, of course) when you are working with clients, then they will appreciate this individual touch and remember you and your company fondly. As a result, you will be able to develop contacts who think as much of you and your administrative or networking abilities as they do of your employer.

Ideally, you will never have to leave an employer until you decide to do so. However, there will be instances in which you may lose your job due to economics or other factors. When this occurs, your networking and positive people skills will not only guarantee that you will be missed when you are gone, but that a number of other entities are just waiting to snatch you up off the job market before you have even had time to get your resume out there. Never forget that every connection you make is personal as well as professional, and you will find that your reputation is solid in every aspect.

Your relationship with your boss will be critical to your happiness and success in your tenure in a position. While there are times when you will immediately “hit it off” with a new employer, there will be many other times where you simply coexist at first. While this may be just fine with you and your boss, ultimately you will both get more out of your working relationship if it is a strong, trusting one rather than simply a relationship based on proximity to each other.

To this end, here are three ways to strengthen your relationship with your boss:

• Report on yourself
  Make sure that your employer knows what you are up to all day. Even if they do not ask, provide timely updates on projects and deadlines so that they know where things stand. This not only keeps your boss informed, but it also shows initiative and demonstrates that you are taking the role that you have been assigned seriously.
   
• Keep things in confidence
  Even if you have not been directly instructed to keep things quiet, do not talk about work at work. Your boss will appreciate your discretion and come to perceive you as a person who can be trusted with information rather than someone who talks a lot about work-related minutia that may not be able to keep their mouth shut when it matters.
   
• Remember details
  Keep up with the little things. For example, if you are an assistant, then make sure you remember personal details like anniversaries and birthdays when that information is available to you. Format correspondence with your boss in the ways that he or she most prefers for easy, pleasant reading and make sure that you remain conscious of how he or she likes to receive information.

By carefully cultivating your end of the relationship between you and your boss, you will find that you are able to establish a stronger bond between the two of you that will help you remain happy and productive in your position.

When it comes to organization, it is hard to beat a good color coding system. It is one of the best ways to quickly access information and to set up a system that others can use even when you are not in the office to find items that you need. Color coding is a great tool, but you must use it effectively or you may find that you are spending more time deciphering your color code than you are finding your target information.

Here are three different ways to color code your files:

• Code by number
  When coding by number, you assign a color for each number 0 through 9. This is a great system if your files are organized by number or if you use a lot of different dates to sort your files. However, if you have a complicated numeric system for your files, you may need to assign additional colors in the spectrum beyond the initial nine to help identify misfiles.
   
• Code by letter
  If you categorize your files by letters – either names or other alphabetical designations – then color coding by letter can be useful. In this instance, you will need a spectrum of 26 colors in order to color code by letter. Some offices actually make the letters themselves large and colorful, while others opt to use the file folders to create the color spectrum. Color coding by letter can be combined with color coding by number to create a more elaborate system, but in this case the main benefit of this decision is that it creates a system in which misfiles are easily apparent. It can still be quite difficult to navigate.
   
• Code by topic
  If you have a manageable number of topics of types of files, then you may choose to color code by topic. You simply need to assign a color to each type of file, then alphabetize within each color.

You will need to take a close look at your file contents to determine what is needed for your personal color coding system. Color coded filing prevents misfiling since an out-of-order file is immediately apparent, and you will love the ease with which you can file things and find things at your fingertips.

As an assistant – your job is to make things run smoothly. However, if you are good at your job then your boss may end up not “seeing” your hand in things at all, which can be frustrating for you and lead not only to a lack of appreciation, but a lack of salary-related compensation.

When I first started, I took great pride in my ability to make things run so smoothly that my boss actually thought he was in charge. I chuckled to myself that he had no idea it was me, behind the scenes, who had taken his schedule in hand and arranged it in such an organized and efficient fashion. I chuckled right up to the day of my first review, when he gave me all “adequate” scores for my, quite frankly, incredible ability to keep that man on time and in the places he was supposed to be.

I was livid. I almost quit on the spot. However, one of my good friends saved me from that mistake of temper. “How is he going to know what you do if you don’t tell him?” she asked me. “After all, you talk all the time about how he thinks he’s the one in charge.”

Well, that made me stop and take a few deep breaths. I had to admit she was right. I had basically done my job “too well,” and rendered myself invisible on my employer’s radar. I decided then and there that I would make some changes.

You may be thinking that I let him foul up on his own a couple times to show him how important I was. I was tempted, but I knew that would only make me look badly for not keeping the schedule and the boss on track. So instead I tracked my successes and kept notes on exactly what I accomplished each day. As the days passed, I developed quite a portfolio of achievements, so when my next review came around, I was ready to show my employer just exactly what it is that I do all day. I got my raise and almost more importantly, I got my recognition. Now even though I need to be invisible on a daily basis – if I’m doing things right – I know that my employer recognizes just how active I am behind the scenes.