You’ve probably come across the term “administrative assistant” before and thought nothing of it. But did you know that secretaries and administrative assistants held more than 4.2 million jobs in 2006, ranking it among the largest occupations in the U.S. economy*?

Long gone are the days of dictation and making coffee. Due to modern technology, today’s office professionals assume responsibilities once reserved for managerial and professional staff.

Administrative assistants perform a variety of managerial and clerical duties. They serve as information and communication managers for an office; plan and schedule meetings and appointments; organize and maintain paper and electronic files; manage projects; conduct research; and disseminate information by using the telephone, mail services, web sites, and e-mail. They also may handle travel and guest arrangements*. 

Administrative assistants work with office equipment like copiers and fax machines, telephone systems, projectors, and more. They also create spreadsheets and presentations, compose correspondence, write reports, and perform many other tasks, that at one time, were handled exclusively by managers or professionals.

Secretaries and administrative assistants can work in schools, hospitals, companies, government agencies, or legal and medical offices. Employment opportunities in this field are expected to grow about as fast as average for all occupations. Secretaries and administrative assistants will have among the largest numbers of new jobs arise, about 362,000 over the 2006-16 period*.

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*http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos151.htm