What makes a great administrative assistant?
As you are growing your business, finding and hiring good help can be difficult. Especially as it relates to a role as important as a construction administrative assistant. Whether you are a small company or a large multi-national corporation. Hiring a high-quality administrative assistant can alleviate daily stressors and ensure you stay organized.
A construction administrative assistant can support your company in various ways. From basic accounting and bookkeeping to more specialized work like project estimating. The addition of an admin can drive profitability throughout your company. But it’s crucial to find the right fit for the role.
At Virtual Construction Assistants, our goal is to not only help our clients find excellent construction administrative assistants. We also support them after the hiring process to ensure they’re set up for success. Thanks to our extensive experience, we’ve noticed that great administrative assistants exhibit some of these skills and characteristics:
Positive attitude
A construction administrative assistant is often a client-facing role that involves interacting with customers, executives, and other vendors. As such, the best administrative assistants approach their work with a positive attitude. More than just a happy demeanor. It was also important to exude professionalism through small everyday tasks like showing up on time for a meeting or avoiding workplace gossip.
This positive attitude in your employee can impact the entire company for the better. Alternatively, hiring a construction administrative assistant that promotes negativity and hostility will bring the entire company’s culture down.
Initiative
One of the benefits of hiring a construction administrative assistant is their ability to work on a wide range of projects and tasks. However, that requires strong drive and initiative on the part of the employee. We’ve found that a great construction administrative assistant tackles projects head-on without having to be told or directed. They are eager to get their work done efficiently and know how to contribute to the company independently.
Strong digital skills
Gone are the days of Rolodex and filing cabinets. Today’s construction administrative assistants must have a keen sense of digital file management and organization. Most executives ultimately hire administrative assistants to help keep them organized. Then it’s expected that the employee is able to quickly navigate calendars, emails, and other digital file systems with ease.
If they’re doing a lot of transcribing or note-taking, the candidate should have excellent typing abilities and a fast words-per-minute speed. As you interview for the role, ensure you ask for specific examples and platforms the candidate has used so you can get a sense of their comfort level with your organization’s technology.
The utmost discretion
Construction administrative assistants often have top-level access to most of a company’s information and files. They’re also usually included in privileged meetings and communication with executives and key stakeholders. Because of this, construction administrative assistants have to be trustworthy and exercise discretion. It’s crucial that they are able to work with this type of information. Without leaking anything to other colleagues, the press or any other sources.
Excellent communicators
Communication is central to everything an administrative assistant does. From the emails they send to the phone calls they answer, great construction virtual assistants are skilled communicators, able to provide organized and clear information as it’s needed. In their day-to-day work, they’re able to keep all stakeholders in the loop while ensuring the right message is delivered to the right person.
They should feel comfortable talking on the phone or responding virtually to emails and direct messages as they come up. Communicating at this level takes a great deal of proactivity and organization, as previously mentioned.
A quick learner
In the construction industry, things are always changing and evolving. The best construction administrative assistants are open-minded to learning new things and getting the hang of them quickly. As a jack-of-all-trades, it’s expected that administrative assistants take on new tasks and responsibilities by exhibiting a can-do attitude – no matter the job.
Even if it’s a skill or software they’ve never used before. They should feel confident asking questions and then quickly learning how to achieve it themselves.
Mindful of budgets
A great construction administrative assistant is able to find cost-saving measures throughout an organization, making the organization’s bottom line more efficient. As they negotiate contracts, review vendors and keep track of costs, admins should flag any areas they see as unnecessary spending. This will ensure they’re indispensable to the organization and illustrate their value.
Construction Experience
Aside from these skills and traits, we can also find great employees with industry-specific knowledge, even if it’s not required in their general work. Since construction work is so specific, this added level of experience can elevate the role even further and make a construction administrative assistant even more valuable to your organization.
At Virtual Construction Assistants, we can help hire these specialized workers like project managers, estimating assistants, project coordinators and more.