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How to find the perfect PA Role

Kate Allen, Executive Chair and Marketing Director, Allen Associates

Whether you’re striving for an Executive Assistant or a Team Coordinator role, you may feel pretty overwhelmed with the vast amount of choice when searching for the perfect PA role.

It’s a fast-paced, high-flying and, sometimes, a high-octane role, and it requires you to make yourself indispensable to whoever you’re working with. Thinking on your feet, adapting and working under pressure are only half the story – a good PA role will live and breathe efficiency. With that in mind, how do you find the role that enables you to do the same?

Be prepared

Ambition and drive go a long way, as a PA. It’s not all glitz and glamour, there is hard work to be done. With that in mind, don’t be afraid to put yourself forward for those opportunities throughout your career that will give you more experience, whether you are entering the profession for the first time, or looking for the next big challenge.

Always look forwards and consider whether the skills you are learning will help you progress in your next role. When it next comes to refining your CV, you will be glad you laid the foundations.

Expand on your skills

All good PA’s will find that their previous experience has nurtured the key core skills necessary to progress. These include, but are not limited to, time-management, efficiency, strong communication skills and the ability to use your own initiative. Therefore, to really get an edge on the market, recruiters are going to be actively seeking someone with demonstrable experience that has gone above and beyond their job description.

This can be anything from complete project execution, to previous managerial experience. It will be necessary throughout your career to put yourself out of your comfort zone and reap the benefits from newfound confidence, so make sure any examples of this form the basis of your elevator pitch when applying for roles. It can be too easy to fall back on skills interviewers have heard a hundred times before – particularly if you have been out of the recruiting game for a while.

Open the little black book

Haven’t you ever seen the film, ‘The Devil Wears Prada?’, in which Anne Hathaway’s character uses her contacts book to achieve the seemingly impossible for her boss?

A PA will have access to contacts that range from useful, to essential. When searching for a new role, it never hurts to consider who you have built relationships with that might prove advantageous to you in the future (and this includes a recruiter you have worked with before!)

Think about the type of the company you would next like to work for, and how your contacts could help you get there. Plan strategic meetings with a select few and broach the subject of a move. This is an effective tactic whatever stage you are at in your career – but be warned – doing this too frequently can create the wrong impression of you. Your contacts can be your currency…use them wisely.

At Allen Associates we believe in the importance of meeting our Candidates and we have a great range or PA roles in London and Oxford. Get in touch today.

Over the last 20 years, we have grown as a business to become one of the leading independent Recruitment agencies in Oxfordshire, and in 2018 opened our first London office, to service Clients in the capital.