Finding an employee for administrative work is very simple, but this is far from the case. If you are engaged in the selection of senior staff, you probably have no problems attracting candidates. However, many of them lie about the presence of administrative skills, and it is rather difficult to recognize such a lie. And again we are forced to say that quality is much more important than quantity. Today we look at the qualities that need to be asked for applicants applying for a leadership position, as well as ways to find out if their statements are true. Remember that employees with perfect administrative skills are a rarity, and try to keep them close to you for as long as possible.

1. Attention to detail

Why it is important: Do not forget that administrative errors are very expensive. If a person writes illiterate – this is one thing, but if he constantly sends messages to the wrong clients, enters incorrect numbers into reports, which are then sent to members of the board of directors, or incorrectly fills in important documents, this is completely different.

Many candidates claim to pay close attention to detail, but the words mean nothing. If you are engaged in the selection of managers who have to work with large volumes of information, do not unconditionally trust everything that is told to you.

What you should pay attention to To determine whether the candidate is really attentive to details, first of all, refer to his application and any correspondence that you had with him. Can you find silly mistakes in his resume and letters? When talking with the candidate, write down the dates that he mentions in order to then compare them with the data from the resume or profile on LinkedIn. A person who is attentive to details will make sure that there is no discrepancy in the information that he reports.

2. Organization

Why it is important: The minute spent on organizing activities saves an entire hour. Without a doubt, the organization is an important quality for a leader. Would you entrust a complex and urgent matter to a person who has sloppy piles of papers on his desk, cups of unfinished coffee, and crumpled wardrobe items? Most likely no. The leader must be organized in everything. Without this quality, he will inevitably make irreparable mistakes.

What you should pay attention to: Ask the candidate if he has ever come up with new/better ways to accomplish tasks-for example, storing documents or compiling reports. If a candidate is proud of his job, this is a good sign. Most likely, he is well organized and can immediately talk about his previous achievements. Self-organizing people are always looking for a way to do something better and more efficiently. Either this quality is, or it is not.

3. Ability to talk on the phone

Why it is important:  Without a doubt, every leader should be able to conduct a telephone conversation. Many candidates assure that telephone conversations are not a problem for them, while forgetting about situations in which everything is not going according to plan, when you have to receive calls from angry customers one by one, put them on standby or redirect them to other departments, trying in parallel identify the essence of the problem and develop solutions. It is far from as easy as it sounds!

What you should pay attention to Beware of candidates who often do not answer the phone. If you have already made an appointment, ask yourself if you have ever spoken to the candidate. Perhaps you called him to inform about the date and place of the meeting, but the call was not accepted, and the message went to voice or email? Did he call back later or simply reply to the message with text? If similar situations happened several times, it is worth being wary. Perhaps the candidate is not so good at phone calls.

If you manage to schedule an interview by phone, pay attention to how the candidate behaves. Does he often interrupt? Does the question finish before it begins to answer? How confident is he talking? The ability to conduct dialogue by phone directly affects the quality of customer service. Make sure

4. Initiative

Why this is important:  Surely you know that in some companies there is simply no one to train new leaders for. The world is imperfect, therefore, instead of the adaptation process, an employee who is called to play the role of a manager simply goes to work on one of the existing projects.

What happens next? He can come and ask himself a new task, he can find it himself, or he can just sit quietly at the table and wait until someone asks how he is doing. You need a person who is ready to take the initiative, able to work without detailed instructions, but who do not want to redraw everything in his own way.

Points to pay attention to:  Ask the candidate to describe his management style at his previous job. How does he like to work – alone or as a team? Does he need close contact with senior management or prefers to be limited to periodic inspections? Specify how to manage it.

Some people require specific, step-by-step explanations, and some prefer to use freedom, moving in their own direction and taking into account the interests of the organization.

5. Concentration

Why it matters:  Let’s face it. Administrative tasks are far from always interesting and fascinating. In some cases, managers simply have to update the database by copying the necessary rows from Excel to other programs. You need a candidate who is ready for routine and monotonous work because when performing such tasks, loss of concentration usually leads to errors. Nowadays there are a number of administration courses were available online from where you can learn more about management and administrative process easily.

Read: MBA fees and scholarship

© Ruchie Verma. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.