The role of the team secretary is to provide secretarial and administrative support to a variety of different people within an organisation. This requires immense organisational skills as you will be managing diaries, travel and documents for many different people at one time. Word, Powerpoint and Excel skills are a must, as are a proactive and hands on attitude.

Job description

A Team Secretary provides secretarial and administrative support to a group of people, rather than just one person. This is the fundamental difference between a team secretary and a secretary.

As a team secretary you'll need to be super-organised as you'll be dealing with different peoples' needs on a daily basis - you therefore need to be able to juggle and prioritise your duties. As well as the standard secretarial support, you'll most likely be asked to contribute to the team in terms of ideas, feedback and conducting research into a variety of projects. You need a sound knowledge of how your team operates, what it does and how it fits into the general scheme of things within the company.

The daily duties will be extensive and varied and might include:

• Planning and prioritising your workload
• Attending team and board meetings, production and distribution of minutes
• Using your initiative to handle ad hoc tasks as and when they arise
• Maintenance of individual team members' diaries
• Arranging often complex hotel and flight bookings
• Providing research and input into projects
• Managing expenses on behalf of your team
• Preparation of individual and joint presentation material
• Maintenance of spreadsheets and internal databases

The working week will, on the whole, be the usual 35-40 hours expected in any office-based role. However, you may be in a business where there are tight deadlines to be met and you'd be expected to work longer hours as and when the need arises. Lots of team secretaries tell us that these pressurised situations can actually build team spirit and adds to the enjoyment of the job. There's often the obligatory pub visit afterwards of course, which helps!

You'll need a good level of education - maths and English at GCSE level are the bare minimum. You may be required to have A levels though more often than not, your suitability to the job will be determined by the career record and achievements highlighted in your CV. A good track record of experience and performance in similar roles will serve you well. Qualifications won't do you any harm either - the usual suspects being those from OCR, Pitman, LCCI and City and Guilds. Evidence of excellent typing and even shorthand skills will only enhance your prospects of getting the job.

The skills you'll need to highlight in an interview for a team secretary job are:

• Strong IT skills - all the usual packages, Word, Excel, Lotus Notes etc
• Multi tasking
• Communication, interpersonal skills
• Great telephone manner and client service
• Team work
• An organiser-supreme
• Audio/copy speed 50++wpm

A Team Sec role is a really good career in itself, though quite a few candidates go on to become Personal Assistants and Executive Assistants as their career progresses within an organisation. It's also quite commonplace for team secretaries to become so involved in the operational side of the business, they actually become part of the ‘team' and require their own team secretary!

Salary Information

London salaries are typically top of the pile, starting at circa £21000 per annum rising to £35000+ for the top earners in the City, Docklands and West End. Elsewhere, you'll be expecting to earn c£16-20k starting salary, depending on and where and who you're working for. After 5 years' experience, this can rise, but again these rises are location/industry related.