An Executive Assistant

Some gals pinged me asking for a good Recruiter. They only person I still recommend to all the CEO’s within my network (looking for an Executive Assistant / Admin Assistant) is David Goldman from Ruby Peak Recruiting. This is purely based on the great experience I had when I was job hunting 4 years ago. I met David, we talked and felt he was real good at understanding what the candidate wants and what the company is looking for. He’s a great matchmaker that way! ;) His network within the VC community on Sand Hill Rd is strong (my company has been using him for years now). David only works with quality firms and most openings have great pay. No harm in checking him out.

http://rubypeakrecruiting.com/About_Us.html

I also come to know of great openings within my network. I helped two gals get a job in a great Venture Firm and a Startup this month. They contacted me from the EA Facebook page I started most recently.

https://www.facebook.com/executiveassistants

http://bhavanakumar.com/

Are you interested in writing a guest post on Executive Assistants / Admin Assistants? Would love to hear your ideas and tips! 

Ha! This was too funny!

I regularly come to know of job openings within my network. So, please check the Facebook page (I am trying to build for Executive Assistants and Admin Assistants) plus my blog every now and then for an update. :)

https://www.facebook.com/executiveassistants

http://www.tumblr.com/blog/bhavanakumar

As an Executive Assistant I book private dining rooms on a recurring basis. I am constantly on the lookout for restaurants with not only great food but private rooms where one can have private dinners for confidential meetings. I thought of listing some of my favorite spots (in the peninsula) I like to send the executives I support. 

• Rosewood Hotel, Menlo Park
• Restaurant 3000, Menlo Park 
• Left Bank, Menlo Park 
• Village Pub, Woodside 
• Four Seasons, Palo Alto
• Flea St. Cafe, Palo Alto
• Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar, Palo Alto
• John Bentley’s, Redwood City

Do you have have a favorite spot in the mind? Please share!

I received some messages from gals (who were kind and crazy (!) enough to read my blog) asking me about Executive Assistant interviews. “How to prep for an Executive Assistant / Admin Assistant Interview?”, “What are the most commonly asked Executive Assistant interview questions?”, “What are the duties of an Executive Assistant?”, “How to prep for first day as an Executive Assistant / Admin Assistant?”. 

If you are going to interview for an Executive Assistant position at a decently established firm chances are your first round of interview will be by a fellow Executive Assistant.  Maybe at times the entire Admin team. Look up LinkedIn profiles and do as much research as you can beforehand. It is good to know your audience, every little bit helps.

I thought I’d write about topics I frequently ask about during an Executive Assistant / Admin Assistant interview. Hope this helps!

Organizational skills - I try to understand how the candidate deals with workflow on hectic days and will prioritize tasks. It is good to have some anecdotes in mind. 

Work ethics - As an Executive Assistant I am privy to very confidential emails, documents, first hand information etc. I’d like to understand if the candidate is frivolous with this access? Gossips about what she/he knows? Or great at guarding this information and prevents anything from leaking out.

Commitment - The entire process of finding the right person is time consuming. So, I’d like to understand if the job is a short term commit or a long term commit? How far they live? What kind of flexibility they have in terms of work hours? etc.

Technical Skills - Although most Executive Assistants / Admin Assistants spend most of their time using MS Office products and Windows, times have been changing. I switch frequently between my MacBook and Windows Laptop. I use Outlook as well as GMAIL for maintaining multiple calendars. I’d like the candidate to be savvy with technology and be confident with whatever can come their way. 

Passion - For me, it is OK if your most recent job wasn’t as an Executive Assistant. I want to know what brings you in to interview today and why you’d be a good fit for the position?

Personality - I’d like to understand how your friend’s describe you? What are your hobbies? Do you work better in a team or solo? What types of personalities you work best with? etc.

Hope this helps! Are you interested in becoming an Executive Assistant and currently in the market for job? Send me a message or reply on my Facebook page. I always know of openings from my internal network.

I am currently trying to build a Facebook group for Executive Assistants and Admin Assistants. Feel free to “Like” or leave a comment. 

https://www.facebook.com/executiveassistants

Chances are you schedule a ton of meetings if you’re an Executive Assistant / Admin Assistant. I am certain my fellow Executive Assistants have exchanged countless emails (banged their head against the desk) trying to nail down a time for a meeting that works for all 9 people but that “one” person. Result, start from scratch or get on a conference call. The funniest part is when us Executive Assistants can’t seem to find a mutual time that works to get on a call for a meeting that can’t be scheduled unless we get on that call! :) I can’t thank the stars enough when I can schedule a board meeting in no time with zero conflicts! Especially when the board members are in different time zones. So, I thought of listing some of the online tools available for this purpose. These tools come in handy for scheduling board meetings, conference calls, setting up interviews, internal meetings, etc. They are all real simple to operate, so I won’t go in detail about the description. Try out and see if something works for you. In my case, I use “When is Good” and “Doodle” when I have to schedule board meetings or even internal meetings to avoid the back and forth on email and help save time. 

Doodle, Tungle, When is Good, Meeting Wizard, Setster, Congregar and Presdo. 

Including screen shots from 2 tools that can help schedule meetings. 

I use Google Docs and Google Calendar to do most of my personal work. But if you are an Executive Assistant or Admin Assistant chances are that you use MS Office for office work. Since I am on Outlook all the time at work, I thought it would be easier to view my Google Calendar in Outlook as well. If you’d like to add your Google Calendar try what I did. I am currently using Outlook 2010.

Click Settings>Calendar after you log in to your Google Calendar. At this point you should see all the calendars you have on your Gmail account. 

Click on the calendar you would like to add to MS Outlook. I have highlighted it below.

Scroll down to the Private Address section and click on the iCAL button. 

Copy the calendar address you see on your page. 

Now that I am done with the Google Calendar, I open MS Outlook 2010. I click on File>Home tab>Open Calendar and scroll to From Internet.  

Paste the link/address you copied from your Google Calendar and click OK. 

Click Yes. 

You should see another dialog box open up asking you to add a name to the calendar. But that is pretty much it. Voila! You can now see your Google Calendar in your MS Outlook Calendar. :)

As an Executive Assistant I work on MS Excel a lot. I am constantly doing something on it. Here I mention how to sort data in Excel 2007. I have listed some methods I personally use to sort, filter or format data in Excel.

• Ascending order (A-Z) or descending order (Z-A).
• Multiple Columns. 
• Auto filter.
• Custom sort using cell color.

To sort data click on the DATA tab in the ribbon. Now you can choose what method you’d like to use. 

I have to create and edit large spreadsheets, so I prefer using the below method. Here I can rank the sort order of the columns. For example, if I am working on a contact list I can sort by “First Name”, “Last Name”, “Company”, “Country of Residence”, “Email”, etc. Try and see what works for you. 

There is a good chance you have a Blackberry smartphone if you are an Executive Assistant or an Admin Assistant. My Outlook account was configured to the Blackberry on my first day of work. But I added my Gmail account on the Blackberry to make life easier. It is a very simple process and you should be able to integrate your Yahoo, Hotmail account (if you have one) using the same steps.

1. Navigate to the home screen.
2. Locate the Setup icon.
3. Click and you should see Setup Wizard or Email Settings or Email Setup.
4. Click on I want to create or add an email address and click Next.
5. The next step usually asks you to enter your email address and password. Just follow the instructions from there and you should be good to go!

As an Executive Assistant I schedule a ton of meetings in different time zones. One tool I use quite often now is the Easy Clock. My colleague told me about this site and I can’t thank her enough for this.

http://easyclock.appspot.com/

Is it your first day of work as an Executive Assistant or Admin Assistant? Be prepared and hit the ground running. I was eager to personalize my computer from day one at my current work place. IMHO I have listed the must have software applications (mostly open source and free) for Executive Assistants and Admin Assistants. So get cracking and install the applications that fit your need. 

• Foxit Reader Fast and perfect for reading tons of PDF files.
• Cute PDF Install this to create PDF files from any document. Great way tool for Executive Assistants and Admin Assistants, no matter what your location.
• Dropbox Great way to store, sync and share files. Have instant access to all your files, no matter what your location. A handy tool for all Executive Assistant’s and Admin Assistant’s. 
• 7zip Perfect way to compress files / folders fast.
• Anti-Virus (AVG Free) Anti-Virus software trusted by more than 110 million users around the world to protect their computers.
• Skype Free calls over the internet anywhere in the world, video chat, conference call, international calls, the list is endless! A must have to stay connected.
• Pidgin Universal chat client. Very handy if you use multiple accounts to chat. Create an account with Pidgin and add your chat clients such as Yahoo!, Google Talk, MSN, AIM, Zephyr etc.
• Chrome  If like me you always have multiple tabs open, and one crashes, only that one rogue tab will close, leaving the entire browser unaffected,. Fast although uses to much memory space.
• Firefox  My favorite browser, fast, user-friendly and secure just like Chrome, but with additional features to customize the browser.
• Adblock Plus Annoyed by the pesky pop up ads? A must have to block them. Install as a add-on in Firefox.
• Xmarks A must have to synchronize bookmarks. I feel Xmarks come in handy for me to stay organized. I am never at a loss for information or passwords. No matter which computer I use, I always have access to all my bookmarks.
• VLC Media Player 2.2 downloads/sec, one the most popular video players around. Ditch windows media player.
• Pandora Zen! Soothing new age music playing in the background keeps me focused.
• Google Reader Read all your favorite sites in one convenient place.
• Gimp Great alternative to Photoshop, since it is free. 
• Picasa Automatically finds all the photos on your computer, organizing them in seconds. And I just love how easy it is to fix the red eye in photos with Picasa.
• Notepad  A cross between notepad and wordpad.
• WordWeb English thesaurus & dictionary that can look up words in any program.
• OpenOffice Word Processing, Spreadsheets, Presentations, Databases, great alternative to MS Office.
• Google Desktop, X1 Can’t find that email? Instant search is an important feature every Executive Assistant or Administrative Assistant should use.

Convert a word document or screen shot into a PDF document using CutePDF. I am (as mentioned in many posts) a fan of open source and free stuff. This is a great free software you can download onto your computer and use to convert documents. How does this work? Well when you download the CutePDF, it installs itself as a printer subsystem. So all you really need to do is choose CutePDF from the printer list and hit the “print” button. Voila! Really as simple as that. One of the handiest tools an Executive Assistant or Administrative Assistant can have owing to the large amounts of paperwork we handle and edit.

Two amazing coffee shops on downtown Palo Alto: Caffe del Doge and Coupa Cafe. Caffe del Doge is cozy and inviting. The capuccino was just the perfect blend of heaven in a cup and for the chocolate lovers the pastries are equally delectable. Coupa Cafe is another treasure with great coffee and yes some amazing chocolates and savory treats to eat. Certainly worth a try, you will feel it is money well spent.

If you work as an Executive Assistant or Administrative Assistant, knowing how to export contacts from Outlook to a Excel spreadsheet is very important. It is extremely easy and as always I try to include as many screenshots as possible to make it that more easier.  

• Open outlook click file and then click on import and export.
• Click the option export to a file when the dialog box opens ant then click next.
• Select Microsoft Excel 97-2003 option and then click next.
• Select the contacts folder you wish to export and then save where you generally like to save stuff.
• After you type in the name of the excel sheet, click save and then hit finish!