Introduction
Employee selection is focused on evaluating resumes of applicants for essential requirements, which include review analytical skills besides academic credentials. Through aptitude tests, elimination of those lacking analytical skills is possible within minimal prejudice or biases. Thus, this paper discusses the different elements of the recruitment and selection process of an administrative assistant.
Job Analysis
Questionnaire
Job analysis offers an explicit review of the roles, skills, responsibilities, and duties of a prospective candidate during the process of selection. In the case of recruitment of an administrative assistant, a questionnaire is designed with twenty questions on the qualifications, skills, duties, and responsibilities of the required candidate (Andreadis 9). The questionnaire is designed to capture the aspects of personal details, past work experiences, educational qualifications, and special skills that the prospective administrative assistant might possess (Sostrin 23). The questionnaire is attached in appendix 1.
Job analysis interview
Reflectively, “by promoting the principles of specialization, standardization, and predictability in organizations, classical theorists were essentially attempting to minimize the occurrences of misunderstandings” (Sostrin 16). The scope of the role of an administrative assistant requires a candidate with skills in administration and documentation, besides possessing a business degree or diploma in administration. The candidate must have an experience of at least two years to qualify for the job (Korkki 22). These aspects will be tested through the interview feedback attached in appendix 1.
Job Description: Duties and Tasks of the Job
Managing the daily operations
The administrative assistant will have the duty of managing the daily operations in the operations manager’s office.
Providing administrative roles
The administrative assistant will have the responsibility of providing the administrative roles in the operations manager’s office. The roles will include being the secretary.
Planning the duties and responsibilities
The administrative assistant will have the role of planning duties for the clerks within the operations management office.
Tracking the performance
The administrative assistant will have the responsibility of tracking the performance and report submission among the clerks in the operations management office.
Briefing the operations manager
The administrative assistant will have the responsibility of briefing the operations manager of the concerns and success of each stage of the business.
Registering the complaints
The administrative assistant will have the duty of registering complaints of the other clerks and customers before passing the same to the operations manager.
Office support
The administrative assistant will perform office support duties for the operations manager supervisors in order to ensure effective and efficient operations in terms of scheduling events.
Secretarial duties
The holder of this position is charged with the responsibility of assisting with daily communication, messaging and faxing, maintaining office documentation, provide receptionist services, and handling business correspondence.
Office accounts role
From time to time, the successful candidate will be drafting internal memos, compiling contact lists, handling petty cash, coordinating with team leaders in arranging live meetings, and acting as the secretary during the official meetings (Rudman 20).
Documentation role
The officeholder will also be responsible for creating and modifying documents such as invoices, reports, memos, and letters using word processing, spreadsheet, dataset, and other presentation software.
Person specification
Team leadership and strong personality
The successful candidate must be a team leader capable of completing a wide range of activities within the stipulated time. Therefore, this job requires cognitive testing through task-based job analysis. This test provides the company with an opportunity to foresee personality, approaches, and psychological behavior to determine an applicant’s fitness with the existing personnel, especially for the sensitive and strategic administrative assistant job.
Integrity and reliability
The candidate must be of great integrity, reliable, and able to work under pressure (Andreadis 9). Knowledge of Microsoft Office applications, report writing, record keeping, problem-solving, and effective communication skills are extremely important for this job description.
Self-discipline and accuracy
The candidate must also show the ability to work under minimal supervision, prioritize workloads, and pay attention to detail when executing duties.
Education skills
A preferred candidate should possess a Bachelor’s Degree in Business/Office Administration or at least a diploma in a relevant field. Besides the Bachelor’s Degree, the candidate should have a two-year of experience in accounting or bookkeeping.
Relevant experience
The candidate should possess a minimum of five years of relevant work experience in reputable and busy organizations. The candidate should have a clear knowledge of office equipment, procedures, and operation.
Other qualities
The candidate must exhibit a confident posture and the initiator trait in presentation and answering questions. The candidate must show a strong aptitude in terms of teamwork, future plans, motivation, learning curve, dominancy, and managing stress.
Purpose: Employee Selection Plan
Data Source
The purpose of this reflective research is to create a comprehensive selection plan for job analysis of an administrative assistant position. The data will be from the primary source in the forms of a structured interview, as represented by 20 questions attached in appendix 1. The sets of descriptors will be the recruitment activities, selection process, and orientation to ensure that the selection process is effective. The data collection method for the job analysis will be from direct interviews through open-ended questions that can be guided to get relevant responses.
Justification of the choice of feasible alternatives
In order to get the best candidate for the administrative assistant job, the proposed job analysis approach will depend on the interview findings since the respondent is qualified and has sufficient knowledge on the role and job description of an administrative assistant. The use of a one-on-one interview will ensure that the descriptors such as recruitment activities, selection process, and orientation are related to the actual job analysis objective that aims to discuss the entire employee selection plan for an administrative assistant job description.
Summary of findings from the interview
Recruitment activities
Selection process
After reviewing the resumes of the candidates, the shortlisting should be carried out and the final list submitted to the HR manager. The HR manager and his team will conduct an interview to select the final candidate among the shortlisted (Korkki 22). The interview is then conducted by a committee drawn from the HR department. The proposed checklist is summarized in the table below.
Orientation timetable
After the right candidate has been selected, he/she will undergo an orientation process to familiarize him/herself with the company’s rules, regulations, and work policies. The orientation will be a one-day activity conducted by various officials of the recruiting company.
Personal Reflection
What Went Well
From the interview results, the selection processes are reliable and valid devices for hiring management assistants in an organization. Reflectively, the desired skill must be displayed by potential candidates. Furthermore, the selection should be focused on evaluating resumes of applicants for essential requirements; rather, it is geared towards filling the urgent positions (Rudman 28).
The qualification has to be a legitimate job-related requirement. Thus, a candidate who seeks employment must fulfill the preferred requirements listed in the employment description. In the case of the position of the administrative assistant job, the candidate should possess a Bachelor’s Degree in Business/Office Administration or at least a diploma in a relevant field. Besides the Bachelor’s Degree, the candidate should have a two-year of experience in accounting or bookkeeping.
Selection is a procedure of matching candidates to employment conditions. In this case, the process is systematic and value-oriented since the selection is influenced by the desirable traits for the specific job description. It was also established that different stages involved in selection procedures rely on the kind of personnel to be hired. Secondly, selection procedures rely on recruitment sources and the technique used to get in touch with potential applicants. The procedure is complex and requires an in-depth analysis of each candidate (Rudman 32).
When assigning duties, personality checks were successfully done to promote self-satisfaction while at the same time, improve performance through defining specific substations to minimize conflict of interest as a result of multi-faceted employee management.
Job testing is an important concept in getting the right individuals for employment towards the achievement of the organization’s goals. In this case, the process is systematic, and through aptitude tests, elimination of those lacking analytical skills is possible within minimal prejudice or biases. The main idea of a selection procedure is to assess information about applicants in order to determine their fitness for employment.
These objectives can be achieved by balancing psychological testing with actual professional testing during the recruitment process, as was established in the findings of the interview. This kind of selection procedure is meant for choosing employees who possess analytical skills besides academic qualifications. The selection process has multiple stages, which include interviews, pre-employment inquiries, background investigation, aptitude tests, and screening interview (Sostrin 23).
The interview is a significant component of the selection procedure. In fact, there is no selection process that is absolute without several interviews. Personal interviews are important since information gathered through application letters, and various tests are cross-examined. The interview is an essential step of the selection process since it is where applicants demonstrate their strength and competence in reference to their academic qualifications. Interviews perform three functions. First, the interview process seeks to get information about work experience, interest, training, education, and background of applicants (Rudman 38).
Secondly, the interview process provides information to applicants about the nature of the organization, policies, and regulations of the organization and job description. Thirdly, the interview process creates a friendly relationship between applicants and employers in order to motivate the triumphant candidates to work for the company.
Every selection procedure should be certified by evaluation. In fact, it is a moment when every worker is required to evaluate how he or she feels and sees the progress of work performance. Moreover, supervisors are also required to provide their comments upon workers’ progress. In fact, the “human resource department would compare these two recommendations and would come up with their conclusion upon each employee’s job performance” (Korkki 71). If the follow-up is not appealing and discouraging, the selection procedure is presumed to be handled with faults and mistakes. Actually, it is necessary to follow-up with fresh employees since it is important to know how they are progressing with work performance. It is helpful to handle problems at an early stage in order to support employees who might encounter challenges rather than suppressing critical issues, which would have long-term negative effects on the company.
What Might be Improved
There is need to there is a need to merge organizational skills, knowledge, and culture with the new challenges and demands of the job description to ensure that the selection process is more dynamic and focused on producing the nest candidate. Therefore, there is a constant need to use psychological tests because the department operates in a highly stratified environment to ensure that the final candidate selected is well rounded to serve as an administrative assistant.
Since the “three key dilemmas in talent and performance management are transparency versus autonomy, power of HR versus the power of academics, and equality versus homogeneity” (Andreadis 9), there is need to evaluate the effectiveness of the selection process in realizing the goals and objectives of recruitment of new personnel. The performance should be measured through the appraisal feedback in the form of 360-degree feedback program is testing the success of each stage of selection of the administrative assistant. Therefore, the organization must be effective in committing to compliance and adoption of standard business practices since the benefits outweigh the cost implications of a poorly conducted selection process.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the main aim of the selection procedure is to employ applicants who have a high possibility of working successfully as administrative assistants. This kind of selection procedure is meant for choosing employees who possess analytical skills besides academic qualifications. The selection process has multiple stages, which include interviews, pre-employment inquiries, background investigation, aptitude tests, and screening interviews. The process was very successful, as indicated in the interview findings.
Works Cited
Andreadis, Nicholas. “Learning and organizational effectiveness: A systems perspective,” Performance Improvement, 48.1 (2009): 5-11. Print.
Korkki, Philip. Administrative assistants on the workplaces frontline. New York: Wiley and Sons, 2012. Print.
Rudman, Ronald. Getting the right people: Effective recruitment and selection today. Auckland: CCH New Zealand, 2009. Print.
Sostrin, James. Beyond the Job Description. New York, NY: Macmillan, 2013. Print.
Appendix 1: Questionnaire and Responses
Interview questionnaire
We have designed this questionnaire to assist us to obtain information concerning duties and responsibilities that will give us a clear understanding of your job for purposes of job analysis, job description and person specification. The data from this questionnaire will be used for the purpose of recruiting a new administrative assistant in our company. Please answer all the questions accurately and honestly providing only the information related to the duties and responsibilities of your job.
Personal Details
- Name Prof./Dr./Mr./Mrs./Ms: (Insert name)
- Organization: X
- Job title: Administration Assistant
- Department: Administration
- Contact: (Insert contact)
- Gender: Male
- Qualification: Bachelor Degree in Business Management
- Please indicate how long you have been in this position: Three years
Job description
- Describe in brief the basic purpose of your job.
- Assisting with daily communication, messaging and faxing, maintaining office documentation, providing receptionist services, and handling business correspondence.
- Highlight the most important duties and responsibilities that entail your job in the order of importance.
- Office documentation
- Communication management
- Receptionist duties
- Please indicate also any other duties you may perform from time to time when assigned
- Recording minutes during meetings.
- Does your job entail any supervisory responsibility?
- Yes.
- State those that directly fall under the job as it is.
- Coordinating documentation with company clerks
- Supervising the maintenance duties in the administration department
- Who do you report to?
- I report to the operations manager
- What should be the salary scale for a new employee in this position?
- About AED 3, 000 per month. The AED 3,000 is the standard salary that most companies offer.
- Describe the complexity of tasks that this position entails.
- This position requires the occupant to be ready to work under pressure and be very keen on details to avoid instances of filing wrong reports.
- What is the role of this position in motivating other workers?
- The occupant of this position has the duty of passing information to other workers in the most efficient way possible.
- Please are there any important information that will enable us understand this position more? Briefly summarize them below.
- The occupant of this position must be dynamic, flexible, and very social person. The person must exercise self control and disciple since he or she handles very sensitive documents.
Person specification
- What should be the minimum formal education requirement for a new employee?
- A diploma degree in Business Administration
- What should be the minimum work experience for a new employee? Indicate in terms of years.
- Two years
- Briefly highlight the relevance of this level of experience.
- Two years of experience are enough to equip the occupant with basic communication skills and the ability to work in a business organization.
- Are there any specific skills required for this job?
- Computer skills
- State any interpersonal skills that may assist the holder of this post in executing his/her duties.
- Effective communication and socialization skills
- How long would it take to train-on-job a new employee after recruitment? Please justify the length of time.
- Two weeks. The two weeks will form part of the induction.
- Who do you report to and how frequently? Please indicate the nature of the report and the method of reporting.
- I report to the operations manager after every week. I brief the manager about the administrative logistics of the company. The mode of reporting is always face to face meeting.
- What is the level of personal contact with other stakeholders?
- Secondary level, especially during the monthly meetings
- Is teamwork an important factor in the delivery of duties in this position?
- Yes. Teamwork makes it easy to consult and create flexible reports
- What qualities should the holder of this position have to enable him/her motivate others at work place?
- The holder of this position should be open to consultation and welcoming since he or she forms the link between other clerks and the operations manager.