Building a Career Strategy for Success: 10 Tips for Executive Assistants

As any architect will tell you, there is a lot of consideration and dedication that goes into creating a blueprint. Having a plan mapped out is essential for getting the results you want. When building a career strategy, it’s important to consider what you want to accomplish by following your outline. Your career strategy will essentially serve as a blueprint for your growth as an executive assistant as well as a person in general. 

When creating your strategy for success, you’ll want to consider particular career development strategies that can be used as steps to reach your goal. You’ll want to determine what those steps are, how many there are, and expected timeframe, and what your larger goals are. 

Career Development Strategies and Tips

For executive assistants, creating a set of goals and determining how to reach those goals can be very helpful. Below are 10 key tips for executive assistants for building a career strategy for success. Let’s get started. 

1. Define Your Goal

First and foremost, you’ll need to define your ultimate goal. Your ultimate goal can be something as simple as where you see yourself in five years. The trick is to develop smaller goals that will ultimately help you achieve your end goal. Your smaller goals should be achieved in a shorter time frame, typically by focusing on the nine steps below. 

2. Understand Your Responsibilities

Knowing what you have to do day in and day out is great, but do you truly understand what the extent of your responsibilities are? Understand everything that is required of you day-in and day-out, both as an executive assistant and a human being. This is critical to comprehend how your processes can be streamlined in order to accomplish your goals. Streamlining your responsibilities often boil down to the following next eight steps. 

3. Enhance Your Business Knowledge

When you enhance your business knowledge through research, you gain a greater understanding of how what you do impacts your company. You can also figure out what steps other executive assistants have taken to climb the ladder. Essentially, enhancing your business knowledge means accomplishing and sticking to the remaining seven steps. 

4. Learn to Prioritize Work

Learning to prioritize work as an executive assistant is critical to not only your success but to the success of the executive as well. Your executive relies on you to get things done. But sometimes certain projects, assignments, duties, and responsibilities are more important than others or have a shorter deadline. Learning to prioritize work is made easy when following the next six tips. 

5. Research New Tools

Researching new and innovative ways to prioritize work using the plethora of tools available online today is a great way to stay ahead of the game. Not only that but researching new tools and finding something that works better than your old ones could be the key to increasing output and work quality. Following the next five steps is made much easier when you find new ways to prioritize work through new tools. 

6. Work Proactively 

Being proactive is key in an environment that constantly asks so much of you. Executive assistants often get slammed with so many tasks that it can feel almost impossible to get it all done at once. By being proactive, you can stay ahead of the curve and even move on to the next four steps given your dedication to being proactive. 

7. Develop Unique Ideas

So you’ve found a way to streamline your work through enhanced business knowledge, prioritizing your work, finding new tools, and being proactive. Now you can share your unique ideas with others. In essence, everything you’ve done up to this step required your unique mind to think outside of the box to solve problems and reach your goals. So, why stop now? Pursue the next three steps!

8. Collaborate With Executive Staff

Get the ball rolling! You’ve already created a trusting business relationship with your executive, so try to make your way into their world. Start by presenting them with your unique ideas and explaining to them how you’ve been able to streamline tasks and improve overall efficiency. Everyone loves initiative, so show that you’ve got it.

9. Get to Know Your Company

Who doesn’t want to enjoy the company of the people they work with? Take a walk around and introduce yourself to anyone who may not know you. Start building and fostering business relationships with your coworkers and executives. Schedule meetings with them and get to know your company inside and out. Once you have, you’ll be surprised how much everyone’s work can improve! This is an ongoing step, as is step ten.

10. Always Ask for Feedback

Always, always, ALWAYS, ask for feedback. Constructive criticism, feedback, and even failure can teach us some of the most important lessons of our lives. Be sure to always ask for feedback every time you finish a task or project. 

Want to Learn More About Career Development Strategies?

Check out ASAP’s How to Own Your Professional Development! The American Society of Administrative Professionals is dedicated to helping executive assistants as you grow. Click the link above for more information!