Top Administrative Assistant Interview Questions

This question is asked to know how much the candidate knows about the role of administrative assistant and help the employers to understand how motivated you are about your job responsibilities. At the time of answering this question, focus on the most common duties of an administrative assistant like filing, organizing, and maintaining schedules in the office.

The goal of an employer is to find out what kind of software and office equipment the candidate has proficiency with if the candidate is up to date with current administrative software if they are confident in using the software. Tell them your proficient areas like Microsoft Office Suite of products and features like Powerpoint and equipment like scanner, printer, fax machines, and stamping machines.

STAR Technique would help to answer this question to describe how you have used administrative skills in the past and how you will use them now to contribute to an organization. Some skills assistant should have been

• Communication Skills
• Time Management Skills
• Organizational Skills
• Computer Skills

This is a situational question that helps the interviewer determine how you will handle complex situations that don’t have proper and clear instructions.

Candidates can first help themselves by their research skills such as web search and if that won’t help they can follow up with the person who has assigned the task and also ask for clarification if needed.

Here employers want to know about your weaknesses. Depending on your answer employers gasp this thing that if you can identify your areas of improvement. Tell them a scenario you found challenging and what you did to overcome that with a successful result.

Again STAR methodology would help you here.

The interviewer wants to know how you will handle multiple calls at a time and your comfort with the technology. After confirming that you are comfortable with that you can mention some phone skills you have used in past like-

• Placing callers on hold
• Transferring and forwarding calls
• Conference calls
• Note down the important messages of the caller
• Voicemail Management

In any interview for any job, it is very important to show the skill of a Team Player. A good team environment is both productive and efficient.

You can say that you can compromise, listen to the problems of your teammates and show respect to others. In a situation where you act as a leader, you would play that role with all your efforts and create a good and friendly environment.

For an administrative assistant typing speed with a low error rate is very important. Make sure that you should answer this question very honestly as they could take their test at that time only.

To practice this you can use google and can check your typing speed and also error rate.

Management Skill is a key factor for Administrative Assistant and should be in every employee who is working in the corporate world.

Tell them by example how you have managed other people and helped them in their work by guiding them and it is totally fine if one or more people report to you as this shows your level of independence in the workplace as this helps them to decide whether their management skills align with yours or not.