There are many reasons why you feel you might not be eligible for certain jobs… You don’t have the right past experience, you haven't worked in that field before, you’re unsure whether your PowerPoint or Excel skills are up to it, you're not confident that your accounting knowledge is good enough, you haven’t had much experience of organising complex international travel?
Recently, I’ve been recruiting for a rather difficult role – a strong financial background and PowerPoint skills were needed, plus a typing speed of 65wpm. Scouring my PA contacts, I found a couple of candidates who would be just right for the position. But in both cases, I faced the same stumbling block – neither candidate could type quickly enough! Out of all the difficult skills needed for the role, it was the typing that was the problem. That came as a complete surprise to me. I recognise that as PAs are evolving into more business managers the old PA/secretarial skills aren't coming into play as much as they were 10 years ago. However, these skills are still vital and worth brushing up on. As one PA said to me recently, ‘If you’re a fast typist and confident with your IT packages then, no matter how difficult the boss or how diverse the workload, you'll hit the ground running and will be able to work anywhere’.