My first job when living in the UK was Office Coordinator at BusinessMobiles.com. A fast-paced sales company with a team of about 50. My role was varried from the beginning. The sales support team I was recruited for was in the process of cross-training all 6 members, meaning we would all be trained in each others' duties so that we would never skip a beat in case of an illness or annual leave.
My primary role was to act as the first point of contact for all clients, new and existing, calling into the company. My managers were impressed with my telephone manner (and clients liked my unique Canadian accent) and so they wanted me to represent the company to everyone calling in. As time went on and new tasks were created my list of duties grew. I became responsible for distributing leads that came to us via the marketing team, inputting and updating client information into our database, troubleshooting technical difficulties with clients, and preparing invoices and sending out orders.
One of my favourite tasks was organizing our weekly Chocolate Friday Staff Appreciation meeting. Every Friday morning I sent out a team email asking for nominations for employee of the week. As time went on I got more creative with my emails, creating themes like Canada Day and Easter to inform my choice of text colour and accompanying images. As the day went on I'd send reminders and compile all of the nominations into a list, shuffling them around so they were all anonymous and evenly distributed. At the end of the day I set up the meeting room with chocolate for the whole team and the "Employee of the Week" trophy for the person with the most nominations.
This position gave me a terrific foundation for office work experience and an excellent insight into the corporate work environment which helped me greatly when searching for future employment. Some of the key skills I've taken away from this role were:
- Courteous Customer Service and Listening skills
- Written and Oral Communication to a wide variety of clients and associates
- Effective Time Management from working with a dynamic "to do" list shared by multiple people
- Attention to Detail from entering, updating, and comparing client and order data
When meeting room bookings became complicated and encountered conflicts I implemented a new booking system to minimize communication errors and help maintain our professional impression when clients or other meetings came to our offices.
When it came time for me to leave BusinessMobiles.com I created a training manual outlining all of my duties. I created the instructions in Microsoft Excel using hyperlinks within the documents to easily navigate from one procedure to another and answer as many questions as I could think of within the instructions.
This role was invaluable for me in gaining experience in office duties and a corporate environment. Everything from work ethic to vocabulary I've found useful tools in my career development.