when you say office management is it more running the office or managing other people, or a mixture of both?

When I did my secretarial training 10 years ago a lot of the secretarial course textbooks for all round training (I did the LCCI Private Secretary's Certificate course and studied for the diploma exams at the same time, squeaked through somehow with a few practice papers) included a lot of information which would be useful, I'd suggest looking for a handbook aimed at fairly senior secretaries.

If you're moving into managing other people, HR, health and safety, maybe a general management/intro to management course would help, I know it's something some of my PA colleagues have done a bit of.

Luci

one option for meeting agencies is to look out for their open evenings. I wouldn't worry too much about registering with one agency, the majority of them don't bother too much. Once you build up positive links or rapport with one agent, you may get more help. One of the few genuinely nice recruitment consultants I met when I was temping moved to another agency which was actually more in the line that my CV suited for (from a city agency to one dealing with charities) and called me when she saw my form come in, and she found me several temp jobs at a fairly dark point in my temping career - after that I landed legal sec experience which made a big shift possible. Luci

The second approach would probably work ok for some things but not for shorthand. But I can understand how you feel about being out so late, and my experience of learning shorthand (I struggled) would make me think that while the first is better, I wonder how much you'd learn in that time each week, when you're tired and so on.

Does either course include getting a qualification? I'd think it more likely that the first would, and that you'd be more likely to pass tests via the first option.

How would you get real life practice at work? This might help consolidate your learning with either approach.

Luci

Hope things are going well for you Jess, have you started yet?

Celine, I don't know how easy it would be to jobhunt from France or wherever you're living at the moment. If you can find somewhere to stay/live in London DLA looked for secretaries with language skills, and were quite nice to me though I never felt banking (their main client area) was me and ended up leaving a longer term job after a few weeks because I'd been offered a temporary contract which would give me better experience in terms of my longer term aims.

London generally is very expensive. Putney looks very pretty, near the river etc, but might be a stretch on a secretary's wages. I moved to a working class, multiracial area of north London with something of an image problem, and very little that could be called "pretty"  because it was only a couple of miles from friends and family and the places I really knew already and it was a bit cheaper, but still call Tottenham home over 10 years later, however, I'm lucky not to have to rent and to have a reasoanble mortgage, couldn't have done it much later than I did. Many people move into shared houses, but that can feel quite hard.

Hope you'll let us know if you have come or do come to London.

Luci

That sounds interesting, I work in local government too but support staff are being treated pretty badly here, I think we could do with some of that stuff...

Luci

I would always be happy to train new people - I have a different problem, last time we had temp cover when I was on leave the team got through 3 temps and almost nothing was done properly, now we don't have any...

The other secretary in my office tends to take over and give new people an introduction which is unhelpful and confusing, but I feel that I can't contradict everything she says or any newbie will be even more lost.

I see showing new starters the ropes as an important part of teamwork, I found it incredibly difficult to find my feet because Christa just wouldn't help me.

Rather than saying "it's not part of my jd" I would press for the work and responsibiltiy involved to be recognised better. It might also help if it was better orgnaised not to have to do it so often, secretaries might settle in.

Luci

The Guardian and Times newspapers also have special features (tied to recruitment advertising) on Monday and Wedneday respectively - Office Hours and Creme. They are available online and stay up at leaset on the Guardian site. Luci

The icebreaker suggested by Jackie sounds ok, and I'm a very very shy person. But stick to one icebreaker and then schedule the real content. Are there changes planned in your organsiation? Training needs, career development, what matters most to those involved. Maybe send out an email to those this is organised for to try and get some tips on what matters most to them, what they'd like to discuss? or is it part of a wider scheme - our admin support group was linked to restructure plans and eventually folded. Luci

I really wouldn't want it on my desk. Generally people in the office sometimes bring in something to share, if we put it on top of the fridge someone will open it at some point. There are lots of things which I'd lke to have some of but really wouldn't want a whole box, packet, tin or whatever on my own (because I'd keep eating) so I like to encourage others to have a bit of it too.

Luci

What is the purpose of your job? Are these people you are supposed to work directly for or do they have miscellaneous queries? If taking messages or dealing with things on the phone is part of your job, then you should have a chance to do that. Are the office queries things that people could give you a note or a message about and ask you to phone/message/come back to them when you have a minute?

Is there a supervisor or colleagues doing the same job you could discuss the problem with?

Luci

No, you don't need a degree. You do need good typing and English language. Your other language(s) might be more highly valued in finance firms or maybe law firms dealing with lots of language stuff. If you do have legal training, it might also be worth approaching legal recruitment firms regarding paralegal work.

I'm a legal secretary but in local government and it's years since I temped in private practice for Career Legal briefly.

If you have language skills another option might be to develop those with legal as a specialism.

Luci

First, to get office work in Britain I think increasing your speed from 30 wpm would be very useful.

Mavis Beacon is a computer software package to teach you to touch type, but there are also lots of short courses here if you were to move here first which would probably help you get into the right habits and if you found work where you were keyboarding the rest would follow.

Then, I would market yourself as an administrator/office manager, not as a secretary. There are some such who don't type fast. I have heard of PAs who don't come from a conventional secretarial background and who don't touch type.

I last tested around 70 wpm but I don't think that in my job there would be much difference between a 50 wpm and a 100 wpm typist - there are days when I have a lot of audio typing but much of the time I'm preparing leases from precedents, cutting and pasting and a few words here and there. IT skills are more relevant, and trying to be more organised than comes naturally to me. The important thing is I can type without thinking too much about it and that frees up attention to what I'm doing, and I think that usually follows from touch typing,

I'm afraid a secretarial degree here would cut less ice than other things. The main thing is to focus on your work experience, what can you do? Were your "management tasks" supervision or personnel administration? I'm sure there are jobs which could make good use of your skills, but they're unlikely to have the word "secretary" in the title. Hopefully, they'd be better paid!

Luci

My office is very close to where it happened, I'm fine, worrying about all the colleagues who may not be. I travel in normally between 9.30 and 10 and only rarely on  the Piccadilly line. It was some time before I realised (a) that this wasn't just a tube failure and (b) that my boyfriend and parents (and one of my step parents) would be worried.

I hope everyone else is ok and would be glad to know.

Luci

1. What is your base salary? Hourly or Exempt?
I earn about £24,600, on a salary scale as I'm in the public sector. That's the top of scale 6 with inner London weighting - my employer is one of the better paying in the sector. We have a currently good pension scheme which is almost certainly going to be attacked severely, but as I'm just about to turn 36 that's some time off for me, and  I don't imagine much pension provision or a retirement age will exist in 29 years time (or 34 or whatever...) If I have kids there's good maternity leave provision.

2. How many hours do you generally work for overtime and do you get paid for this?
Probably half an hour to an hou ra day and no pay. I would be on flexitime but my timekeeping isn't great and I got taken off, but I do stay and finish stuff, and am working on the timekeeping.

3. Do you feel that you are overworked? Or, that your office is understaffed?
One solicitor has just left and I think we have about the right number of solciitors now. I think I have a bit too much work but there's a question of what my job is, as I work for several people but there is a lot of dealing directly with people who ring up, problem solving, non fee earning tasks (ie it has to be done but other departments are reluctant to find money in the budgets to pay for it). Our management seem to want less secretaries to provide low level support for more fee earners - I'm not sure this is best use of the council's money (and that paid by the borough's residents) but what do I know?

4. Do you work for a small company or for a large company?
Quite a big organisation but the department is about the size of a medium sized law firm, and many of the sections we mainly work for are small to tiny. In a council the kind of joibs and areas people work in are much more diverse than anyone outside would realise.

5. How many people do you support?
3 directly, but I also have to cover if other secretaries are off, and help out with lots of little queries across the team. I've had moments of having our main clients demand stuff directly (it may not help that I was once their temp even though it was 9 years ago for 3 months).

6. Are you provided w/ a cell phone or laptop?
No! I wouldn't want the first one, as it would only be for work to chase me elsewhere  and my job really involves being in one set place, so why would they want to give me a laptop?

Luci

Oh how awful. I can't offer any advice but it seems rather crazy to presumably put time and money into recruiting someone and not to put effort into making them feel welcome/able to do whatever they're there for. We once lost a locum member of staff within a day, eek!

I hope you'll let us know how you get through the embarrassment of the first day of this new person starting with no phone or computer login etc for a month...

Luci