Job Seeking TipsBy Millennium Personnel Corp.

In the business world screening calls for a Manager is an art. The office assistant has to have essential skills in order to screen calls effectively. Screening calls helps your manager because not all calls are going to be important. Some of these calls can be a waste of time to him or her and in the business world time is money. The office assistant needs to know what calls to transfer to the manager, when to tell the caller to leave a message or try calling at a later time.

The ability to get detailed messages is one essential skill needed to screen calls. When a person calls, the office assistant needs to determine the type of call it is. If the call is important the assistant then gets the person’s name, phone number in case you get disconnected, the name of their company if any and what the call is about. Once you get this information you put the caller on hold and call your manager. Given the information you give to your manager, he or she will decide whether to take the call or instruct you to have the caller try back later.

Having good judgment in screening calls is another important skill an office assistant should have. There will be times when the assistant receives a call from a solicitor. For instance, if you know your manager doesn’t take soliciting calls and a solicitor is one the other line, politely tell the caller that the manager doesn’t take soliciting calls and say good-bye. But there are situations when the caller will not tell you what the call is about would like to speak to the manager. You, as the assistant, must tell them that you need to know what the call is in regard to in order to get them to the right person. There is also the case where the solicitor will mislead you and say that they do business with your manager and would like to speak to them. It is your right as an office assistant to ask “Are we subscribed to you?” and even if they say yes, get more information. Once you get their name, number, company name and what the call is about, put them on hold and call your manager. If the manager says they don’t know that person, tell the caller “We are not interested in buying whatever you’re selling at this moment, thank you” and hang up.

I am familiar with these kinds of situations because I am currently an office assistant. I know that it’s my job to make my manager’s life easier by transferring only the relevant calls to her. If I was giving every call I get to my manager then there would be no need for me as an assistant. The art of screening calls is skill that should not be taken for granted!