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Anyone work as an Office Manager?
I haven't posted on this board before, but I'm about to finish up my grad program and am investigating several possible directions for my career. I'd love to hear about others' experiences as Office Managers.
Does anyone have experience working as an Office Manager? Can you tell me about your responsibilities?
What industry / type of office / company do you work in?
What kinds of qualifications did you need to get your job?
How do you like it? What are some of the advantages / disadvantages you see?
Thanks in advance for any information or experiences you can share!
And a little bit about me, in case you're interested: I have several years of professional experience from before grad school, and I'm nearly finished with my Master's degree. Thanks again!
Re: Anyone work as an Office Manager?
I have worked as an Office Manger for over five years. I worked for a small nonprofit organization so I really ended up wearing a lot of hats. My main duties were making sure we always had what we needed (office supplies), taking care of the in-house bookkeeping, update the website, managing our database, supervising the admin assistant and volunteers, answering the phone as needed, speaking with customers and clients and planning events.
I think if you are a very organized person who can multitask and know how to delegate, you can do the job. I've never worked in a large company so that might be a bit different when you have more than 5 or 10 people to manage.
I liked my work but now I'm unemployed because our nonprofit closed and you'll find that there are alot of administrative jobs out there but I can't find any that really pay what I'm making. Luckily I have good connections in the community and actually have a second interview tomorrow for a position that is sort of related.
I hope this helps!
I am the office manager for a construction company.
I am in charge of basically all paper work here. A/P, A/R, P/R, etc..... I have people working for me but the end result is that I am the one who answers to the bosses!
I like my job. I have a 2 year business management degree, but I really didnt need it for the job.
For me, a masters degree would be overkill.
My experience was pretty similar to Southern's. I worked at the chapter-level of a national non-profit. I was responsible for supervising the secretary, all bookkeeping, budgeting for office systems/supplies, some event planning/fundraising, chapter newsletter and website updates, training new employees on office systems, being the chapter liaison to the home office and working with the executive director on special projects. I had previously worked there as a fundraiser, so I had background with the organization. The biggest aspect of the role was the bookkeeping, which I had no real experience in (other than what I was responsible for on an individual campaign level) - I doubt I would have gotten the job for this reason if I hadn't worked there already...the girl who was in the role prior to me had a Bachelor's in Accounting and left when she completed her Master's.
I loved it because it was truly Mon-Fri, 9:00-5:00 and it made for a pretty interesting day-to-day experience. After the pressure of fundraising and late nights and weekends, I was ready for a break. However, it wouldn't have improved my situation to have a Master's - totally unnecessary, at least at this organization.
A higher-level position at this company, that wasn't yet available at my chapter, was an Operations Manager/Director - that may be something to look into or aspire to.
I was an office manager and had the same experience as Southern and Lauram. I liked that I got to do a little of everything and learned a lot from that. If I was bored, I could find a random project that would improve the office (like deciding we needed a Halloween party) and it was totally fine for me to do it on the clock.
The flip side of it was that a lot of things would default to being my responsibility since it wasn't anyone else's so I kind of felt like a mom or housekeeper to all the other staff. I would get stuck taking out the recycling or nagging people to tell me before they used the last of the paper so I wouldn't have to overnight office supplies or run to office max all the time and sometimes I would feel resentful. Overall I think it was a good experience though.