Redundancy: What course shall I take?

This article looks at what type of training is most appropriate for a secretary seeking voluntary redundancy.

Secretarial course providers are often very skilled at ascertaining what particular course is most appropriate for the individual secretary or PA.

Modern secretarial courses deliver content outside the working week realising that individuals need to work in order to survive. It is not always possible for the individual to take time off to train when there are bills to pay!

The particular type of course undertaken must achieve one major goal: it must match your final goal. The current skills of secretaries will often enable them to find temping work and therefore it is wise to emphasise your future goals when deciding what training to undertake.

Sometimes, short courses may be the best way of supplementing your goals and a package of short courses to update/refine your skills is all that is required to reach your goal. Sometimes the secretary must confront the possibility that to achieve their long term goal and realise their ambitions a longer course of study is required.

This is more so in the current climate where there are a number of very well qualified secretaries and PAs on the market searching for jobs. Often these individuals will have undertaken either advanced secretarial course or an Executive PA Diploma and are now searching for jobs as secretaries.

Secretarial courses have also moved on and are delivering a range of skills which ten years ago may not have been needed. Now advanced IT skills are often a critical component of many secretary courses.

Therefore, the message for secretaries is that short courses work for some secretaries, especially those who have kept their training uptodate; for others, training may mean a slightly longer period of study. Whichever, is required your secretarial course provider will often be able to give you some ‘pointers’ to help you decide what to do. 

Mike Connolly is a well known author who writes on the topics related with secretarial courses and secretarial training and other administration and vocation courses. See http://www.pitmanhammersmith.com/ for more such articles.