The Perfect Secretary

Manawatu Times, Volume 63, Issue 74, 29 March 1938, Page 5

The Perfect Secretary

Have you noticed that some men never seem to have any trouble with their secretaries? As soon as one girl leaves to get married or to take a better position she is automatically replaced by anothei paragon. There is no upheaval—merely a slight rippling on the surface of tk( office efficiency —and then in a week oi so things are running as perfectly a before. After all, it can't bo luck everj time. These men arc excellent judges o character. They assess a girl’s merit more by what they deduce during th preliminary interview than by a stud_ of her qualifications. Having selected : girl, they are confident that she wil suit* them, so they don’t mind taking little trouble during the first days. They slow down their normal rate o dictation until the girl is accustomed t the new voice and phraseology. The explain exactly what the girl is expec ted to do. Whenever a fresh problei crops up a few minutes are spent o quietly elucidating it. The girl is fu nished with a complete list of both th firms and private people who are likel to write and telephone or call. In short, it i 3 made easy for the gi co pick up the threads dropped by h< predecessor, and she rapidly acquin that poise and assurance that are tl

hall-marks of the perfect secretary. So much for the employer —now for the girl. A private secretary must first and foremost have a personality. I am not suggesting that she should resemble Greta Garbo, says a writer in an English paper, but she must bo the sort of girl one can easily call to mind a week after one has first met her. That sort of personality is mainly made I up of attention to detail. | She must dress well in the office , sense of the term. That is to say, she must look quiet, neat and efficient. She : must look fresh and clean. So many , girls look as though they would bo ail ’ right if only they had visited the hairj ! dresser and the manicurist. I I The ideal secretary attends to those 1 things automatically. She will have a i bright, pleasant attractive smile. She ,will look as though she is interested f . in everything, and, above all, she will o have a quiet air of dignity and selfy j respect—a modest consciousness of her own worth. a S In addition to personality the perfect n secretary must have intelligence, and •- if she has not received this gift from e her fairy godmother, she had better y resign herself to staying in the ruck all her life. •1 i Intelligence is not the same as clever;r ness. Many girls are clever. They know •s two or three languages, they are ie thoroughly conversant with intricate

problems of accountancy, they have studied company law, they hold every business diploma it is possible to obtain but still they lack that quality which for convenience we call “common sense. ”

They are perfect in theory, but they are unable to use their theoretical knowledge for the solution of the queries that crop up every hour of the secretary’s day.

Taking it for granted that the aspirant to secretarial honours is technically perfect in the mechanics of her

craft—that her shorthand and typewriting aro above reproach—there is only one more quality she must have, and that is reliability.

A busy man relics on his secretary to such an extent, that if she lets him down once it may mean a loss of a thousand pounds. I once asked a millionaire what he meant when he said his secretary was thoroughly reliable, and this was his reply: “If I told her that I have to be in New York on a certain day threo months ahead to conclude the negotiations for half a dozen big contracts, I should then dismiss the matter from my mind. But on the appointed day I should find myself in New York, I should have every paper that I needed for each contract, and suitable appointments would have been made with every man I wanted to see.”