Any Tips For A Receptionist Job?

[terestrife]

for anyone that doesnt know me here, im starting a new job. i mentioned it in a post recently. its the first job i have ever had. which is sad since im in my 30s.

what has me nervous is that i had to put that i had experience to get the job, you cant really get a job without experience, and you cant get experience without getting a job. lol

does anyone have any advice?

--

im terrified to say the least. lol its a really good job, working in a city office. i badly need this job, now that my mom is gone, i cant continue staying where i am now. dont get me wrong, i am living in my brothers home, and he would never kick me out. but its hard living here without my mom, and hearing him complain about my cats incessantly. he even put up a door in the middle of the house, and im now in one side of the house with my cats, and his dog. i need my own place, and this is the beginning of me reaching my goal. i want to do a really good job, but im afraid they will notice i have no experience.

 

[nansiludie]

Well, they are going to know that you have no experience since they'd ask for your last place of employment but you could tell them you weren't working because you'd stayed home to care for your ailing mother. You'd most likely be answering phones, taking messages and answering questions at least. I don't know how its going to look given you admitted to fudging the truth a bit to even get in the door if you will. Just try to do the best you can and ask plenty of questions, also try to find someone there who has a bit of experience and is one you can refer back to if needed.

I am sure it is going to be quite a change for you for sure. Please keep us posted on how it goes.

 

[terestrife]

Well, they are going to know that you have no experience since they'd ask for your last place of employment but you could tell them you weren't working because you'd stayed home to care for your ailing mother. You'd most likely be answering phones, taking messages and answering questions at least. I don't know how its going to look given you admitted to fudging the truth a bit to even get in the door if you will. Just try to do the best you can and ask plenty of questions, also try to find someone there who has a bit of experience and is one you can refer back to if needed.

I am sure it is going to be quite a change for you for sure. Please keep us posted on how it goes.

i'll try that, thanks for the help =)

 

[Kieka]

Receptionist jobs can vary greatly. It could be just answering phones. It could be sorting mail. It could be posting mail. Or greeting visitors. At my office it includes runs for lunch orders and taking care of filing and ordering office supplies.

General advice is ask the questions you need to. Keep a small notebook and pen on yourself. Take notes so you don't have to be told something twice. I would actually have a small notebook for immediate notes then a bigger one that you organize for long term referencing. You want to become invaluable to everyone by anticipating needs and staying on top of everything. The best receptionist is the one who makes things run so smoothly that people forget they are there.

 

[terestrife]

Receptionist jobs can vary greatly. It could be just answering phones. It could be sorting mail. It could be posting mail. Or greeting visitors. At my office it includes runs for lunch orders and taking care of filing and ordering office supplies.

General advice is ask the questions you need to. Keep a small notebook and pen on yourself. Take notes so you don't have to be told something twice. I would actually have a small notebook for immediate notes then a bigger one that you organize for long term referencing. You want to become invaluable to everyone by anticipating needs and staying on top of everything. The best receptionist is the one who makes things run so smoothly that people forget they are there.

thank you! thats really good advice. i appreciate it

 

[betsygee]

Even if you did have experience, every job is different so they shouldn't think it odd if you're asking questions and taking notes to get familiar with this one. Good luck to you.

 

[terestrife]

Even if you did have experience, every job is different so they shouldn't think it odd if you're asking questions and taking notes to get familiar with this one. Good luck to you.

thank you! that makes me feel a lot better.

 

[arouetta]

Everyone else has built you up, now I get to scare you. The biggie is giving the appearance of calm when you are stressed. The people on the phone or people walking in are not always going to be reasonable. With a receptionist title, you are likely going to be their first point of contact. If you have any conflict resolution skills, start mentally reviewing them.

Beyond that, these are the things I can think of:

-Working multi-line phones is intimidating at first. Most important words are "Please hold for a moment." The phone rings, you pick it up. The phone rings again, you tell the first person to hold, answer the second and tell them to hold, and go back to the first. Same when the third line rings. Unless someone is high priority, deal with the calls in order. Don't be afraid to put them on hold so that you can pick up the other lines every 2-3 minutes to apologize for the wait and to continue to hold. Think about it from your end, do you want to wait 10 minutes wondering if they forgot about you, or do you want someone to touch base every now and then? Some people ask callers to hold instead of telling them and it does sound more polite, but you run the risk of someone saying "This is quick, can you..." and you either deal with them for several minutes or you put them on hold anyway as they are mid-sentence.

-Take control of conversations. Some people are easy to work with. Some people don't have a clue and you have to end up asking a lot of questions to tease out what they need so you know who to direct them to. Some people will want to tell you their entire life story and you have to jump in between breaths to get short answers to tease out what they need. As quickly as you can get an idea of what you need to know in order to accurately route people, so you know the questions to ask. For phone calls, "please hold for a moment" is also important here, because if you feel you are losing control of the conversation, you can put them on hold, take a deep breath, take a few seconds to figure out how best to steer the conversation, and then pick the line back up. Also a tip I learned a long time ago, when someone asks to speak to someone, don't ask "May I ask who is calling?" It does sound a little nosy, even though it's needed information. I get really good results with "Who should I say is calling?" or "Who should I tell him/her is calling?" or other natural sounding variant.

-Natural sounding is important. The more uncomfortable you are with a sentence, the weirder and more stilted it's going to sound to the other person. Adjust as needed to make it comfortable for you to say.

-Phonetic alphabet is a must. You do not want to screw up "C" with "V" or "B" or "15" with "50". When you take a message, read back what you have and phonetically spell things like names to confirm. When it's a number, say something like "That's 15, one five, right?" Read back phone numbers. Don't be afraid to ask them to slow down if they are talking faster than you can write. Be careful with the phonetics you use, you don't want similar words to go with similar letters. Check out the military phonetic alphabet if you want a mental go-to list rather than finding words as you need to spell something.

-See if there's a standard job duties binder. That will usually have the proper greeting, important phone numbers, the business' phone number and address, stuff like that. It may have a list of people working there and their positions, but don't trust that. People change jobs and lists like that never get updated. Best thing is to photocopy it and write the corrections on your copy. You can update the list later, a long time later, once you are fully settled in. But if you do, be aware that someone will quit or get promoted before the end of the month, making the list obsolete again.

-Get hold of your predecessor's Rolodex. 90% of the stuff won't make sense to you. 10 years later, 10% of the stuff will still not make sense and another 15% will be outdated but no one knows the new information.

-If there is no standard job duties binder, mentally curse out your predecessor, and start writing stuff down. You will need the phone and address. You should probably have directions that include both street names and landmarks (some people do better with street names, some people do better with landmarks). You will need corporate's information, if there is one, and nearby sister offices, if there are any. If there are any nearby separate businesses that are often needed, i.e. food delivery, OfficeDepot. Depending on the type of business you are working for, there may be things needed for customer reference, like nearby hotels or certain stores, that also should be on your list. Every receptionist job I've seen has a million little notes neatly typed or neatly written, trimmed down to be as small as possible, taped all over the desk in a way that visitors don't easily see it. Do that. If it's already there, read over it to see if the organization makes sense to you and if it doesn't move them around until it does make sense.

-Learn the software fast. There's a decent chance you will be booking appointments, so you will need to know what calendar software they use and how the information is passed around. Do you enter it and everyone else sees that calendar? Do you enter it and email the appointments daily? Does everyone have access for changing things, or are some people view only? If many people can change it, is there an audit function that tracks who made what changes? There may also be proprietary software that you couldn't be expected to know, but you will be expected to learn it fast.

-Filing is usually very easy, if they have you do that, most of the time it's numeric, alphabetic or date based. If you are putting documents in folders, "measure twice cut once" works here too. Verify a second time you have the right folder when you open it before putting the papers in. Lost paperwork is a intact female dog to find.

-Prep by looking at proper business format when generating correspondence. One of the little things that few people seem to know is below the signature block you will often see something that looks like "ABC/xyz". See if your business uses that by looking at copies of past correspondence. It's a tracking thing, the first set of capitalized letters before the slash are the initials of the person that is sending the letter, the second lowercase set after the slash is the typist's initials. See if the job duties book or a folder on the computer hard drive has copies of standardized letters so you don't have to invent a letter that is commonly sent, you can just copy. If you do have to invent and it's a commonly sent letter, make your own copy once you have it sounding good. If it's something new or unusual, read it through a couple of times to make sure you have the best phrasing possible.

-Pitney Bowes is easier to use than it looks. Most businesses use metered mail, which means it's run through a machine. The prompts on all the Pitney Bowes machines have always been pretty good in getting you to do things like changing postage amounts or paying for more postage or setting the machine for Priority Mail instead of first class mail.

-The US Post Office will send you mailing supplies for free. Don't worry about having to go to the post office for Priority Mail envelopes or Return Receipt forms, you can go to the USPS site and your normal mailman will bring it along with him a few days later. On that note, find out about what to use for different mailings. Do you use USPS for everything or letters only? Do you send anything via UPS or FedEx?

-If you control office supplies, take an inventory pretty often. You don't want to run out of pens. Find out who to check with if specialty supplies are needed, such as one person wanting specific pens. Sometimes it's not an issue, sometimes it is because they are more expensive and need to be justified, sometimes it's a flat out no, the person has to buy their own. Another "measure twice, cut once", make sure the office supplies will work together. Pop-up Post-It note dispensers can't handle regular post-it notes, and pop-up post-it notes are a pain to use without the dispenser. High capacity staplers are not universal and some high capacity staples are the wrong size and will ruin the stapler. There's different types of hanging holders, an expanded hanging folder will keep working loose from the runner unless you put a 4 or 5 inch thick stack of papers in them and a regular hanging folder can't hold thick things and they will rub and possibly tear the top of the documents. Letter vs legal size as well. And sometimes an item is more expensive but there is a business need for it. It could be a color coding system that requires different color file folders or labels so just the cheap standard stuff won't work. One time I had to order some expensive items because the boss was colorblind and couldn't see the difference between the standard stuff.

-Write down all messages, and write them on separate pieces of paper. A message book is good, but some places didn't bother with the cost of that and I had to make do with printer paper. You want to make it easy to give So-and-So his messages.

-Find out the rules for personal calls. You will need to know if the bill collector should be sent through or if the bill collector should be told "I'm sorry, personal calls are not allowed." Same thing with the wife, send her through all the time or only when she says it's a family emergency? If the school nurse calls and the person isn't available, get the name of the school. The person's kids might be going to two separate schools and schools can't easily release the student's name, so which school is calling will be important information.

-Learn to troubleshoot the office equipment. Hopefully you won't have a copier like the one we had where I was making threats twice weekly to the machine that I was going to get some black powder from Wal-Mart, push the copier out the window, go down and pour black powder all over it, run a line of black powder away from it and then light a match at the end of the black powder line and watch it blow up.

 

[Katie M]

I work as a receptionist. My duties include answering the phone, helping visitors, and taking care of the mail. One of my major issues is phone anxiety, so I stick to a script of sorts. Once I learned how the transferring system worked, it became much easier to cope with.

Depending on where you work, you may not be stuck behind a desk all day. I do a lot of running around. Some days, I do so much running around that I wish I could be back at my desk

 

[arouetta]

Also, if they have you working with numbers on a regular basis and they give you a 10 key calculator, multiplication and division is number, X or /, number, equal. Adding and subtracting is done differently, you put the initial number and what you want to do with it, the second number and what you want to do with it, and after you put in the final number and what you want to do then you press total, which is usually a star.

Example, to do 5+7-3=9:
5+ 7+ 3- *. You are saying you want 5 to be added, 7 to be added, and 3 to be subtracted before hitting total.

Learning how those things work instead of pushing the button like you would an ordinary calculator will make life LOTS easier.

 

[neely]

My best advice is to be patient and give yourself time - don't be overly critical of yourself or judge the job in a day or two. It can take up to a month or more to feel comfortable. Remember now that you have a job you will get experience and should you decide to leave in the future you want a good referral. All the best of luck, fingers crossed.

 

[muffy]

I was a temporary receptionist at my job. I filled in during lunch and when the receptionist went on break. Every one has given you good advice. I can't think of anything to add. Someone mentioned phone anxiety. I worked at the headquarters of a construction union and we had a political director that worked on Capital Hill. Senator Kennedy and Senator Al Franken were just a few of the important people I talked to on the switchboard during lunch. They were both as nice as they could be.

Good luck with your new job. I'm sure you will do well.

 

[cassiopea]

My mom is currently a receptionist at a retirement/nursing home (After many years as an Art Historian then a manager at an engineering company, Semi-retired now).
First off, congratulations on getting a new job! That is awesome! You should be proud!

As others mentioned, specifically on what my mother does, it is mainly answering phones, signing residents in and out, light office work, greet new customers or visitors, booking appointments, handling mail, directing people and transferring calls, assisting with little things like helping out in the movie room and helping out the nurses on light duties. She even served tea a couple of times to the residents. Altogether receptionists are the front line folks, and must be organized and knowledgeable, with a good and positive first impression, and a clean and polished/professional appearance.

While it varies by location and experience (as receptionists are still some pretty highly skilled people. Some places these workers are like impressively badass ninjas in high level jobs, sometimes dealing with a lot of crazy stuff. I bow to them, seriously) my mother says compared to her previous jobs being a receptionist where she works is fairly easy, at least in terms of levels of stress and demands, with lot's of enjoyable parts. Again, while it can vary depending on the field, in general, it usually isn't a very complicated position. You are not tossed into becoming a physicist in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics in any case which should be a relief!

Anyhoo, when you start out, know that it is Ok to be imperfect at first. The new employers will understand as it is very normal - no new employee is a superstar immediately. You are learning in a new environment, and adjustment occurs for everyone normally in any job. Another thing, just take a deep breath and hold your head high in the inside. Don't panic. Keep composed when you are at work. It isn't so much about making a boo boo that deters your bosses, it is how you handle the boo boo in the moment. And, whether you are able to learn, grow and adapt after the fact.

As others mentioned again, take notes if need me. Take pictures if need be. Contact other receptionists for guidance in person; maybe you can shadow someone? Study about your company as much as possible - when it was founded, who founded it, current owners, policies etc which are usually found on their website. Look up "Receptionist" on youtube, there is a whole bunch of training videos!



You will do great, honest! Good luck!!!! Don't give up too easily either! Just think good people skills and organization. Listen closely to details and take the job seriously. Have confidence in yourself, and be proud of yourself when you do well.

 

[terestrife]

Thank you so much to everyone that responded. im going to take notes on all the info i was given, so i can refer back to it if necessary.

i appreciate you guys taking the time to type out so much information.

i feel a lot better after reading this thread, even after reading @arouetta's post. lol unfortunately, life has taught me that scary, and difficult things lead to growth, and self improvement. Whenever i put myself out there somehow things turn out okay.

id rather go into this job knowing what to expect, whether good or bad.

This is a huge step for me, but i have grown a lot in the past year. I will do my best in this job, and i pray things go well.

thanks again everyone! i will report back after my first day (friday.)

for some reason their work week starts on a friday.

 

[arouetta]

for some reason their work week starts on a friday.

Oh god, don't tell me you are working for Vacation Villages in Williamsburg, VA. If so, start looking for a new job fast. That place will eat your soul and spit your chewed up remains out.

 

[terestrife]

Oh god, don't tell me you are working for Vacation Villages in Williamsburg, VA. If so, start looking for a new job fast. That place will eat your soul and spit your chewed up remains out.

no its a city job, i live in miami florida =) dont worry if this place doesnt fit me then i will keep looking.

im going to warn my niece as she DOES live in VA. lol

 

[nansiludie]

How's it going?

 

[terestrife]

Good. a little overwhelming, so much new info! but so many friendly people.thankfully i was told only workers tend to call the office and there arent that many visitors. its a really calm office.

=) hopefully i can learn everything i need to learn.

 

[betsygee]

That sounds really positive. You can do it.

 

[arouetta]

Don't rush learning. You will find that there's always something new, something you didn't know. Don't feel like a failure if 3 or 4 months (or 3 or 4 years) you find out something that they think you knew all along.