Administrative Assistant's Update

MAY 2014 2 You are a freelancer. We all are I recently spoke to a class of third- year journalism students at Ryerson University. The topic was Managing a Freelance Career. It struck me that really, we are all freelancers these days. Being a freelancer means be- ing in charge of your career, which may have a specifi c focus but likely comprises many skills and inter- ests. Freelancing requires you to be responsible for your own skills de- velopment, networking and brand management. We each have many areas of interest in addition to what we do in our core job. We develop and apply skills in more than one area. And most of us have a brand that we maintain and market through networking and social media. During work hours In addition to your administrative duties, chances are you also special- ize in certain areas. For instance, you may be the offi ce MS Word expert, or the go-to PowerPoint person or the main minutes-taker. You develop skills in these areas and eventually people who aren't in your department seek you out for your expertise. Ever fi nd yourself helping the marketing department with Excel? Ever been asked by the CEO to take minutes at a board meeting because it's something you're really good at (when you normally work in the HR depart- ment)? You're freelancing. After hours Your hobbies and interests count. Professional freelancers fi nd that their career path often intersects with, and is enhanced by, their non- professional interests. For instance, a penchant for art fi lms can lead to blogging about them, and that can lead to requests for presentations about them which could become a paying gig. At the very least, it will likely lead to an improvement in your presenting skills, and from there it's easy to see how those skills could result in a promotion at work. Professionalism above all The best piece of advice I can give to anyone who freelances is to be professional, above all else. Tweets and Facebook posts never go away. Something you write in a fi t of pique will come back to haunt you. On the other hand, tapping into your expertise and sharing it online could easily have positive ramifi cations far beyond your core job. This morning I posted a com- ment on Twitter about local politics. That comment was picked up by someone who endorsed it with a positive comment about me, and then tweeted it out to his more than 100,000 Twitter followers (which in turn netted me a raft of new Twitter followers). Like most things on Twitter, the endorsement was half luck and half design—or maybe 80/20 in favour of luck. I'd posted a comment that I had thought about and edited, and added the appropriate hashtag—and then got lucky that it was seen and picked up. But one thing is certain, if I'd fl ubbed it, Tweeting a com- ment fi lled with typos or venom, it wouldn't have been picked up—or worse, it might have been widely retweeted for the wrong reasons. It can be helpful to think of your- self as a freelancer and it can help you to advance your main career if you act accordingly. Be professional and scrupulous in all areas of your life because these days, everything intersects. Administrative Assistant's Update is published once a month by Thomson Reuters Canada Ltd. EDITORIAL OFFICE v joycegrant@sympatico.ca S (416) 656-7796 U Joyce Grant, Editor Administrative Assistant's Update Thomson Reuters Canada Ltd. 1 Corporate Plaza, 2075 Kennedy Road Toronto, ON M1T 3V4 CUSTOMER SERVICE S (416) 609-3800 (800) 387-5164 T FAX (416) 298-5082 (877) 750-9041 v carswell.customerrelations@ thomsonreuters.com Contents copyright. All rights reserved. © 2014 Thomson Reuters Canada Ltd. Contents may not be reproduced without written permission. Brief extracts may be made with due acknowledgement. Annual subscription: $189. Publications Mail Registration No. 40065782 GST# 897176350 UPDATE Administrative Assistant's F R O M T H E E D I TO R Joyce Grant 2014 May AAU.indd 2 2014 May AAU.indd 2 14-04-17 9:12 AM 14-04-17 9:12 AM

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