How To Become A Senior Executive Secretary: What It Is and Career Path

What is a senior executive secretary and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

4 min read

Working as a senior executive secretary can be an exciting and fascinating job. In this role, you'll get to see the inner workings at the highest levels of leadership for a company. The senior executive secretary coordinates the schedule of a top level company executive, and ensures that meetings, deadlines, presentations, and other work duties go off without a hitch. The secretary also makes travel arrangements, frequently coordinating accommodations and other itinerary specifics, sometimes under a very compressed timeline.

The senior executive secretary will also typically supervise junior level staff, including executive assistants and secretaries. This individual also serves as the gatekeeper for high-level staff, frequently vetting requests and calls for meetings from clients and business partners.

If you decide pursue this type of position, you'll need to be proactive, well-organized, and capable of meeting short deadlines. Although a high school graduate usually qualifies for an entry-level secretarial position, many organizations require that an executive secretary have a Bachelor's degree. Skills in video conferencing, phone systems, and database management are also a plus.

ScoreSenior Executive SecretaryUS Average

Salary

3.8

Avg. Salary $48,500

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

3.6

Growth rate -8%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

2.8

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.40%

Asian 5.00%

Black or African American 7.62%

Hispanic or Latino 11.22%

Unknown 4.80%

White 70.97%

Gender

female 93.15%

male 6.85%

Age - 51

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 51

Stress level

3.6

Stress level is moderate

7.1 - high

Complexity level

5.7

Complexity level is intermediate

7 - challenging

Work life balance

7.9

Work life balance is good

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a senior executive secretary

Explore senior executive secretary education requirements

Most common senior executive secretary degrees

Bachelor's

45.9 %

Associate

31.1 %

High School Diploma

9.7 %

Start to develop specific senior executive secretary skills

Skills	Percentages
Routine Correspondence	16.63%
Office Equipment	9.07%
Reservations	9.01%
Expense Reports	7.26%
Financial Reports	5.61%

Complete relevant senior executive secretary training and internships

Accountants spend an average of Less than 1 month on post-employment, on-the-job training. New senior executive secretaries learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a senior executive secretary based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real senior executive secretary resumes.

Research senior executive secretary duties and responsibilities

Manage high volume of requests and correspondence from executives and colleagues, pharmaceutical representatives, patients and outside physicians.
Complete payroll and benefit enrollment forms upon hire, termination and open enrollment.
Perform administrative payroll functions by updating and maintaining time and attendance records of staff through a timekeeping system.
Prepare PowerPoint presentations for either internal or external high- level meetings.

Get senior executive secretary experience

Generally, it takes 2-4 years to become a senior executive secretary. The most common roles before becoming a senior executive secretary include administrative assistant, executive secretary team lead and secretary.

Prepare your senior executive secretary resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your senior executive secretary resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a senior executive secretary resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose from 10+ customizable senior executive secretary resume templates

Build a professional senior executive secretary resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 10+ resume templates to create your senior executive secretary resume.