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

What is a senior secretary and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

4 min read

Senior secretaries go by several diverse job titles depending on their employers; these include executive secretary, administrative assistant, and executive administrative assistant. Regardless of the title, this personnel performs a similar role, helping businesses run efficiently by offering many administrative tasks. Senior secretaries usually make more judgments about administrative tasks than their junior counterparts, such as decision-making about incoming requests and other forms of communication for managers and senior staff. Senior secretaries might respond to requests unilaterally without guidance, screen incoming communication, and bring only essential matters to the attention of senior staff. They are often longtime members of the company and get promoted into the senior position; this tenure is why managers feel comfortable allowing senior secretaries leeway to make judgments and decisions.

Senior secretaries must have excellent communication, organization, time management skills, and familiarity with the business's practices, and technical knowledge about their business' field. Many senior secretaries also have bachelor's degrees that relate to the business domain.

If you possess all these skills, you can probably earn around $15 per hour. However, with some experience, you could expect even more.

ScoreSenior SecretaryUS Average

Salary

2.6

Avg. Salary $33,120

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 94.15%

male 5.85%

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 secretary

Explore senior secretary education requirements

Most common senior secretary degrees

Bachelor's

40.1 %

Associate

30.1 %

High School Diploma

14.1 %

Start to develop specific senior secretary skills

Skills	Percentages
Patients	11.81%
Routine Correspondence	10.89%
Data Entry	8.13%
Telephone Calls	5.91%
Office Equipment	5.55%

Complete relevant senior secretary training and internships

Accountants spend an average of Less than 1 month on post-employment, on-the-job training. New senior 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 secretary based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real senior secretary resumes.

Research senior secretary duties and responsibilities

Manage high volume of requests and correspondence from executives and colleagues, pharmaceutical representatives, patients and outside physicians.
Prepare PowerPoint presentations, complete statistical reports, and convert reports to various formats.
Maintain confidentiality of all payroll documents and office files.
Compile and distribute customer updates for payroll software programs and telecommunications networks.

Get senior secretary experience

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

Prepare your senior secretary resume

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

Build a professional senior 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 secretary resume.