Life of an EA- An interview with Jillian Grant

I was privileged to have an amazing conversation with Jillian Grant, a successful Executive Assistant working at Conestoga College. She has been an assistant to the Dean of the college for about nine years. She started her career path by volunteering in many events in college while she was a student for a 2-year diploma course. She also worked at the information desk at the college and had one-year contract to work as the Chair of the Child Program. Currently, she is an Executive Assistant of Vice President of International Centre at Conestoga College. One thing I have learned all these years is that voluntary work always helps you in your professional life. We discussed her voluntary work throughout the years, which included events planning on campus, volunteer at Kitchener-Waterloo October Fest. She used to participate in Conestoga Students Incorporation(CSI) events and also volunteered as an orientation leader.

We discussed her current decision and roles at her workplace. She handles all the budget and travel expenses, financing decisions, and assisting in recruitment activities. She is also responsible for updating the Conestoga website from time to time. She organizes the VP's schedule and decides the priority of the task to be done. She mentioned the type of problems occurring in the daily work life of an EA such as calendar conflict of two events, resolving student issues, and communication hardships during Covid-19.

One of the most important questions as an aspiring EA is the skills required to gain success in this field. Jillian mentioned communication skills are foremost, whether it is through emails, phone calls, or via zoom meetings. She described that it is very important to ask questions as an EA and organize and prioritize tasks accordingly. According to Jillian, another crucial skill is being detail oriented. We were also able to discuss how to be productive in this virtual world while sitting at home all day in this pandemic. She had some great tips about increasing productivity while at home some of which were: making a regular checklist of to-do tasks, making sure that the tasks were accomplished by the end of the day, file management and organizing, and the most important: taking care of yourself.

Jillian discussed the most informational topic for EAs that is to build a profile for an interview. She discussed that feeling confident and prepared is an essential key element. She always stresses on point of expressing herself and asking questions whenever required. One of the points that I really liked was to always give concrete examples or real-life short experiences while expressing your skills. It is always beneficial when you express your skills and qualities with real-life encounters.

Jillian Shared the current trends of the EA profession that the virtual EA is a hit these days due to this pandemic. She believes that an EA should be capable of assisting someone efficiently not only in the office environment but also remotely. Apart from this, she shared a plethora of tips for maintaining your mental health in this lockdown and mentioned that it is important to communicate through various mediums like videos, newsletters, phones instead of only sticking to emails. She discussed how she struggled for a little while at the beginning of this pandemic but overcame it by taking short breaks from staring at the screen all day and taking care of herself at home.

Overall, I learned a lot from Jillian not only about the EA profession but also about how to develop yourself during this pandemic, volunteer, and express yourself to the world out there.