Be a Kickass Assistant: How to Get from a Grunt Job to a Great Career

By Heather Beckel

Book Overview

A practical guide to strutting your stuff from cubicle to corner office.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0446678147
• ISBN13: 9780446678148
• Release Date: May 2002
• Publisher: Business Plus
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

A must for all assistants!

I have read lots of books designed to give tips to administrative assistants. They are all so mundane and elementary. Not so with this book! Heather gives you fun stories to relate to the things she is trying to teach you. Her insights into the details of managing a high-level boss are awesome! She discussed details I had never thought of and opened my mind to new ideas at work. I highly recommend this book for assistants looking to fine-tune their organizational skills. You will not only learn how to be a great assistant but how to springboard into a new career. Get this book! - Bob's Wife, Susan

Grab this opportunity with both hands!

I have been working as an assistant for the last twelve years and I felt that I needed to review the "core essentials" of my profession and pick up any techniques that I might have missed or forgotten along the way. This is an excellent book for anyone who wishes to take stock of their career and review the essentials of what they actually do for a living. The approach of covering everything from first day, first job and career progression is excellent - no matter how much career history an assistant brings to a new job, until she manages to establish in her boss' mind that the new assistant is compentent, the new assistant might as well be a raw rookie. For the record, the book contains a fair amount of information that will not be particularly useful for readers outside the USA (time zones, telephone numbers, etc). So, unless your boss does a lot of business travelling to the US, the parent company is US based, or the company has a lot of US based clients - these sections are not particularly useful. I, too, bought the e-book and I would recommend that if time is on your side, buy this book in hardcopy format as it just cries out for a collection of post-it notes, annotations and needs its spine broken in a photocopier.

Listen to Heather

Heather Beckel was my boss during my very first internship. In a world where perfection was the standard, she taught me how to be the best assistant I could be. I started off well-meaning and earnest, but she helped me turn my enthusiasm into expertise. We were a tight group, those who worked for Heather, and we would all agree it was a career-shaping experience. Read her words. They will help you get to where you want to go.

A Kickass Book

Wow. Be A Kickass Assistant is my new bible. This book offered a zillion tools to help me be a better assistant. I loved reading about The White House, and even though my boss isn't as cool as George, we've already discussed several things from the book that we're going to implement. My favorite thing about the book was that it gave me a new outlook on my job and about myself. Thanks, Heather Beckel.

A fun read, even for non-assitants

This book is written to help you become a better assistant, and it succeeds very well at that. Heather Beckel's suggestions on how to be a better assistant are also useful for anyone who works in an office - her guidelines on computer use, keeping on schedule, and communication were helpful to me. But, more importantly, the book is an entertaining read for anyone! Beckel has worked in some very interesting places, with some famous and powerful people. She has some great stories to tell that complement her suggestions for the workplace. The book is written in a conversational style that makes it easy to read in "small bites." I enjoyed it.