Administrative Assistant

How to hire an Administrative Assistant for your SMB

Before you write the job posting, settle three questions. They determine which profile you actually need and help you avoid the scope and seniority mistakes common at German SMBs.

Question 1: Administrative Assistant, Office Manager or Sachbearbeiter:in? The three roles overlap at the edges but are not equivalent. The Administrative Assistant (Kaufmännische:r Mitarbeiter:in) handles general commercial administration broadly: order processing, invoices, correspondence, travel-expense reporting, simple accounting tasks, reception. The Office Manager additionally covers supplier steering, the office itself (rooms, IT, catering, events) and, at an SMB, often the HR first contact; the seniority level and salary are considerably higher. The Sachbearbeiter:in is specialized in a clearly bounded subject area (sales back-office, order processing in wholesale, dunning, insurance claims) and works deep there, not broad. Mixing the three in one ad attracts a very heterogeneous applicant pool and costs time. Name the function clearly in the title: Kaufmännische:r Mitarbeiter:in (m/w/d), not a versatile admin-and-back-office profile, which says nothing.

Question 2: Which IHK apprenticeship do you expect? In the classic Mittelstand the completed IHK apprenticeship is the expected entry ticket: Kauffrau:mann für Büromanagement (since 2014 the merged apprenticeship from Bürokauffrau:mann, Kauffrau:mann für Bürokommunikation and Fachangestellte:r für Bürokommunikation), Industriekauffrau:mann, Bürokauffrau:mann or Kauffrau:mann für Groß- und Außenhandelsmanagement. Anyone who leaves it at commercial training or an equivalent qualification unspecifically in the ad attracts career changers with an Excel course and graduates with no practical relevance. Name the expected apprenticeships explicitly. If you want to hire from career changers (typical at tech SMBs or in the service sector), name that explicitly too, so the right profiles feel addressed.

Question 3: Which area exactly, sales, accounting or general? The task mix of an administrative assistant varies considerably at an SMB. Three typical focuses: (1) sales-oriented with order processing, quote and invoice creation, customer correspondence, simple master-data maintenance in the CRM; (2) accounting-oriented with entering incoming invoices, allocating incoming payments, travel-expense recording, dunning; (3) general with a mix of both plus reception, correspondence and general office coordination. List the covered topics explicitly in the ad. A candidate with three years of sales-back-office routine will feel under-challenged in a purely accounting-oriented role; an entry-level person straight out of an IHK apprenticeship needs 2-3 months of ramp-up in each new subject area.

If the three answers converge on a full-time Administrative Assistant with a clearly defined area, see the ready-to-use template on the Job description tab.