Are you looking for a quality individual to fill your Officer Manager vacancy? The Office Manager is responsible for duties that are integral to the success of your business and often involve so much more than what is on a basic job description for an Office Manager. That’s why we’ve compiled a guide to the top 8 qualities to look for when hiring an Office Manager.
In the modern-day business structure, the unsung hero of your workplace is undoubtedly your Office Manager.
Much more than just an administrative role, an effective Office Manager is the string that ties together smooth business operations, employee relations and your underlying corporate culture.
No matter what kind of business you run – whether it’s a corporate office, a physical store, a mix of in-person and online work, or entirely remote – an Office Manager ensures everything runs smoothly, keeping everyone connected and aligned.
In other words, they’re the glue holding your business together!
And the more your business grows, the more integral the duties and responsibilities of an Office Manager become.
With the success of your business on the line, we’ve compiled the perfect guide to hiring your next Office Manager. It lists and explains the top 8 qualities you should look out for during the recruitment process to ensure your office is a haven for productivity and morale.
Versatility
Versatility is one of the integral skills needed for an Office Manager and is the state of being adaptable and ready to handle any challenge that is thrown your way.
Given your Office Manager hire will be constantly firefighting challenges that arise on the administrative, financial, operational and managerial fronts — versatility is their secret weapon.
A versatile Office Manager not only thrives amidst chaos but also has the skills to quickly turn chaos into order. In other words, a strong Office Manager can transform challenges into opportunities and keep the integral aspects of a business running smoothly. To that end, versatility isn’t just a part of an Office Manager’s duties; it’s a skill that is key to your business staying ordered, innovative and resilient over the long term.
Resourcefulness
Being resourceful is crucial to any Office Manager’s arsenal. It is best understood as the ability to build a network of people and resources that can be called upon to solve challenges.
Behind the skill of resourcefulness is an ability to excel in building supplier or stakeholder relationships. The more effective an Office Manager is at building strong ties with important stakeholders, the more effective they can be in ensuring a steady flow of support and assistance when efficiently solving problems.
A resourceful Office Manager is therefore an architect of a well-connected, risk adverse and thriving workplace, pointing to the importance of identifying this skill during the hiring process.
Agility
Forbes suggests that the adoption of Agile working and Agile teams drives:
- Adaptability
- Engagement
- Speed and results
As such, agility has quickly become a sought-after quality in businesses around the world.
When it comes to Office Managers, “agility” refers to an ability to seamlessly navigate the dynamic and ever-evolving nature of their professional demands.
An agile manager doesn’t just react; they anticipate changes and navigate through them effortlessly. This means that in a business environment where stability is rare, an Office Manager can pivot, innovate, and keep the organisation sailing smoothly despite the winds of change.
Effective Communication
Communication skills are of course absolutely essential for good office management to perform at their peak.
Why? Because an Office Manager needs the ability to convey:
- ideas,
- goals,
- directions,
- expectations, and
- feedback,
which all directly impacts the broader cohesion and performance of a team.
When used effectively, clear communication fosters understanding, minimises errors, and builds a culture of transparency.
In the information age, most businesses recognise that information is power, however, when it comes to hiring an Office Manager, many overlook a candidate’s proven ability to communicate with teams and empower them to contribute toward shared goals.
Proactive Productivity
Productivity and proactivity aren’t just buzzwords; they are each essential skills of any Office Manager, and when combined – are a force to be reckoned with.
On one hand, productivity is about keeping the wheels of a business turning smoothly and more efficiently through its ongoing pursuit of continuous improvement. Proactive productivity however is an ability and a willingness to implement productivity measures unprompted and on their own accord.
It all comes down to the Office Manager having an improvement mindset. While things might be running well, a proactive manager constantly questions, “How can we make it better?”
This mindset ensures that the manager is always on the lookout for opportunities to enhance processes and views every challenge as a chance to innovate, creating an environment where excellence and growth is the norm.
Business Acumen
Although some people might believe that office management is an administrative role in theory, it requires a high level of business acumen in practice as it’s all about business operations and workflows.
With the right level of business knowledge an Office Manager doesn’t just see tasks; they see the bigger picture about how and why different departments function in a certain way and intertwine with each other, therefore making decisions that contribute to the overall success of a business organisation.
By ensuring that your Office Manager has a solid level of business acumen, you can foster an environment where each department works together toward shared success and where the Office Manager deeply understands the role and function of those teams, empowering them to better manage their interactions.
Visibility
A good Office Manager works behind the scenes to ensure a business runs smoothly, but a great Office Manager leads from the front to create that same outcome.
This is because a visible Officer Manager acts as a steady presence, inspiring confidence and rapport within the team and also with any external stakeholders.
By ensuring there is a common connection point that all teams within an organisation can interact with, Office Managers quickly become reliable and reassuring figures in the workplace and can facilitate increased cross-team engagement.
More than just an outgoing personality, being a visible Office Manager takes some level of confidence, rapport and networking capability, both of which should be screened during the initial hiring process.
Problem-Solving Skills
The final key skill of an effective Office Manager is being a problem solver.
Always on the lookout for challenges to solve, a problem-solving manager tackles issues head-on using the suite of seven other skills that we’ve previously discussed.
With a clear vision of the business goals, they proactively identify and address potential roadblocks along the path to success and make decisions to minimise or prevent these problems from occurring down the line.
In this sense, problem-solving isn’t just another skill; it’s the essence of management and key to the successful operation of your office and business more broadly.
3 Steps to Find the Perfect Office Manager
1. Nail the job description
It’s important to take a strategic approach to compiling a job description for an Office Manager. To do so, look beyond the current needs of the role and envision the business needs over the next 12-24 months. As business goals evolve, so should the role of the Office Manager so the key to success is to hire someone who can grow with the position.
It’s best to anticipate changes to the role and ensure that the job description reflects this forward-thinking approach to ensure the Office Manager you hire isn’t just an immediate fit but a candidate who is ready to adapt and evolve alongside the evolving needs and objectives of the organisation.
2. Conduct cultural and behavioural checks
Many of the skills and attributes of an effective Office Manager that we’ve highlighted go beyond the basic skills you would find on a resume.
As such, your recruitment efforts must extend beyond basic resume checking to include behavioural-based assessments and interviews to screen for these less obvious skills and attributes. Remember past behaviours are likely indicators of future behaviours which is why behavioural-based interviewing is so successful when assessing competency.
This strategy ensures that the Office Manager you ultimately choose to hire not only has the technical know-how but also aligns with the values and culture of your business.
3. Hire a specialised recruitment agency
Specialist Office Manager Recruitment agencies like MJD Recruitment delve beyond basic qualifications to understand your candidate’s suitability on a deeper level.
Using proven behavioural-based interviewing techniques, they can identify the presence of the eight key skills of an Office Manager:
- Versatility
- Resourcefulness
- Agility
- Effective communication
- Proactive Productivity
- Business Acumen
- Visibility
- Problem-Solving Skills
to set your business up for lasting success and efficiency.
Looking For a Specialised Office Manager Recruitment Agency?
When it comes to office support, and hiring an Office Manager in Sydney, an Office Manager in Brisbane and an Office Manager in Melbourne, MJD Recruitment has been trusted for 10 years by many high-value organisations for office support staffing recruitment services.
Contact us on 1300 251 905 or reach out to Tara Elias our General Manager of Recruitment to learn more about how we could assist.
