5 Clerical Skills All Your Employees Must Have
What are Clerical Skills?
Clerical skills include a range of abilities that employees need to perform in the workplace. These skills include verbal and written communication, attention to detail, project and calendar management, computer skills, and conflict management.
When hiring new employees, focusing on job-specific skills is only natural. After all, you want your bookkeepers to be adept at accounting, your office staff to be tech-savvy, and your IT team to have superb detail orientation.
However, what often gets overlooked in the hiring process are the fundamental, general workplace abilities that are important for every role. Looking into candidates’ clerical skills can help ensure your employees’ overall competence.
These skills are the foundational capabilities that enable employees from every sector or industry—whether government or private—to function effectively in a professional environment.
What is the Difference Between Clerical and Administrative Skills?
Clerical and administrative skills, while often used interchangeably, have distinct differences. Clerical skills focus on specific office tasks like data entry and filing, while administrative skills encompass broader responsibilities such as office management and decision-making.
Clerical roles are often entry-level, whereas administrative positions require more experience and involve higher-level organizational abilities.
5 Must-Have Clerical Skills for Every Employee
These clerical skills are the cornerstone of a successful career in the corporate world, as well as government.
1. Verbal and written communication
Effective communication is vital in any organization. Employees must be able to explain their thoughts clearly and professionally in written form and during verbal interactions.
In government agencies, for example, employees often need to communicate with people from all walks of life⎯from constituents seeking assistance to co-workers and superiors in various departments.
Recruiters can assess this skill through clerical skills tests that help evaluate applicants’ ability to express themselves precisely, persuasively, and professionally.
2. Attention to detail
Whether it’s a data analyst crunching numbers or a service representative ensuring customer satisfaction, overlooking even the tiniest details can lead to substantial, costly errors.
These errors can range from simple typos in a report to misplacing a decimal point in a financial statement. As such, consistently producing work without errors or inconsistencies is crucial to your day-to-day operations.
In customer-facing roles, a lack of attention to detail can result in customer dissatisfaction, negative reviews, and a damaged reputation. Likewise, maintaining high standards is crucial for public trust and accountability in government positions.
Did you know? An attention-to-detail test can be a valuable tool for recruiters. This test evaluates a candidate’s ability to spot errors and inconsistencies in documents and data for highly accurate outputs.
3. Project and calendar management
Employees must effectively juggle multiple tasks, meet deadlines, and prioritize work. When workers fulfill these responsibilities, you can expect your company’s overall productivity to improve.
By utilizing pre-employment assessment tests, you can evaluate an applicant’s project and calendar management skills, guaranteeing they can consistently stay organized and meet deadlines.
4. Computer skills
Computer skills are essential for nearly every role in today’s work world. Especially with the growing popularity of hybrid work arrangements, you want to make sure your workforce can operate the programs and applications your organization uses on a daily basis.
They should know how to troubleshoot common computer problems, so they can resolve technical issues themselves while working remotely.
Assessing computer skills is crucial as more positions require interaction with technology, from data analysis to report generation and communication. Whether you work in government or the private sector, proficiency in basic software applications is a must.
A computer skills assessment can help your recruitment team gauge applicants’ comfort level with standard software tools.
5. Conflict management and ability to work with others
Conflicts and disagreements are common in any company. Employees must have the ability to navigate these situations professionally and civilly to maintain pleasant working relationships with their colleagues.
Workplace conflicts can also impact your operational productivity, so it’s important to hire employees who know how to deal with disagreements without letting these affect their performance.
The emotional intelligence test is a tool your recruiter can use to evaluate a candidate’s personality and ability to effectively work with others.
Clerical Skills Examples: Key Tasks and Competencies
Clerical job skills vary by role, but some examples highlight their importance:
- Receptionists: Greeting visitors, managing phone calls, and scheduling appointments require excellent communication and organizational skills.
- Data Entry Clerks: Accurate typing, data verification, and software proficiency are crucial.
- Administrative Assistants: Document preparation, meeting coordination, and record-keeping demand attention to detail and multitasking abilities.
- Customer Service Representatives: Resolving queries and managing databases necessitate a mix of interpersonal and technical skills.
Clerical Job Skills: Essential Abilities for Workplace Efficiency
So, what ties all these roles together? What are the core abilities that make someone a clerical superstar?
Multitasking
Handling several tasks simultaneously without compromising quality. For example, a receptionist might answer phone calls while scheduling appointments.
Typing Proficiency
Achieving speed and accuracy in data entry tasks, such as preparing financial reports or updating inventory records.
File Management
Organizing digital and physical files systematically to ensure easy retrieval. This is essential for roles in government agencies or legal departments.
Basic Math Skills
Performing calculations accurately for administrative tasks, like budget tracking or invoice management.
Adaptability
Adjusting to new tools, processes, and workplace changes, such as learning cloud-based project management tools.
Put all these skills together, and you’ve got a recipe for clerical success. But how can you tell if your candidates have the right ingredients?
What is a Clerical Skills Test?
A Clerical Skills Test assesses a job candidate’s proficiency in common office tasks like typing, data entry, filing, proofreading, and basic math.
Employers use these tests to determine if applicants can efficiently handle essential administrative duties for roles such as administrative assistants, receptionists, and data entry clerks.
Closing the Skills Gap: Building a Better Workforce with Clerical Skills
Recruiters and hiring managers are responsible for building a workforce that excels in their specific roles and thrives professionally. Remember, when looking for the perfect candidate, it’s more than just what they know; it’s also about the broader skills they bring.
While job-specific skills are undoubtedly necessary, overlooking clerical abilities can lead to a significant skills gap within your organization.
Thankfully, you can perform a skills gap analysis and recruit well-rounded employees using the best pre-employment assessment tests from EmployTest. These tests evaluate applicants’ clerical know-how, ensuring you find well-rounded employees with soft and hard skills for them to excel at work.
Ready to assess your applicants’ clerical skills and bridge the skills gap? Discover EmployTest’s suite of assessments and request a demo of our advanced testing platform!
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