Salary for Assistant Admin
 

Hi guys
Help/ guide needed please assist!
I am working in a company almost 4 years as an assistant administrative and the pay given as of now is $2000 exclude aws and bonus (the number of months the bonus given depend on the annual sales revenue.)
Please advise how can I ask for higher pay ? My bosses keep on emphasis our company practice on bonus than increment. Heard from my colleague there will be shrink on our bonus this year.
Should I ask for a promotion ? what is the next position after assistant admin ? sales coordinator?
I don’t really know what the market rate for an administrative with 4 years’ experience should get.

Joanne, the problem with being just an admin assistant is that your role is purely as a "cost".

Think of it from a company's perspective. We have a lady doing our admin work that costs us SGD 50k/year.

If she has 10 years experience and costs SGD 80k/year, how does the company justify your additional $30k/year?
With 10 years of experience doing "just admin" work, are you able to provide more than $30k of logistics/efficiency savings?

A company will think like this - an admin assistant with 2 years experience will do 95% of the work the same as an admin assistant with 12 years experience. So why pay more for the same thing?

If you want a raise, ask for a role-enlargement or additional jobscope that you can add value to your company.


Examples -

Procurement - the current procurement guy is overloaded with work so all he does is buys the cheapest parts/machinery after checking for 30mins.
YOU can spend 1hr checking prices and then make the order... you just saved the company SGD 5000 on the order. If you can accomplish that 1-2 times every month, you have justified your value.

Sales - not everyone is cut out for sales, if you are not then you can assist your sales in being efficient. Allow yourself to be involved in the sales planning, sales coordinating, even helping Sales tidy up their customer list, or help with customer retention - you are making your Sales team more efficient by 5-10% and hence, add value.

Don't just sit there and ask for money (I know you are not doing that) but find ways to justify your cost. Gone are the days where there are so much revenue margins that all employees get big increments yearly and never be given golden handshake.

Talk to your boss and ask for the money but say you are willing to add value into the company in return.

Company has money, you have time. You have to trade your time for the company's money.

Hi

Thank you so much for your reply.

I am currently holding a sales and marketing diploma cert.
I am interest in going into marketing field. however, i have no idea what is it all about. My bosses willing to let me hands on only if i know what I want to participant in.

My company is selling big machinery equipment which i don't know anything about it so I am thinking of maybe i can try coordinating seminar, event or exhibition but i totally have no idea on what is the list nor the job scope for this.

can you have me with this ?

Hi Joanne, I am the same person that replied your initial post.

Sorry to say but to do marketing you will need a much stronger command of the English language to be able to succeed. If that is not your strong point I don't suggest going down that road as you will only be able to progress 3-5 years down before you hit a block.

That leaves only the sales portion. You either have sales "flair" or you don't. If you do, then good. If you don't.... then I would suggest branching out to a Sales Support or a Customer Relations role.
Sales Support is a pre-sales role, meaning you help your Sales do the research, advise them market conditions, competitors, current contracts etc etc. This will help them close the sale.
Customer Relations is a post-sales role, meaning AFTER your Sales has closed the deal and money is already earned by your company, your role is to service the customer in ensuring that their standards requested during the deal which Sales promised are upkept, ensuring that once they need to buy again, your Sales won't need to do anything as your ability to keep the Customer happy after sales ensures that they will buy again from your company.

I would suggest that you ask your family members and those close to you to suggest which you would fit better as each person is not going to be as critical and honest about their own ability than our close loved ones (not friends who will always sing a nice song).

Identify what you will be good at and stick to it and you will progress somewhere. No point wishing you were a top saleswoman, or legal eagle, or famous plastic surgeon, if you have no capability.

Better to be a BIG FISH in a small tank with small fishes than a small fish in a BIG TANK with BIG FISHES.

Hmmm.. customer relation what is the position for it? what you mention above isit a sales coordinator? customer relation can list more details i think that is something i can go into it. i love interacting with customer but my english is not as pro no much confident with it.
Thanks for your guide appreciated:)

how come you have a diploma but have no idea?

Hi

Good day to you!

I thought that marketing is all about market your product, advertise, promotion and sales mainly admin job, coordinator is all about coordinator/assist with sales terms but in my company we do not have any position in marketing, all sales personal doing this role.
I had a fear thought came to my mind when I told one of my colleague that I wanted to hands on some marketing job. He passed me all our product catalogue as me to read and wanted me to know what we are selling and which customer is suitable for which brand etc, he claimed that I should know our product well when customer ask me.
Well, I understand you should know your product well so that you can market it nor promote it.
What came to my mind is than what the sales personal is doing? Am I entitled to commission too ?
and My role is admin cum marketing not full marketing role. As far as I know my boss willing to give me $100-$200 add on only as mention earlier on I am a “cost” to the company.
My First thought was there should be a basic marketing job that is suitable for admin to do like printing of poster, arrange seminar, exhibition, cold call, (Seeking for more advise now. ) for the beginning so that I have the picture on the basic arrangement than I can go further on from there, have to step one step forward in order to go into marketing field.
Please assist to advise me thanks.

Hi Joanne

As you are still in a fresh diploma sort of career level, there is really no need to think about switching career tracks to marketing, sales and logistics etc.

There is still some room to go in the admin space especially in small companies. You need to be more observant in terms of the different kinds of admin taking place and find some areas that you think you yourself can grow and add value.

Common areas of admin in small companies can be things like office/facilities management, manpower/payroll, events support, secretarial duties for senior management etc. It is less risky for yourself and also more convincing for the boss if you suggest to naturally branch out your work to more related stuff instead of just going to the boss and declare you want a career change.

Hi Brian

Pertaining to your question “common areas of admin in small companies can be things like office/facilities management, manpower/payroll, events support, secretarial duties for senior management etc.”
To my bosses nor my colleague their thinking is that admin is a “cost” to company and admin responsibly is to do all the paper work in the office be it sales nor service but for benefits wise will never come to admin department.
I had a so called supervisor above me which have been working in this company almost 20 years her pay just only $3000 plus benefit for her is 26 days leave per year this was given to her about 5 years back.
Do you still think that I can still grow on admin job scope in this company?

Hi Joanne

Two valid points you raised:

1) Admin is seen as cost and rank low when it comes to benefits and social ladder - This is not unique to your company, any company regardless of size generally ranks dmin pretty low, but think about if from your own POV.

If you can build up a proper career track in admin and reach like a team lead or even global/regional lead in the future, the pay will still be better than if you work in say marketing department unable to reach full potential and end up as some local manager right?

Think of careers as it best suit your character and skillsets, not in terms of which department is good/bad.

2) Career limitations in your company - It will happen in a SME to any department. Over the long term, there will come a point where you will need to leave the current company to a bigger one in order to progress. The key thing is to gain useful experience so that you can sell yoursself better to big MNCs.

I would suggest if you really want to enhance your chances, follow a 2 prong approach. Look for opportunities to enlarge your job in the current company AND start updating your CV and apply for admin jobs in MNCs.

Your 2k pay is very easy for MNC to match (no offence really very low btw), the challenge is to convince them though you spent the last 4 years in SME, you are able to perform and collaborate in a large company.

Although administration department is not a high flying or prestigious place to be even in MNC, there is still a lot of room to grow if you can find the right company.

Just to give you some inspiration, in my office we have a shared services director who looks after the 2 admin service centres in Asia for the company. She was doing admin/clearical work and slowly worked her way up the ranks through the years until now around mid 50s. I don't know her exact pay, but base on job rank she is 2 notch above me and getting paid probably in the 250k range. Not saying this is common, but just telling you sometimes paths are forged by yourself.