A receptionist is essentially the glue that holds the office together. They are the ones who answer the phone calls, take the messages, plan meetings, and keep the morale high. If you are looking into being a receptionist you should be prepared to do a lot. A typical receptionist job entails the basics of answering phone calls and directing them around the office to the correct employees.
This requires an understanding of the phone system and knowing the different extensions available for the people there. The next one is the emails, people will be sending emails to schedule meetings, request information and a variety of other things. A solid understanding of Microsoft Outlook or whatever email server that is used will really help you out here. Incorrectly scheduling a meeting is a very large inconvenience for all the parties involved.
People want to be certain they are somewhere when they need to be. If you are getting into a receptionist job where money is involved then you will need to know how to use the proper invoice software that is used by the company. This will usually be taught on the job as every company will have their own way of doing things and software that is used. Just like the meetings, it is very important that people are being correctly billed.
Money is the language of business and if you mess it up, you will pay for it. Not literally pay for it with money, but you will be disciplined. A receptionist is a very important and underrated office position. They do one hundred different jobs a day for the various departments and make sure everything runs smoothly. It is a good career path if you are task oriented and able to work on multiple things at one time. As many receptionist jobs are not the same, there are a few things that are similar across the board.