Office Clerks

The average salary for office clerks is a little above $12.75 an hour.  They are required to multi-task with skills ranging from answering the phone, standard filing and word processing. 

The good news in this field is that it's growing.  However, many employers are looking to take on people who can do many tasks instead of different specialized people for each task.   One reason is that it reduces the need for multiple benefit packages. 

The employment descriptions vary for the jobs though, so it’s not always so that an employer will take on multi-taskers as opposed to specific specialized employees.   Your requirement to get a job in this field is often only a High School Diploma or a GED.  Often the training is on the job.  If you are going for a medical clerk job though, you will need to enroll in a special school; the same with working in a court house.   Now this is where the not so fun part of this blog starts. 

Employers still love experience.  This field is growing and is expected to increase in size by ten to twenty percent, but employers don’t like to train employees, they’d rather have someone else train them and then steal them.

So how do you go about getting one of these jobs?  In a booming economy it’s not so hard because you don’t have to necessarily start at the bottom since an employer may take a chance on you if you have strong references and worked hard on another job not related to clerking.  But in bad times, it’s not the case.

The thing you need to do is look for clerk jobs that you can train on that will hire you if unskilled, so you can later jump up to an office job.  One place is a convenience store.  And this job by its nature can be a real boon for you.

People don’t stick around in these kinds of jobs, and from what I have seen; most of the people who work here are either college students who don’t want this kind of job as a career, or people who drift from job to job, depending; of course, on how good the job is.  Take Sheetz for example. Sheetz is a very good company and keeps its employees.  Yet a less pleasant convience store job can be a big plus for you.

These convenience stores are always hiring and the jobs are clerk jobs, though not the office kind.  But guess what?  The job skills here are exactly what you need in an office job that does not require a degree.  Stocking is like filing, a cash register is often used on an office job and you need to answer phones and be pleasant to customers to be a good clerk.  The only skill you are missing is in the use of Word and Excel (computer programs).   But don't let this scare you away.  I type on Word Perfect and use it for my blogs, and most of it is self-taught.   You can take on-line courses and learn Excel.  All you need to do then is to follow this plan of getting the convenience store job and be a great employee.

You'll just need to put in time for a resume, learn your job, be on-time and friendly.  Be a go-getter. 

Just realize that no job is risk free.  If you work at night, you will deal with nighttime people.  I have been there.  But with this plan, you have an idea for your job future; especially since you can start as a clerk in this field, move on to an office and work your way up to office manger.