Assistant Company Secretary
Tritax
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My name is Christiana.
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My job title is an assistant company secretary.
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I work for a company called Tritax and we’re based in London.
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The best way to describe the job
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of a assistant company secretary is to support the business
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in ensuring that it runs in accordance with the laws and regulations.
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In essence, our job is to make sure that the business is run well.
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A really good skill to have is prioritisation,
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really good time management.
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You have to have a strong expertise in company law, in company administration.
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You also need to be familiar with the way boards operate, because as much as you
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do a lot of company administration, it’s a strategic and it’s an advisory role.
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So you need to understand risk.
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You need to understand how people develop strategies.
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And you also need to understand how people work together.
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And if I relate that back to being in school…
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Imagine doing a group project and there’s always one person who doesn’t
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quite pull their weight, and one person who tells everybody
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what they need to be doing, and one person who sort of goes with it.
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Not saying that’s exactly what you find at companies, but it’s how you work with different people.
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I studied geography
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during my A-level times, and I went to university and studied geography again,
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and wanted to go back and do a PhD in geography.
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So there was a lot of geography in the background.
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I realised that I probably needed some real-world experience.
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So I took time out, did a little bit of traveling for three months,
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nothing major,
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came back and realised I needed to gain some useful employment.
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So I went to a recruitment office and asked for some sort of office temp roles,
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while I figured out what kind of research I wanted to do, because at this stage
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I was very much going back to do a PhD. And a role came up,
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three months was great.
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Worked in a team with an amazing manager with three amazing women,
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and it was a governance team.
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And I absolutely fell in love with what they did.
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And completely changed my mind about what career path I wanted to choose.
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So no, when I left school, I did not think I’m going to be a company secretary.
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If I’m honest, I had no idea what a company secretary did.
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And everything changed when I took on my first corporate role.
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It’s in those moments where I had a lot of setbacks
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in trying to sort of navigate the new job market is where I leaned
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into good mentors, good sort of teachers that I’d had in the past,
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friends and family, to kind of push me back up
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and help me keep going and keep applying for those roles.
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It’s okay to not know what you want to do, and it’s okay
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to feel like you want to go down one career path and then change your mind.
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Don’t give up because, you know,
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rejection is a part of life, and it’s very easy to
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feel defeated when something you worked so hard for and something
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that you thought you would have, doesn’t actually come your way.
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And there’s always a new opportunity on the horizon
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so keep pushing and keep going.
“There’s always a new opportunity on the horizon so keep pushing and keep going.” After a geography degree, Christiana decided to get some work experience and then planned to return to university to study more geography. She chanced upon a temping role in a governance team and enjoyed it so much she changed her path. She now works in governance, ensuring the business she works for is run well and follows the laws and regulations.
More information about Business and related associate professionals n.e.c.
The UK average salary is £29,813
There are 37.5 hours in the average working week
The UK workforce is 47% female and 53% male
Future employment
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