Aulien van Ginneken's passion

My name is Aulien van Ginneken, born in 1969 and happily married with Henk. In 1988, I started my first office job at an investment company. After one year I went to Schoevers, a famous secretarial college in the Netherlands.

As I graduated high school as a moderate student, I astonished myself with this secretarial course, which I enjoyed avidly, and experienced as very, very interesting and valuable. I concluded this course with a successful graduation, and: a passionate, qualified secretary was born!

Several jobs followed, mostly at international companies, small and large, and each time I picked up valuable experiences which I took to the following job. In 2004 I decided to start as a freelance secretary, and since then I work for several clients at location or from my office. You could wonder why the profession of secretary is so interesting....

It is the combination of being the visiting card for the company; being able to handle complicated time schedules, whilst keeping overview; preventing mistakes, by reminding your manager or colleague of an appointment, deadline, of their colleague's birthday; being a walking encyclopedia (especially when you work at one place for a longer period); being a sparring partner for your manager or colleagues, organizing interesting meetings or events, and often minute these; composing customer focused letters, e-mails, presentations, organizing business trips, etc., etc.

You can read from the above that a professional secretary needs to have a lot of competencies, and sometimes you need a lot of them at once, and that's the challenge!

One thing I realize is that the English you read, might not be exactly the English you are used to. There are differences in British English and American English for instance, and next to this, English is not my mother tongue. This explaions why certain words or expressions might read different for you.

I wish you a lot of pleasure reading this site, and I hope that you find some valuable information. As in my opinion no one never stops learning, I am open to suggestions from your side. With this I can enhance the quality of this site and share more and more with you!