Office support is one of those areas people underestimate — right up until the person doing it leaves.

I've recruited a lot of these roles over the years. Office managers, administrators, receptionists, PAs, coordinators. The jobs that quietly hold a business together. And the thing I've come to realise is that they're some of the hardest to get right, precisely because they look easy on paper.

Anyone can read a CV and see someone's used the right software or worked in a similar setup. What you can't see on paper is whether they'll spot the thing that's about to go wrong before anyone else does. Whether they'll keep their head when the office is chaos. Whether they're the sort of person the whole team ends up relying on without quite noticing.

That's the bit that takes actual conversation to figure out. So when I'm recruiting for these roles, I spend less time worrying about the perfect keyword match and more time working out how someone thinks and how they handle pressure.

And for the businesses hiring — my honest advice is don't treat it as a box-ticking exercise. A brilliant office support person saves you time, money and a surprising amount of stress. A wrong one costs you all three. It's worth getting right.

Some of the best hires I've ever made have been in this space. Quietly brilliant people who never get the credit they deserve.