Receptionist job description

The desk faces the door. A receptionist answers the switchboard, greets whoever walks in, works out the nature of the visit, and gets each person to the right place, and O*NET's task list stays concrete all the way down: take payments and record receipts, keep the appointment calendar current, hear complaints and resolve them, care for the plants, straighten the magazines. The May 2025 BLS median was $38,010 across 910,180 jobs, and eight in ten receptionists earned between $28,760 and $49,950.

Core Duties and Responsibilities

Calls come first: answered, screened, or forwarded, with messages taken and appointments booked from the same chair. Visitors are greeted, their business established, and their path through the building arranged, escort included when the destination is hard to find. Around that runs steady clerical work: recording payments, sending documents by mail, computer, or fax, filing, sorting courier deliveries, proofreading, transcribing handwritten material, and keeping a current record of who on staff is in, out, or reachable.

Common Skills and Technologies

Speaking and active listening rate above everything else, with service orientation just behind, a fair sketch of the person who stays helpful on the fortieth call of the day. The tools are mainstream: Microsoft Word, Excel, Outlook, and Windows are the names employers use in postings, joined at some desks by Intuit QuickBooks for payments and Microsoft Dynamics where visitor and customer records feed a CRM.

Education, Training, and Career Path

Little formal schooling stands between an applicant and this desk. Asked about required education, 49 percent of survey responses pointed to high school or a GED, 26 percent to some college, 21 percent to a post-secondary certificate, and 4 percent to an associate degree. O*NET's Job Zone 2 rating measures the training in months spent alongside experienced coworkers rather than in credentials. The closest related occupations O*NET lists include office clerks, medical secretaries, and customer service representatives.

Sources: O*NET 30.0, 43-4171.00 Receptionists and Information Clerks, https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/43-4171.00. BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, 43-4171, https://www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm.