BE ready to work hard that's the advice which Niamh Merrigan offers to anyone thinking about a career in the secretarial field. Her job is very detailed and labour intensive. The best part of her day without question, she says, is the afternoon from 2 p.m. to 5.30 p.m. when she is busiest. "The time flies," she says. "I get more work done. I love working on the computer, I really love it."

A secretary must be organised and methodical, she says. Every morning at 9 a.m. she is at her desk ready to begin. There is a constant and steady flow of work it's not sitting down typing letters all day." There is great job satisfaction also. Her work as a data processor computer clerk at a joinery manufacturing company in Dublin involves invoicing clients, up dating and inputting information, handling the payroll and the PRSI and PAYE returns, processing orders, writing up statements and handling queries over the phone and by post about delivery dockets that then have to answered and sent out.

Mornings are generally taken up with sorting invoices, letters, queries and various order dockets, handling calls and organising what needs to be input. In the afternoon Merrigan really gets into her stride. You can nearly see the steam rising from her keyboard as she works away, a whizz at a computer terminal.

Carroll Joinery has its head office in the Bluebell Industrial Estate in Dublin. It makes windows, doors and other items for the construction industry. Its clients are builders, contractors and "mostly merchants and wholesalers and whoever is building a house." Merrigan is pleased with her work and takes satisfaction from knowing that she has helped reduce the pressure of work in the office since she started working here earlier this year.

Merrigan was trained at Rathmines Senior College. Dublin. where she studied for two years. After finishing her teaching Cert at St Paul's Secondary School in Greenhills, Walkinston in September 1994. she "didn't have a clue" what she wanted to do.

Because she loved computers, she began a secretarial course. When I went to Rathmines it was the computers that interested me most." She first did a bilingual secretarial course because, as she explains, it included a section on computers. She studied business French and German. She also studied communications and public relations.

There were 30 young women in her class the first year. The following year she did an advanced secretarial course, which was new at the time. "It was interesting," she says. "It was a change. There was more to do with computers." The course included typing, word processing, new computerised accountancy and desktop publishing.

Before Carroll Joinery, Merrigan was a secretary at a wine and spirit merchant's in the city centre. Her job included many of the same duties as her current job. However, she also had to handle queries from France, one or two from Germany she handled correspondence in French. "It was a good way to learn and to start off. It was very busy. You have the Christmas season. Easter was very busy as well." Her current job is more enjoyable and not as pressurised, she says.