California State Jobs Exam Office Administrative Assistant 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Under California state personnel rules, which action requires written authorization from a supervisor before an administrative assistant may proceed?
- Answering a routine phone inquiry
- Ordering office supplies within an approved budget
- Approving overtime for another employee (Correct answer)
- Scheduling a routine internal meeting
Correct answer: Approving overtime for another employee
Approving overtime involves payroll authority and must be authorized by a supervisor, not delegated to an administrative assistant.
Question 2: You receive a phone call from someone claiming to be an IT technician who needs your login credentials to fix an urgent server issue. What should you do?
- Provide your username but not your password
- Give both credentials since the issue sounds urgent
- Refuse and report the call to your IT security department (Correct answer)
- Put the caller on hold and ask a coworker for advice
Correct answer: Refuse and report the call to your IT security department
Legitimate IT staff never request login credentials over the phone; this is a classic social engineering attack that should be reported.
Question 3: A state office's petty cash fund is used primarily for:
- Large equipment purchases
- Employee travel reimbursements over $500
- Small, incidental office expenses that cannot wait for a purchase order (Correct answer)
- Payroll advances for employees
Correct answer: Small, incidental office expenses that cannot wait for a purchase order
Petty cash covers minor, immediate expenses such as postage or small supplies that are impractical to process through normal procurement.
Question 4: When using a numeric filing system, which sequence is correct?
- 1, 10, 100, 2, 20, 200
- 1, 2, 10, 20, 100, 200 (Correct answer)
- 100, 200, 10, 20, 1, 2
- 2, 1, 20, 10, 200, 100
Correct answer: 1, 2, 10, 20, 100, 200
Numeric filing orders files by ascending numerical value: 1, 2, 10, 20, 100, 200.
Question 5: Which of the following best describes the purpose of a routing slip attached to an incoming document?
- It permanently labels the document for archiving
- It identifies the sequence of people who need to review the document (Correct answer)
- It replaces the cover letter for the document
- It indicates the document has already been approved
Correct answer: It identifies the sequence of people who need to review the document
A routing slip lists the people who must receive and act on a document in a specific order, ensuring no recipient is missed.
Question 6: An administrative assistant is asked to prepare travel arrangements for a supervisor attending an out-of-state conference. Which information should be confirmed first?
- Hotel restaurant options near the venue
- The supervisor's preferred airline loyalty program
- The conference dates, location, and any agency travel policy limits (Correct answer)
- The weather forecast for the destination city
Correct answer: The conference dates, location, and any agency travel policy limits
Knowing the conference dates, location, and agency travel limits is essential before any bookings can be made.
Question 7: Which keyboard shortcut is universally used to undo the most recent action in most word processing software?
- Ctrl + Z (Correct answer)
- Ctrl + X
- Ctrl + Y
- Ctrl + S
Correct answer: Ctrl + Z
Ctrl + Z is the standard undo command across Microsoft Office, Google Docs, and most other word processing applications.
California State Jobs Exam Office Administrative Assistant 3
Under California state personnel rules, which action requires written authorization from a supervisor before an administrative assistant may proceed?