Administrative assistants are the backbone of the office. They act as liaisons and points of contacts between internal teams and with external teams as needed. Responsibilities include scheduling meetings, managing calendars, ordering office supplies, answering phone calls, taking notes, and supporting management and the team as needed. Administrative assistants help to keep the department organized and running smoothly overall.
There are various types of administrative assistants as well, ranging from departmental support to support for executives and other leadership. They vary in salary, responsibilities, and required experience. The role may range from requiring one year of experience or more.
Since administrative assistants are typically responsible for clerical tasks, decision-making, preparing reports and documents, you will want to showcase your communication, collaboration, and time management skills. Examples include improving efficiency in the department and ways that you maximized productivity by streamlining processes.
Now, let’s dive into what successful administrative assistant resume templates look like in 2023. We’ll examine five different examples of different administrative assistant roles to showcase the various positions and offer a strong place to start with your resume. After, we’ll go over a list of strong action verbs to emphasize your work experience and a list of the most common skills that recruiters are looking for in administrative assistants.
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An administrative assistant is a professional who helps organize, optimize, and execute day-to-day business tasks. Administrative assistants help a company ensure their administrative business practices are organized and efficient. As an administrative assistant, you may be responsible for tasks such as filing, faxing, organizing and cataloging invoices, purchasing office products, monitoring and organizing databases, and more.
To become an administrative assistant, you will need superb attention to detail and organizational skills. For this role, hiring managers will typically look for someone with a minimum of an associate's degree in a related field, though a bachelor's degree can help you stand out. More importantly, hiring managers will look for a candidate with prior experience in organizational support roles, such as experience as an office coordinator. Ideal candidates for this position will be organized, efficient, and great multi-taskers.
The organization and preservation of important documents usually falls on the administrative assistant. As such, it’s important to showcase your ability to keep track of documentation effectively. Since documents can be stored physically or digitally, it’s a plus if you can showcase any database tools you have used to optimize a company’s filing procedures.
There are certifications you can earn to show your knowledge when it comes to administrative work. The CAP (certified administrative professional) credential will look great on a resume for this role and show hiring managers you have the skills needed to succeed.
As an experienced administrative assistant with years of professional work history, you’ll want to primarily highlight your previous administrative work at companies. This administrative assistant resume template emphasizes strong experience supporting various groups and teams with specific and measurable numbers of accomplishments in the role. You should also supplement your experience with education and skills to create a complete picture to your potential employer.
If you have as much work history experience in related administrative roles, you’ll want to make sure you use lots of detail about your achievements with specific numbers. Good examples that this template uses are “established workflow processes, monitored daily productivity, and implemented modifications to improve personnel efficiency by 15%” and “registered and withdrew 50+ students annually.”
Recruiters prioritize candidates not only with relevant experience, but also longevity in previous positions which shows commitment. Sourcing, interviewing, and onboarding requires time and money. Recruiters don’t want to pass along candidates who’ll stay for a short time and have to start the cycle over again. Do your best to mention relevant roles to an administrative assistant on your resume.
A senior administrative assistant is a position that highlights your extensive experience supporting higher management and overseeing other employees in the department. Since you’ll have plenty of experience to share, you’ll want to detail your accomplishments with specific numbers and highlight your transferable skills from previous roles. This template will show you how to combine both to create a lasting impression on the recruiter.
Since this role is a senior position, you’ll be expected to train new employees per the company’s needs and support senior management. This resume template uses examples like “managed administrative staff of 15 personnel,” “hired, trained, and managed over 355 part-time workers per year,” and “supported Senior Vice President of Manufacturing.” Make sure to emphasize your relevant senior experience.
Besides just your education, you’ll want to spotlight any relevant certifications that you have to demonstrate your fluency in this role. This senior administrative assistant resume template uses the example of Administrative Assistant Certificate Series from the Growthsi Business School. Additional certificates show your dedication to additional training for the position.
The executive administrative assistant is someone who provides high-level, tailored administrative support for the executives within a company. They will often be assigned to a group of executives, and help these leaders organize and optimize their daily efficiency. As an executive administrative assistant, you may assist executives in planning travel, booking meetings, answering incoming calls, planning events, overseeing office operations, and more.
To become an executive administrative assistant, you will need to demonstrate prior excellence in administrative roles. Most hiring managers will look for someone with a minimum of an associate’s degree in a related field. Moreover, because this role handles high-level administrative duties, the ideal candidate will have 2-5 years of experience in related roles like as an administrative assistant or office manager. Superb candidates for this role will showcase organizational excellence, as well as a professional attitude and great time management skills.
Executive administrative assistants are responsible for managing the executive schedule, and this includes creating travel plans. As such, any experience you have booking and organizing travel for others should be detailed on your resume.
Executive administrative assistants must juggle leader’s scheduling conflicts with grace and creativity. It’s important to demonstrate on your resume how you have used your time management skills to effectively organize schedules in the past.
An executive administrative assistant manages all clerical tasks for executive managers. This includes welcoming guests, and handling communication between stakeholders, clients, and partners. Additionally, an executive administrative assistant often performs basic bookkeeping duties, so this is another skill you might want to highlight in your resume.
Other responsibilities include preparing documents, negotiating with vendors, managing corporate inventory, reviewing incoming documents, etc. This is a role that requires attention to detail and strong communication skills.
Executive administrative assistants often work under pressure. They need to meet tight deadlines and make sure everyone on the clerical team is on top of everything. That’s why having time management skills is essential for this role. If you want to demonstrate this in your resume, you should use accomplishments and mention projects that you coordinated effectively and on time.
Since communication is essential in this role, this is exactly what you want to reflect on your resume. Rather than just saying you have excellent communication skills, use the appropriate vocabulary and structure on your resume, such as strong action verbs like "Communicated", "Directed" or "Influenced". If you've worked with senior execs or CEOs, it's worth mentioning things like "Presented to senior stakeholders..." on your resume.
An executive assistant works closely with a high-level executive or a small group of high-level executives in overseeing projects and anticipating business needs. On the other hand, an executive administrative assistant tends to focus more on task management and administrative duties, such as calendar scheduling, data entry, and handling calls. In your executive administrative assistant resume, make sure to highlight your experience and relevant skills accordingly.
When writing your executive administrative assistant resume, make sure to demonstrate your proven ability to carry out administrative tasks. You should highlight relevant skills you have in these capacities, and include skills that pertain to the job description. This candidate includes a list of administrative capacities in their skills section, such as Calendar Management, Travel Arrangements, and Organization Skills, and expands upon them in their work experience.
In your work experience section, make sure to use strong action verbs and to quantify your positive impact to the company. Executive administrative assistants should be experts at performing administrative duties, especially in areas of facilitating smooth operation and in catalyzing productivity. Use words such as “streamlined”, “orchestrated”, or “facilitated” to describe your contributions, and make sure to accompany them with tangible quantitative metrics.
As an executive administrative assistant, you will be supporting one or multiple executives in the company. A high-level of discretion and anticipation of what your executives need is a must. To tailor a resume for this position, you’ll want to focus on your experience supporting previous executives and how you resolved pain points for them.
In this role, you’ll have familiarity with streamlining and implementing processes. This resume uses great examples like “reduced cell phone expenses, resulting in savings of $5,000+” and “organized new office and designed systems to maximize office function efficiency by 30%.” Make sure to showcase what you did to make the office better for the team. Numbers talk!
This template demonstrates a promotion from an administrative assistant to an executive assistant. Growth shows that your previous company was impressed with your work and trusted you with more responsibilities, like supporting five executives. You should also highlight why you were promoted. If you took on additional work, became a mentor to others, or more, make sure to share it.
As an entry-level administrative assistant, you will be able to get your feet wet in the world of operations and business management. Entry-level administrative assistants will quickly learn how to monitor and optimize day-to-day business practices. They may be responsible for cataloging paperwork, ensuring office facilities are in working order, answering general phone calls, providing support with training and onboarding, and more.
To land this role, you will need to show a strong interest in administrative work and superb organizational skills. Hiring managers will look for someone with a minimum of an associate’s degree in a related field. Since this is an entry-level role, a lengthy resume is not necessary. However, you should showcase work you’ve done at past jobs, internships, or in volunteer roles that required organizational skills, time management, and/or great people skills.
Given that this is an entry-level role, it’s a perfect opportunity for a recent graduate. To bolster your resume, be sure to highlight any projects or research you’ve completed relating to business efficiency, human resources, or operations, and what you learned from the coursework.
Certifications can help entry-level applicants stand out. There are many certifications that relate to administrative work, including the CAP (certified administrative professional) or the certified professional secretary credential. These courses can often be found online and adding these credentials to your resume can showcase your knowledge in the field.
Just like senior and executive-level administrative assistants, there are also entry-levels administrative assistant positions out there. Don’t worry if you don’t have administrative assistant work experience or if you’re looking to change careers — you should use your education and other related administrative experience to supplement it. You should also highlight relevant skills that are transferable to showcase previous experience with them in different environments.
Action verbs are important tools and phrasing is everything. Your resume should have powerful action verbs to bolster your accomplishments. Some excellent examples of action verbs in this resume template are “directed,” “oversaw,” “generated,” and “drafted.” We’ll also go into more detail about action verbs down below for more ideas.
You typically want to emphasize technical skills but that can be difficult for an administrative assistant position compared to a role like a project manager. In this resume, skills such as “customer service, “telephone reception,” and “data entry” are listed. The skills are implied in experience like “answered an average of 35 calls per day by addressing customer inquiries.”
A sales administrative assistant is someone who helps a sales team optimize daily business practices relating to sales and marketing. This can be a great opportunity to transition into a sales and/or marketing role for many. Sales administrative assistants will assist with tasks such as answering phone calls to the sales line, planning and organizing meetings, assisting in invoice processing, assisting with proposal writing, and more.
To become a sales administrative assistant, you will need a mix of relevant experience in both sales and business administration. Hiring managers will look for someone with a degree in business administration, business operations, or another related field. Moreover, the ideal candidate will have both customer-facing and organizational experience. Prior roles as a sales representative, customer service representative, or administrative assistant will stand out for this role. Overall, a candidate for this role should be a team player, who has strong organizational skills and an eagerness to learn.
Salespeople with a high workload may rely on their administrative assistant to help with proposal generation. Showcasing any work or educational experience you have with drafting pricing and product proposals can help you stand out for this role.
Unlike many other administrative roles, the sales administrative assistant will help sales teams communicate with customers. In this role you may be responsible for handling incoming questions, concerns, or requests from customers. For this reason, it’s important to highlight any customer-facing experience you have on your resume.
Sales are a key function to any business. Without the sales team, the company would probably have a hard time earning revenue for their products or services. As a sales administrative assistant, you’ll want to spotlight your related sales and administrative experience to demonstrate that you can do both. You may not only just support the sales team, but also contribute to sales pitches, presentations, and generating leads as well.
Since this role requires familiarity with selling, make sure to showcase your previous sales experience. This template uses related positions such as sales clerk and sales coordinator. If you’ve worked in retail or similar roles before, mention it with examples like “managed $300,000 monthly sales figures operating at an average of 30% profit margin” and “conducted 50+ sales presentations.”
Sales is all about numbers. This resume template specifically mentions a project of “creat[ing] sales tracking database in Access that decreased overall deficiencies by 20%.” Recruiters want to see hard numbers of how you contributed to increasing sales and generating leads. Emphasize what you did in past roles to show what you could do for your potential employer.
Legal administrative assistants support a law firm’s lawyers and paralegals. Some tasks you can expect include drafting legal documents, doing legal research, ensuring the office runs smoothly, handling schedules, speaking with clients, etc.
You will be expected to have a strong legal educational background and some experience in the legal field would be highly preferred. The legal industry is also a high-pressure industry so the ability to work under pressure and have a high level of productivity is essential. Take a look at this strong resume sample for the position.
Above this being a legal position, it is an administrative position. Make sure your experience section shows recruiters the range of administrative tasks that you have experience doing.
If you don’t have a lot of experience in the legal field, include any administrative experience you have had in other fields. There is overlap in the tasks and most of the skills are transferable.
This is an entry-level position where you work to ensure the office runs smoothly. You will be tasked with everyday needs like reception duty, maintaining files, prepping and scheduling meetings, managing calendars, etc.
Great communication, a helpful and polite demeanor, and a go-getter attitude will be highly desired for this position. Likewise, any experience in an administrative position will be appreciated. Here is a recruiter-approved resume sample.
You may not have a lot of experience in this job, so add the job title to ensure you get past any ATS resume filters in place.
An administrative position requires a varied skill set due to the varied tasks you will need to complete. Ensure the list of your technical skills is equally varied.
A medical administrative assistant will take charge of the clerical tasks needed in a medical facility. You may have front desk duties, you may maintain patient files, and you may be in charge of assuring the waiting area is in order, among other responsibilities.
Important to note, however, is that, unlike a medical assistant, you will not handle patients’ care in any way. Regardless, a background in health or medicine will be highly beneficial to your application and resume.
There is very specific industry knowledge and very specific tasks you should be able to perform in this field. Knowledge includes things like HIPAA while the tasks include things like insurance billing and healthcare management. Make your skills section very medical-industry-specific.
Little changes like changing ‘customer’ to ‘patient’ can make a huge difference in showing recruiters that you are experienced in the healthcare industry. Pepper your resume with healthcare keywords as this applicant has done.
As the name suggests, this administrative assistant is not new to the industry and has had some professional experience in the field. Your tasks will be varied as you do your best to assist in whatever day-to-day tasks need to be completed. In this position, you may be working solely for the CEO or certain staff members, or you may be working for the entire office or department. Tasks may range from making travel arrangements to scheduling meetings, to maintaining files. Take a look at this resume sample to get an idea of what yours should entail.
Show your dedication to the career by gaining administrative certification. This applicant is a certified professional secretary and administrative professional.
If you have had experience in a related position like a secretary or receptionist positions, include those in your resume and highlight the tasks and skills that an executive administrative assistant would also have. There is a lot of overlap in these positions.
We spoke with hiring managers at companies like Amazon, Apple, and Google to find out what they look for in an Administrative Assistant resume. Based on their insights and our research, we've put together these tips to help you create a strong resume that will get you noticed by top employers.
One of the most important skills for an Administrative Assistant is being organized. Showcase your ability to manage multiple tasks, prioritize effectively, and keep things running smoothly.
Administrative assistants are responsible for maintaining a smooth flow in the office. They coordinate scheduling, support the team and management, take meeting notes, create documentation, answer and direct phone calls, and more. They are fluent in the standard software required for an office environment, while having excellent verbal and written communication skills. A sense of urgency and the ability to prioritize is required for this role, alongside time management in order to complete necessary projects and fulfill daily duties.
Now that we’ve reviewed what administrative assistants do, let’s go over some tips on how to make your resume stand out to recruiters in 2022:
A resume summary for an Administrative Assistant is an optional section that highlights your most relevant skills, experience, and achievements. While a summary is not required, it can be beneficial if you have extensive experience or are making a career change. On the other hand, an objective statement should never be used as it focuses on your goals rather than what you can offer the employer.
When crafting your Administrative Assistant resume summary, focus on showcasing your abilities in areas such as organization, communication, and technical proficiency. Tailor your summary to the specific requirements of the job you are applying for, emphasizing the skills and experience that make you a strong candidate.
Your work experience section is the heart of your resume. It's where you show hiring managers what you've accomplished and how you've used your skills to drive impact. When applying for administrative assistant roles, focus on highlighting experiences that demonstrate your ability to organize, communicate, and support a team. Here are some key tips to make your work experience section stand out:
The education section of your administrative assistant resume should be concise and relevant. It's an opportunity to showcase your academic background and any specialized training that qualifies you for the role. Follow these tips to create an effective education section that will catch the attention of hiring managers.
Each bullet point in your work history section should begin with an action verb. These action verbs are strong ways to showcase your experience and achievements by showing, rather than telling. Examples of great action verbs for an administrative assistant are “negotiated,” “supervised,” “calculated,” “established,” and more to speak to your accomplishments in the role. These words imply the ability to effectively communicate with vendors, leadership and management of other team members, proficiency in numbers, and creating something new.
Descriptors such as “responsible for,” “helped,” “assisted with,” and “handled” imply that you did the responsibilities of the job, but leave the recruiter wanting to know what you specifically achieved in your past roles.
For more related action verbs, visit Customer Service Action Verbs.
For a full list of effective resume action verbs, visit Resume Action Verbs.
When you’re applying for an administrative assistant position, your relevant administrative skills that are transferable from other roles will play a big part. This may include skills such as customer service, data entry, technology, and more. Make sure that you take the time to carefully read the job posting for the required skills and preferred skills to identify what the recruiter will be exactly looking for in an ideal candidate. You’ll want to tailor your resume for each position that you apply for with this in mind, especially since the company is likely using an applicant tracking system (ATS). There will be key words scattered throughout the job posting that you want to strategically use throughout your resume while keeping it natural.
To get you started, here’s a list of relevant skills that recruiters and companies are looking for in administrative assistants.
You can include the above skills in a dedicated Skills section on your resume, or weave them in your experience. Here's how you might create your dedicated skills section:
This word cloud highlights the important keywords that appear on Administrative Assistant job descriptions and resumes. The bigger the word, the more frequently it appears on job postings, and the more 'important' it is.
You should use bullet points to describe your achievements in your Administrative Assistant resume. Here are sample bullet points to help you get started:
Created Monte Carlo simulation using Pandas (Python) to generate 30,000 sample portfolios with 8+ constraints
Managed user engagement analytics strategy, providing first insight into how users interact with our apps on their tablets and mobile devices
Analyzed brand's pricing, advertising and distribution data and identified seasonal trends and white space by integrating consumer insights; recommended strategic changes in portfolio and marketing plan to C-suite executives, reversing sales slump (+6.5%)
Recommended multi-brand strategy for a leading restaurant chain company to enter fast casual market by evaluating core competencies and performing market analysis
Developed pricing strategy for a digital subscription service by segmenting potential users by behavioral and psychographic attributes from survey data
For more sample bullet points and details on how to write effective bullet points, see our articles on resume bullet points, how to quantify your resume and resume accomplishments.
Thank you for the checklist! I realized I was making so many mistakes on my resume that I've now fixed. I'm much more confident in my resume now.
