Executive assistants are the behind-the-scenes gurus of the executive world. You help a company run smoothly, taking care of everything that helps executives be as productive as possible. You must be exceptionally organized, detail-oriented, and effective at communication, as well as fantastic at organizing meetings and making flawless travel arrangements. You enjoy wearing many different hats throughout the day as you support various needs and requests that may come up at a moment’s notice.
In the past months, as most companies continue to work remotely during the Covid-19 lockdown, executive assistants find themselves in a pivotal moment. Many administrative duties have been pared down significantly and travel has all but paused, bringing an end to many traditional administrative duties.
But in a changing environment, executive assistants are needed more than ever. Business leaders across all industries are facing new challenges and tackling new problems, and they need executive assistants who can help -- who can think on their feet, take initiative in uncertain situations, and get creative with solving unprecedented problems. Candidates who have strong business sense, technical savvy, and great emotional intelligence will be high in demand in the upcoming years.
What should an executive assistant resume look like in 2023? Continue reading below to view examples of effectively written executive assistant resumes that will help you land your next role.
An executive assistant is the communication point between executives, partners, employees, and clients. That’s why they coordinate emails and memos, schedule meetings, arrange accommodations, take meeting minutes, and prepare reports. They have an important role because they manage sensitive information, including executive calendars.
Even though this is an assistant position, you likely would also be responsible for overseeing other clerical employees. So, leadership is often a must and something hiring managers look out for!
Executive assistants should be familiar with basic computer programs like Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, Zoom Cloud meetings, and calendar management tools like Calendly. You of course aren't supposed to be a programming expert, but you should definitely be familiar with clerical tools that the execs or people you're supporting use on a daily basis.
Event planning is an essential skill to have as an executive assistant. You might have to coordinate with vendors, and partners, book locations, and coordinate invitations. You can talk about previous experiences in which you coordinated events such as meetings, conferences, or trips. Perhaps even include how you dealt with expenses, a common responsibility for EAs.
Executive assistants with a few years of experience should craft a resume that highlights their accomplishments in previous assistant roles. You should include a logical path of your work history that demonstrates growth, as well as a capacity for increasing responsibility. This resume has a strong work history section that shows their experience in previous positions as an executive assistant, and the candidate uses numbers and metrics to support their accomplishments.
If you have several years of experience working as an executive assistant, it is important to showcase this clearly and effectively on your resume. Recruiting managers like to see that candidates have dedicated time towards developing their skills in relevant roles and that they have extensive experience working in assistant positions. For example, this candidate clearly states in their summary that they have worked in the administrative department for five years, exhibiting their career journey from when they started out as an administrative manager.
This resume uses numbers and metrics to back up their work experience -- highlighting not just their responsibilities, but their accomplishments in their roles. When writing your bullet points for your work experience section, include quantitative evidence of what your impact was in the work history section -- specifically in areas such as efficiency, productivity, and organization. This template includes such details as “increased office efficiency by 25%” and “facilitated...savings over $5,000 in the first year”.
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.
Providing assistance at the C-suite level (CEOs, CFOs, CIOs, etc.) requires a deeper level of expertise in the given industry, as well as the ability to work cross-functionally or technically. You must know how to skillfully interface with various departments, uncover potential bottlenecks, and facilitate improvements that help the C-suite function at its highest efficiency. When applying to a C-level executive assistant role, make sure to include evidence of past experience in relevant roles and to demonstrate your ability to catalyze efficient operations.
It takes a special type of person to operate calmly and effectively in the high-pressure, fast-paced world of C-level executives. Many individuals at this level have big personalities and urgent needs, and hiring managers want to see that you understand what it takes to work in such an environment. When writing your C-level executive assistant resume, make sure to include work experience that shows you have experience providing direct support to a CEO or other C-level executive.
The various needs and requests from a C-suite executive can evolve rapidly within a matter of days or weeks. It’s important to show that you are flexible and quick to learn in new environments. To demonstrate that you can adapt to new situations, make sure to highlight instances where you’ve been promoted in an organization or when you have taken on more responsibility than your role entailed. This candidate includes an experience where they were promoted from lead administrative assistant to executive assistant to the CEO.
Sometimes a CEO may require more personal assistance and will want to hire an executive assistant to directly support their needs. This position is the CEO’s primary resource, and must demonstrate deep administrative and organizational expertise to support the demands of the highest position in the company. When writing your CEO executive assistant resume, make sure to showcase your mastery of relevant skills, such as calendar management, hiring logistics, and event operations.
Different CEOs have different needs - for this position in particular, it’s important to read the job description carefully and even do some research of your own into the company’s CEO, given that their information is included. Make sure to include skills that tailor to the job posting. For example, if the executive travels often, emphasize your experience in making travel arrangements or serving as a travel assistant.
Use strong action verbs, accompanied with relevant metrics, to demonstrate skills that are relevant to supporting a CEO. Executive assistants to CEOs must wear a variety of hats and be quick on their feet. Use such verbs as “liaised”, “collaborated”, and “oversaw” to demonstrate such abilities.
A senior executive assistant is an executive assistant with senior responsibilities. This means that they typically do fewer administrative tasks and tackle more hands-on operations work such as managing projects, creating and implementing processes, etc. When crafting your senior executive assistant resume, keep this in mind as you write out your bullet points and curate the skills you want to showcase.
As mentioned above, the senior executive assistant role takes on more operations and logistics type work than administrative work - make sure you tailor your resume accordingly. When possible, include bullet points that detail your experience with overseeing processes and managing projects. It’s okay to include administrative duties, but try to include as many experiences as you can that emphasize your ability for operations and logistics work.
A senior executive assistant should know the executive assistant world inside and out. It takes time and experience to understand the subtleties of the executive world and the different responsibilities that the role entails. In your professional experience section, showcase your growth throughout your career by including promotions and detailing your years of experience, working your way up through roles that demand more and more responsibility.
This is the perfect position for someone looking to enter the assistant profession. You will be assisting executive-level professionals in both their professional lives and sometimes their personal lives. Your job is to make their lives as easy as possible and to handle mundane or logistic tasks that will allow them to focus on more important things. You may be making flight and dinner reservations, scheduling meetings, or even buying birthday presents for their child. This is often a fast-paced and high-stress position so your ability to exceed under pressure and have a friendly demeanor is crucial.
Your tools list should include administrative tools like Microsoft Office, but also include things like scheduling tools and communication tools. You need to show that you can perform all aspects of your job.
If you don’t have a lot of experience, an easy way to show your ability is to gain certification as an executive assistant or administrator. This applicant has 3 impressive and relevant certifications.
As the name suggests, this role requires you to have years of experience as an executive assistant. You will handle many behind-the-scenes tasks and logistics for your executive-level superior. Tasks may include scheduling, doing administrative tasks, running personal errands, etc. You need to be time-efficient, discreet, and able to multitask to thrive in this position. Here is a recruiter-approved resume sample for this position.
This position requires an applicant who has years of experience in the field. Your resume’s experience section needs to show that. So focus on including only assistant or administrative positions in this section.
To ensure that your executive assistant resume stands out from the crowd, you’ll want to demonstrate that you have the skills and relevant experience to excel.
When crafting your executive assistant resume, make sure to carefully read through the job description. Executive assistant roles often vary considerably across industries -- or even between different types of executives. Different individuals have different needs, and it’s important to make sure that you choose to highlight skills that the hiring manager is looking for.
In addition, make sure to go beyond listing skills in your resume’s Skills section. You can expand on what you did in your work experience by describing your expertise in the bullet points of your work experience.
This word cloud highlights the important keywords that appear on Executive Assistant job descriptions and resumes. The bigger the word, the more frequently it appears on job postings, and the more 'important' it is.
It’s not easy to excel as an executive assistant. The role demands a high level of emotional intelligence, the knowhow to wear many different hats, and the ability to maintain your composure in high-stress situations. In addition, busy executives often need their assistants to quickly understand them and their working styles on a deeply personal level, picking up on subtle body language and unspoken cues that many others would completely overlook.
However, once you figure out the nuances of the individual you support and grow familiar with the industry they operate in, you become an indispensable part of their workflow. It can be extremely rewarding to find a good match between an executive and an assistant, and many executives will even take a stellar executive assistant along with them if they switch companies.
Want to find your dream executive assistant role? Follow these curated tips for executive assistant resumes:
Executive assistants are masters of reading between the lines and understanding the unspoken needs of their executive. They must be versatile and quick to anticipate potential problems, and smoothly juggle the often chaotic schedule of high-level individuals.
When writing your resume, it’s important to emphasize these types of skills with strong action verbs. For example, use words like “oversaw”, “organized”, or “planned” to highlight your ability to smoothly and efficiently handle a variety of tasks.
It can be helpful to review the job description and see what types of action verbs they use. However, don’t copy every single one-- try to be creative and find words with similar meanings to tailor your resume to the job.
For more related action verbs, visit Customer Service Action Verbs.
For a full list of effective resume action verbs, visit Resume Action Verbs.
If you're a senior-level employee, or you're changing careers to become an Executive Assistant, it's useful to add a paragraph at the top of your resume highlighting your most impressive accomplishments. This is called a resume summary.
Here's an example of a summary that can be used on an Executive Assistant resume.
A resume summary is a totally optional section, and in most cases, it's better to leave it out of your resume than include it. For example, if you're a student or mid-level hire, you should not include a summary, and instead use the space to add to your work experience.
To learn how to write an effective resume summary for your Executive Assistant resume, or figure out if you need one, please read Resume Summary Examples for Job Seekers: When To Include One.
You should use bullet points to describe your achievements in your Executive Assistant resume. Here are sample bullet points to help you get started:
Analyzed $800K of monthly marketing spend data to optimize audience, creative and copy of campaigns; increased conversion by 12% MoM and decreased cost per acquisition by 35%
Recommended multi-brand strategy for a leading restaurant chain company to enter fast casual market by evaluating core competencies and performing market analysis
Analyzed fundamental growth drivers via top-down (macro/sector trends, competition) and bottom-up (growth strategy, revenue forecast, cost allocation) approaches, and analysis of senior management and shareholding structure.
Analyzed data from 25000 monthly active users and used outputs to guide marketing and product strategies; increased average app engagement time by 2x, decrease drop off rate by 30%, and increased shares on social media by 3x over 6 months
Doubled new user acquisition from 10-15 users to 20-25 through the implementation of new marketing strategies focused on online advertising and improving the company's web presence, social media, and search engine optimization.
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.
Designed and implemented a new filing system that reduced average document retrieval times from 15 minutes to 3 minutes.
An easy way to improve your resume is to upload it to Score My Resume, a free tool that will identify mistakes commonly seen by recruiters in executive assistant resumes. The tool will also provide suggestions on how to boost your resume.Implemented a recycling and reuse policy for office supplies, leading to yearly savings of over $10,000.
