Whether on the front end or the back end, office managers are a critical part of handling the inner workings of businesses on a day-to-day basis. Having an interest in details, a penchant for accuracy, and familiarity with technical tools will all serve you well as an office manager.
Office managers could work in a number of industries, from medical offices to hotel offices to factories. There are skills between office manager positions that are transferable, including attention to detail, teamwork, and leadership, meaning you should be able to comfortably change industries once you’ve gained experience.
Some hard skills will also transfer, including Quickbooks or Microsoft Access, operating office machinery, and handling incoming customer or client contacts. Other skills or tools relate more directly to specific industries, such as medical coding software, Oracle PeopleSoft, and transcription software, and these won’t be as transferable.
The type of office manager position you’re applying for is thus the first clue as to the kind of skills you should include. In this guide, we’ll review four templates for office managers in different industries to give you a solid starting point, followed by examples of skills and action verbs you should emphasize.
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As an office manager, you're responsible for overseeing the day-to-day operations of an office, ensuring that everything runs smoothly and efficiently. In recent years, office managers have become more important as companies recognize the value of a well-run office in improving productivity and employee satisfaction. That's why having a solid resume is important to showcase your organizational, leadership, and problem-solving skills tailored to this specific industry.
When companies look for an office manager, they're seeking someone with strong communication and multitasking abilities, as well as someone who can manage a team and implement effective systems and policies. Your resume should showcase these skills and illustrate how you've excelled in previous roles.
As an office manager, you've likely gained experience in a variety of areas. On your resume, emphasize the roles and projects that are most relevant to the office manager position, such as managing teams, overseeing budgets, and implementing new office procedures.
Office managers are often responsible for using various software programs to streamline office processes. Be sure to outline your experience with popular office management tools like Microsoft Office Suite, project management software, and any industry-specific software like accounting or HR systems.
Office managers handle a range of duties depending on their industry. In general, hiring managers will be looking for particular technical skills that align with the duties you’ll be performing. You can help your experience stand out by including a skillbank that lists the relevant software you have familiarity with. Additionally, if you have been promoted internally to an office manager position before, you should reference your previous positions to show your aptitude for the work.
Office managers are expected to have a toolkit of technical skills. Aside from integrating your skills throughout your resume (in the form of bullet-pointed accomplishments that work in the tools you are familiar with), you should include a skillbank at either the bottom or the side of your resume to emphasize the technical skills or particular software that you have expertise with.
Being able to demonstrate your ability to work hard and excel as an office manager is the whole point of your resume; as such, including any relevant internal promotions you’ve earned will help you stand out to hiring managers. It not only helps assert that you know what the position requires, it also serves to indicate that you are a dedicated worker who will go above and beyond for their company.
As a Dental Office Manager, your role is incredibly important, overseeing the daily operations and ensuring a seamless patient experience. With this job, the key is to be organized, detail-oriented, and skilled in managing both tasks and people. Recently, the dental industry has started to emphasize digitalization and patient-centered care, so staying up-to-date with these trends is essential. Resumes are crucial in this field, as employers often look for well-rounded candidates with applicable experience and the right skillset to manage a fast-paced office.
Your resume should not only emphasize your organizational and communication skills, but it should also showcase your industry-specific knowledge and experience. Let's focus on two recommendations to enhance your Dental Office Manager resume.
Dental offices are increasingly utilizing digital platforms to manage appointments, billing, and records. Be sure to highlight your proficiency in dental software (e.g. Dentrix, Eaglesoft, Open Dental) to show potential employers that you can efficiently navigate and manage these systems.
As a Dental Office Manager, it's crucial to be able to handle patient relations with care and consideration. In your resume, emphasize any experience handling patient concerns, resolving conflicts, and promoting a positive patient experience. Additionally, outline any initiatives you've taken to improve patient relations in previous roles.
As the name indicates, dental office managers are specifically experienced with working in a dental office setting. Like medical office managers, they’ll be accustomed to handling patient information and administering paperwork. You should demonstrate your experience with the work by emphasizing appropriate office manager skills and starting each bullet point with a strong action verb.
Hiring managers will be looking for experience with overseeing dental offices, insurance verification processes, and working with patient charts. Each one of your accomplishments as an office manager should be directly related to the position. If you have worked in other industries or fields, try to tie in your past work with the duties of an office manager whenever possible.
By starting each one of your accomplishments with a powerful action verb, you’ll be relating that you have familiarity with the office manager position. Your bullet points should lead with words like “organized”, “conducted”, “managed”, or “calculated” (see below for more examples) to hit home that you’re right for the position.
As a Medical Office Manager, you'll be responsible for maintaining a smooth, efficient medical practice that provides quality patient care. This role involves a mix of administrative and medical responsibilities, including managing staff, organizing schedules, and ensuring compliance with healthcare regulations. Recently, we've seen an increased focus on digital transformation in medical practices, with many companies looking for candidates who can navigate electronic health record systems and improve their processes. A well-crafted resume is essential in this competitive field, as it helps you showcase your unique skills and experience that make you a perfect fit for the role.
Resumes are particularly crucial in the healthcare industry because they allow you to demonstrate your expertise in dealing with sensitive information, time-sensitive tasks, and the ability to adapt to ever-changing regulations. Essentially, a strong resume can set you apart from other applicants and secure you an interview.
As a Medical Office Manager, you'll likely be working with electronic health record systems, scheduling software, and other medical technologies. Make sure to emphasize your experience and proficiency with these tools, as potential employers will value your ability to streamline their practice and improve overall efficiency.
Medical Office Managers are responsible for leading a team of administrative and medical staff, so it's essential to highlight your management and leadership experience. Include specific examples of how you've led teams, resolved conflicts, guided staff development, and implemented new processes or initiatives to demonstrate your ability to manage a successful medical practice.
Medical office managers will have experience working with patient records, patient scheduling, office finances, and insurance verification, along with a host of other specialized tasks. Accuracy and attention to detail are more important than ever in this role, and so it helps to provide the scope and scale of your background in the medical industry with quantifiable data points and specific skills.
To indicate the impact you were able to make at your previous employers, or to relate how many patients or staff you’ve worked with, you’ll want to include numerical values in every accomplishment. It makes a much bigger impression to say that you handled payroll for 500 staff members than to state that your responsibilities included timely payroll management.
While you may have experience in other fields, you should keep the hiring manager focused on your medical office manager background. You can do this by ensuring that your accomplishments consistently reference working with patients and physicians. If you have worked in other fields, aim to reference the transferable skills (such as team management) whenever possible.
As a Front Office Manager, you play a crucial role in orchestrating the daily operations of the front desk, ensuring a positive guest experience and facilitating collaboration between departments. With the hospitality industry emphasizing a customer-centric approach, companies are seeking Front Office Managers who can effectively manage teams, excel in communication, and implement innovative solutions. A well-crafted resume is key in this competitive field, as it highlights your expertise and relevant skills, proving that you're the right candidate for the job.
In recent years, there has been a shift towards integrating technology within the hospitality industry, and companies are increasingly seeking Front Office Managers who can adapt to new platforms and drive efficiency. Your resume is an opportunity to demonstrate your adaptability and showcase your proficiency with relevant technologies.
As a Front Office Manager, you're responsible for managing and motivating your team to deliver exceptional customer service. Highlight your ability to lead and develop staff, emphasizing your hands-on approach and your success in improving team performance.
Showcase your adaptability and familiarity with technology by highlighting specific instances where you've successfully implemented new systems or software to streamline front office operations. Emphasize any positive impact on customer service, staff efficiency, or revenue generation.
Front office managers are focused on staff management, typically in hotel settings or similar scenarios where the daily operations of a business will come down to your expertise. You can make a potent impression by starting your resume with a short summary or introduction. Adding in volunteer work or relevant certifications will further lend to your credibility as being involved in the front office management role.
As a front office manager, you’ll often be among the first points of contact for clients or customers. First impressions - whether for the business or for yourself - are important, and so it helps to start your resume with a short, succinct summary that conveys your experience, your skills, and, when possible, numerical values to back it up.
If you are an active volunteer, then you’ll want to include the pro bono work that you’ve done (along with how many hours you contribute on a regular basis). This helps hiring managers see that you have a commitment to your community’s success. Additionally, any recent certifications that are relevant for office manager work should be listed in a sidebar to give a quick impression of your accredited skills.
An office administrator ensures that an office runs smoothly. In this position, you will make sure all necessary supplies are available, maintain office files, coordinate meetings, support staff with events, organize payroll, etc. It is a very multipronged position so having a wide set of skills would be useful. Recruiters care most about your previous experience in a similar position and the tools and skills you have so make sure you spend extra time on these sections. Take a look at this successful resume sample.
Certifications show recruiters that you are passionate about your profession and are willing to go the extra mile to improve your skill set. That drive and effort are very impressive to recruiters so if you have any administration-related certifications like this applicant has, make sure you include them in your resume.
Recruiters will be looking closely to see if you have experience using the tools they use. You having experience in the tools they have means your transition into the job will be smoother. Research and find out what tools they use so you can make sure you have listed them. If you aren’t familiar with a specific tool, do a crash course on it before adding it to your resume.
An office administrator provides support with clerical duties in an organization. They arrange appointments and meetings, create presentations, keep track of office supplies, and place orders when needed. Office administrators ensure that colleagues follow compliance policies and assign each team member administrative tasks. As an office administrator, you must have problem-solving skills. A good way to highlight this in your resume is by mentioning previous challenges and how you addressed them.
Even though it seems to be focused on clerical tasks, office administrators have a leadership role. They must oversee their colleagues' performance and ensure they follow corporate compliance, meet deadlines, and work within a budget. That’s why it is relevant to highlight your office management skills in your resume.
In this role, you will be interacting with numerous employees, and that can be overwhelming sometimes. However, a good office administrator knows how to be patient and has excellent interpersonal skills. In your resume, you can mention your experience working with multiple teams. This will help your future employer know that you are capable of team work.
In this position, you will manage the day-to-day tasks associated with keeping an office running smoothly. Some tasks you can expect include maintaining databases, coordinating office supply delivery and storage, scheduling meetings, processing invoices, etc. Recruiters will expect to see a bachelor’s degree in business, management, or a related field as well as years of experience in the position. Take a look at this recruiter-approved resume sample.
This job requires you to complete a wide range of tasks so you should develop a skills section that is equally diverse. This applicant has included a range of capabilities including budgeting, marketing, and event planning.
Metrics make a resume more digestible and impressive. It is favorable for a recruiter to know exactly how much you saved your company because of your efficiencies, or by what percentage you made certain tasks more efficient.
An assistant office manager offers administrative support to the executives and the rest of the office staff. Your tasks may include scheduling meetings and travel, maintaining supplies, assisting with events or projects, handling correspondences, etc. You need to be able to multitask and have a varied skill set. You also need to be personable and have strong interpersonal and communication skills. Take a look at this successful resume sample.
Action verbs are a great way to shape your experience section. Because this position calls for you to do varying tasks, use action verbs that indicate varying tasks and functions. Some action verbs the applicant uses for this purpose include ‘maintained’, ‘developed’, ‘tracked’, and ‘prepared’.
Grab recruiters’ attention from the very beginning of your resume. Because they may not have time to scrutinize the hundreds of resumes they get, it’s advantageous to include impressive achievements and metrics in the introduction section as this applicant has done.
As the name suggests, this is an office manager who works in a construction company. You will complete the same administrative tasks any other office manager would complete, such as filing, handling correspondence, scheduling meetings, etc. However, you may also have construction-specific tasks to complete such as managing project budgets and schedules, hiring and communicating with foremen and other construction stakeholders, evaluating subcontractor bids, etc. Your resume needs to show a background in and understanding of the construction industry and also needs to show your experience doing administrative tasks. Here is an example of a successful resume sample.
Your skills list should not read like a general office manager’s skill list. There are certain skills pertinent to construction that you should include. Relevant skills that this applicant has included are renovation, construction safety, and construction.
Recruiters often use ATS resume filters to narrow down the applicant and create a list of the most suitable candidates. Forgetting to simply add the word ‘construction’ to your resume title might cause you to be filtered out.
As a hiring manager who has worked with companies like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft to recruit office managers, I've seen firsthand what makes a resume stand out. Here are some key tips that will help you create a strong office manager resume that will catch the attention of recruiters and hiring managers.
One of the most important skills for an office manager is the ability to organize and manage multiple tasks and projects. Make sure to highlight specific examples of how you have demonstrated strong organizational skills in your previous roles.
A resume summary for an Office Manager position is optional, but can be a valuable addition if you have extensive experience or are making a career change. It allows you to provide context and highlight key qualifications that may not be immediately apparent from the rest of your resume. However, avoid using an objective statement, as it focuses on your goals rather than what you can offer the employer.
When crafting your summary, tailor it to the specific Office Manager role you're targeting. Emphasize your most relevant skills, experience, and achievements. Be concise and objective, using metrics to quantify your impact where possible. While it's important to include relevant keywords for applicant tracking systems (ATS), avoid overusing buzzwords or soft skills.
The work experience section is the centerpiece of your resume. It's the first place hiring managers look to understand your career story and judge if you're qualified. In this section, we'll cover the key ways to structure and write your work experience section to impress hiring managers and land more interviews.
Office managers are all about organization, and, fortunately, there’s an easy way to organize your accomplishments while working in strong action verbs that relay your capabilities. Each of your 1-2 sentence bullet points should start with an appropriate action verb, and incorporate others where necessary to round out your background. This helps impart to hiring managers that you are able to handle the responsibilities of the position and that you respect time management.
While it’s okay to duplicate these action verbs a few times, avoid using the same ones too often as it will blur your experience together.
For a full list of effective resume action verbs, visit Resume Action Verbs.
Office managers wield a combination of personnel management and technical skills to perform their roles, and hiring managers will be looking for specific responsibilities in your resume. On the left, we’ve compiled the most commonly utilized skills for office managers to give you a pool to draw from as you build your resume.
As office managers often have a significant amount of data to manage, or a roster of staff, you’ll want to display your proficiency at these tasks with each accomplishment you list. Integrating the skills on the left with technical tools (such as Adobe Acrobat Pro or Quickbooks) will serve as a double whammy in indicating your experience in the position.
Other than working your skills into the body of your resume, don’t forget to include a skill bank at the top or bottom of the page. You may wish to start with a short (1-2 sentence) summary that includes your hardest hitting statistics (such as how long you’ve been in the field or how many personnel you’ve managed).
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 Office Manager 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 Office Manager resume. Here are sample bullet points to help you get started:
Executed four branch openings, including location selection, P&L development, and task coordination for 5 functional areas, resulting in $9MM of incremental revenue over 2 years
Redesigned and implemented over 15 business processes for an estimated 50% efficiency gain in operations and potential net savings of $3MM for a pharmaceutical company
Refined outsourcing strategy, resulting in increased offshore headcount from 12 to 95 employees and saved $1.2MM
Conceptualized, redesigned, and presented enhancements to the data warehouse and stored SQL procedures, leading to 100x increased query performance (double digit minutes to milliseconds)
Determined sales effectiveness strategy for a ERP software supplier to increase sales by $10M over three years
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.
