Administrative Assistant CV

Administrative assistants support their teams by doing tasks like managing files, planning trips, and serving clients. Although barriers to becoming an administrative assistant are low and administrative assistant skills are highly transferable, you’ll still need a compelling CV to compete with other qualified candidates.

Follow our four tips to write an administrative assistant CV that lands you more interviews:

1. Research your target administrative assistant role

While many administrative assistant positions seem the same on the surface, each company — and what they’re looking for in a candidate — will differ when you look closer. As a result, researching the company and role will help you determine if you’ll enjoy working there and how you should customise your CV to land the job.

After reading the administrative assistant job advert carefully, do some research into:

• the company’s business (e.g., mission statement, business strategy)
• the specific industry knowledge you’ll need
• who your primary supervisor will be
• what team or department you’ll be part of
• what other departments you’ll be working with
• whether the role trends more towards secretary or assistant
• how much you’ll be working with clients and customers

Incorporating the information you’ve learned into your administrative assistant CV shows employers that you’re excited to work for their company specifically.

2. Choose a professional layout for your administrative assistant CV

Your administrative assistant CV layout must be organised and easy-to-read to show recruiters how you’d handle reporting, diary management, bookkeeping, and other tasks requiring attention to detail.

As you set out to make your CV, remember to:

• use a readable CV font that’s between 10.5 and 12 points
• avoid adding photos or graphics that may not pass applicant tracking systems (ATS)
• use a reverse-chronological format for your work experience (start with your most recent job and work backwards)
• place your education section above your work experience if you’re a fresh graduate

3. Highlight your administrative assistant work experience with hard numbers and CV adjectives

Your CV’s work experience section is the place to show recruiters how you’d bring your past experience to do a great job in your new role. So describe your job-relevant achievements using hard numbers — rather than just listing previous job duties — to emphasise the value you deliver as an administrative assistant.

Examples of hard numbers you can use on your administrative assistant CV include the:

• amounts of time or money you saved your company
• number of people you trained or managed
• number of calendars you managed
• amount of petty cash you controlled
• amounts of money you invoiced and billed
• number of reports you generated weekly
• number of clients or customers you helped
• number of calls you answered or emails you replied to daily

The best administrative assistants can perform a variety of tasks, even if the tasks aren’t listed in the job description or haven’t been done by the company before. Show future employers you’re multi-talented by ensuring each work experience bullet highlights a different skill.

Additionally, because administrative assistants work heavily with other people, give recruiters an idea of your personality. Distribute — but don’t overuse — CV adjectives throughout your personal statement (the introduction at the top of your CV) and work experience sections.

Choose CV adjectives that address the requirements in the job advert. Examples of adjectives found in administrative assistant job descriptions include:

4. Put top administrative assistant skills on your CV

Round out your administrative assistant CV by adding key skills that may not have come through in your other sections to your CV’s skills section. Administrative assistants need both hard skills (those learned through education) and soft skills (personality-based skills that affect how you work).

Essential hard skills for administrative assistants include:

Soft skills that distinguish an average from a stellar administrative assistant include:

Below is an example of how an administrative assistant CV’s skills section should look: