Administrative Assistant Resume Examples | Templates & Formats

What are some common administrative assistant’s job duties and responsibilities?

• Edit official documents.
  
• Manage official events’ calendars.
• Perform elementary bookkeeping.
• Prepare invoices, reports, and memos.
• Deal with outgoing and incoming mail & faxes.
• Schedule meetings, conferences, and seminars.
• Book accommodation, flights, and travel for managers.
• Maintain electronic and paper databases plus filing systems.
  
• Schedule appointments for executive managers and the CEO.
• Receive and reply to messages, answer, and/or transfer telephone calls.

Whether you are switching careers to become an administrative assistant, or an experienced one currently looking for better opportunities, you need to understand the importance of a professional administrative assistant resume during a job search.

Since it takes about 6 seconds for a recruiter to review a resume in order to decide, an outstanding administrative assistant resume can highlight your relevant skills, qualifications, experience, and education professional resume, which would help you proceed for an interview. 

A resume is a short description of a professional’s life geared for a particular job summarizing skills and work experience.

A “Curriculum Vitae” is Latin for “course of life”. It details academic, experience, skills, hobbies, and any other professional aspects. However, CVs and Resumes mean the same for some countries, while others use the terms interchangeably.

A resume template gives you a structure with the main sections of a professional resume where you fill details as necessary. It guides you on where to place personal information and how to organize it. After filling the sections, run it to produce a resume, and then download it.

To make your administrative assistant resume more appealing to the recruiters, it's important to align your resume to the job description.

By looking at the key roles for the administrative assistant job and using them in your resume, you will have propelled yourself ahead of the competition. You will show recruiters your worth to them and this will earn you an interview at least.

A cover letter is a short document attached to a resume or CV summarizing what the applicant is about, relative to a job. It comes first before (covers) a resume. 

An administrative assistant cover letter showcases an applicants’ unique skills, experiences, and abilities for the role being applied for. It is the first marketing tool to allow recruiters to gauge your worth to the company and why they should even read your resume.

A well written resume is a ticket to a dream job. It’s the key to greener pastures. No one will employ you if your administrative assistant resume is full of glaring typos, spelling, and grammatical mistakes. Read it loudly, word by word, twice, or thrice to iron out the errors if you expect the recruiters to understand everything in your resume.

A resume is a gateway to a job opening. It is supposed to help the recruiter to:

✔ Gauge if the applicant is qualified for the job based on skills, education, and training.

✔ Evaluate the value the applicant will bring to the company if offered the job based on experience and accomplishments. 

✔ Be able to contact the candidate.

1. Personal Information on an Administrative Assistant Resume

To identify yourself and be contacted by a recruiter, at the top of your first page on a resume, include personal information like:

• Full Name
• Email Address
• Phone Number
• Professional Job Title
• (Optional) LinkedIn url, Address, Social Media links, Personal website, Languages, etc.

2. Resume Headline of an Administrative Assistant Resume

An outstanding relevant headline is the first step to landing your dream senior administrative assistant job. This profile title or CV headline sums up the whole resume.

The title should lie just below your name above your contact information to be able to attract recruiters and help them decide your value at a glance.

3. Resume Summary of an Administrative Assistant Resume

The resume summary is also known as a profile summary and should be placed just below the contact information. 

A resume summary has a few lines outlining your best achievements and skills relevant to the senior administrative assistant position that you want.

After the resume headline and contact information, the recruiter will glance at the resume summary for relevant skills, experiences, and achievements, to decide whether to proceed further with your resume. 

To enhance your chances further, pick important points from the job requirements section and infuse them into your resume summary. The resume summary for an administrative assistant shouldn’t be more than 100 words on average.

3. Resume Objective of an Administrative Assistant Resume

It’s a stated career/professional goal placed just below the contact section on a resume and tailored for the job one is applying for. It can be 2-3 sentences. It’s mostly used by fresh graduates (freshers), those with career gaps, and those changing careers.

4. Skills for an Administrative Assistant Resume

This section lists the skills you possess as an Administrative Assistant that are relevant to the role you are aspiring for. Skills are abilities you are equipped with through learning, education, interaction with people, and personality traits. 

The skills section can be placed after the contact section for those changing roles and fresh graduates. Experienced Administrative Assistant applicants can place it after work history and education sections. Administrative Assistant can possess:

5. Work Experience Section for an Administrative Assistant Resume

Most employers want polished candidates with some level of experience in a similar or same role. They also wish to know your quantifiable accomplishments and the extent to which you may have solved problems in past jobs.

When writing work experience on an administrative assistant resume, include the name of the company, position title, location, and dates for the period worked for each role. Match your experience to the opening you’re aiming at using a maximum of five bullets. Encompass both paid and unpaid experience but start with paid ones.

6. Education Section on an Administrative Assistant Resume 

The education section lists the institutions one has attended in reverse order starting with the highest level. E.g., doctorate-masters-bachelors. There is no need of listing high school if you have a degree or diploma. Indicate if completed or in progress.

7. Additional Information Section for an Administrative Assistant Resume

This lists additional information like: 

Publications & papers, hobbies, licenses, certifications, commendations, awards, sports, etc.

It’s recommended to include those relevant to the job you are pursuing, otherwise, leave them out entirely.

Only use relevant experiences suitable for the job opening. This calls for an in-depth look at the job and company so as to extract the best qualifications matches from your resume. 

Write short concise statements with action words (e.g., developed, trained, screened, etc.,) to highlight your skills and achievements.

Recruiters have a short time (15-20 seconds) to spend on your resume, so, long paragraphs may lead to rejection of your resume. Keywords should be adopted from the duties and responsibilities listed on the job advert and relevant research on the role.  

Using a problem-action-result approach will sell your value instead of listing generic responsibilities.

Recruiters understand the responsibilities and duties of an administrative assistant for instance, so, saying what you did is obvious. But using percentages and amounts to show what you accomplished will show value.

A statement like ‘trained junior staff on fast call screening methods can change to, "inducted 4 entry level administrative assistants on faster call screening methods, which raised screened calls by 40%, increasing profits by 20%." 

Some words and abbreviations may not be common to all, local and international, and need further clarification. 

For example, ‘worked as a senior administrative assistant at the Emirates'. Elaborate that Emirates is an international stadium in England for a premier league team and not Emirates Airlines.

Using simple common fonts (Times New Roman, Calibri, Cambria, etc.), 10-12 font size, automatic black font color on a white background normal text is the standard ATS-recruiter friendly way to go. Use bold 14 size fonts for headings. 

As discussed earlier in this article, a cover letter is a short summary of an applicant’s qualifications and background that accompanies (covers) a resume.

Congratulations, you are done with an administrative assistant cover letter.