Administrative Assistant Resume

Skilled administrative assistants ensure offices function properly through multitasking, discretion, and good time management. To land a job, you need to demonstrate these traits on your resume. Here are four tips for writing the best administrative assistant resume possible:

1. List common skills for an administrative assistant

Applicants with a strong set of administrative assistant skills are easier and faster to train — and, as a result, are highly desirable to hiring managers. Here are some of the top soft skills and hard skills required to fulfill an administrative position:

Additionally, keeping your administration skills up-to-date on your resume will help you stand out from other applicants. With that in mind, we surveyed the most popular administrative assistant skills of 2022:

These skills can either be added to your resume’s skills section or highlighted with examples in your experience section.

2. Write a convincing resume objective

The resume objective is designed to give hiring managers a reason to continue reading your resume. Consider this administrative assistant’s resume objective:

The candidate here has succeeded with their resume objective because they:

• describe how long they’ve been an administrative assistant, and the main duties they performed
• list their degree and expertise in relevant software (Microsoft Excel)
• tell the hiring manager which role they want to fill and why they’re a good choice

Essentially, this applicant has made a concise argument for why they’d be a great candidate for the job. An argument like this grabs the attention of employers and convinces them to read more about your qualifications.

3. Target your professional experience

Reinforce your administrative assistant qualifications with a detailed, targeted work experience section, featuring your accomplishments in bullet format.

Below, we’ve highlighted three standout bullet points from a well-written administrative assistant resume. Note that the strongest parts of each bullet (shown in bold) include hard numbers to show employers the extent of the applicant’s responsibilities and achievements:

• Developed new filing and organizational practices, saving the company $3,000 per year in contracted labor expenses

The above bullet point proves that the candidate is a skilled, competent, and motivated worker because they took the initiative to create a new organizational policy that saved the company money.

• Trained 2 administrative assistants during a period of company expansion to ensure attention to detail and adherence to company policy

As shown above, the ability to train new employees demonstrates leadership skills and dedication. This bullet proves that the applicant is trusted by their management to handle important tasks.

• Typed documents such as correspondence, drafts, memos, and emails, and prepared 3 weekly reports for management

Here, the candidate quantifies the number of reports they made weekly, giving the hiring manager an idea of how much work they did. Preparing 3 reports weekly in addition to their other duties shows that the applicant has excellent time management skills and can process data and write reports quickly.

4. Include action verbs in your administrative assistant resume

There’s nothing employers love more than an employee who delivers results. The best way to show that you’re capable of getting work done is by highlighting accomplishments on your resume with strong action verbs.

Avoid using cliched phrases that hiring managers see all the time. For example, instead of being responsible for setting up meetings, you scheduled meetings and coordinated travel arrangements. By using action-oriented language, you show employers exactly what you can achieve.

Use some of these impactful action verbs on your administrative assistant resume: