Administrative Assistant
Resume Example

Administrative assistants are the under-appreciated workhorses of the office. Without you, the gears that keep the office running smoothly would grind to a halt.

Skilled administrative assistants are masters of multitasking, discretion, and time management. To land a job, you need to demonstrate these traits in your resume. Here are some tips for writing the best administrative assistant resume possible:

1. Common Skills for an Administrative Assistant

The more administrative assistant skills you have, the less you will need to be trained and the faster you’ll be able to contribute to a company.

That’s why employers are always on the lookout for applicants with a strong set of skills. To help you get started, here are some of the top skills required to fulfill an administrative position:

However, it’s also essential to keep your administration skills up-to-date if you want to find a job in this economy. With that in mind, we surveyed the most popular administrative assistant skills of 2020 that will continue to be valuable in 2021.

In addition to the abilities above, be sure to highlight these more cutting-edge skills on your resume:

These skills can either be added to your resume skills section, or highlighted as a bullet point in your experience section.

2. Write a Strong Resume Objective

The resume objective is designed to give hiring managers a reason to continue reading your resume. The candidate in the sample above has succeeded with her resume objective, for these reasons:

• She describes how long she’s been an administrative assistant, and the main duties she performed
• She lists her degree, and her expertise in relevant software (Microsoft Excel)
• She tells the hiring manager which role she wants to fill, and why she’s a good choice

Essentially, she’s made a concise argument for why she’d be a great candidate for the job. This helps grab the attention of employers and convinces them to read more about your qualifications.

In the next section, we explain how to make your resume’s bullet points impactful.

3. Target your Professional Experience

The best way to follow up a strong career objective is by reinforcing your qualifications with a detailed, targeted work experience section, featuring your accomplishments in bullet format. Below, we’ve chosen the three strongest bullet points from the above sample resume for you to consider. We’ve also bolded the strongest parts of each bullet point:

• 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. She took the initiative to create a new organizational policy, and saved the company money. This makes her strong interview material.

• 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, and proves that she is trusted by management to handle sensitive tasks.

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

Here, the candidate quantifies the number of reports she made weekly, giving the hiring manager a strong mental picture of the scope of her responsibility, and how much work she had to do. Preparing 3 reports weekly shows that she is an efficient worker who can process data quickly and manage time expertly.

4. Include Action Verbs in Your 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 the achievements on your resume with strong action verbs.

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’re capable of achieving.

Arrange	Distribute	Generate	Oversee	Record
Assist	Draft	Greet	Purchase	Schedule
Coordinate	File	Organize	Raise	Train

Like the above list of action verbs? There’s more where that came from! Visit the longest action verbs list in the universe.