Looking for a new Administrative Assistant Position?
The first step to getting an interview is to make sure your resume stands out from the rest. To get there, we made a few Administrative Assistant resume samples and a full explanatory resume guide to make sure you start your resume based on proven examples.
You will be lined up for interviews in no time!
What you can read in this article
23 Administrative Assistant Resume Examples
(Free resume sample downloads are at the bottom of this page)
Administrative Assistant Resume Guide:
Resume Sections
1. Contact Information:
Name, Address, Email Phone Number, Driver's license
2. Professional Summary:
1 – 3 sentences giving a broad overview of your background, years of experience as an Administrative Assistant, the industries you have worked in, and the people you have supported. (see below)
3. Employment History:
Showcase your employment history. Include the company name, your title, the dates of employment, and a list of your daily responsibilities.
4. Education/ Certifications/ Coursework/ Training:
It is not necessary to have any type of academic degree to be an Administrative Assistant. If you have a degree though, add it here!
5. Key Skills:
List of key skills that you possess that align with the job descriptions you are applying for. (more on this later)
What to Highlight
There are a number of things that are important to highlight in your Administrative Assistant Resume. These will make sure potential employers know if you are a good fit.
The first thing to include in your resume is the type of industries you have worked in.
While the main clerical duties will be the same in nearly every company, some industries, like legal, require more specialized tasks.
Make sure you include the industries you have worked in throughout your resume, including in the summary at the top and in your professional experience section.
Next, you should explain who you have experience supporting. Some Administrative Assistants support executives, some support specific managers, and some support an office as a whole.
Under each position description, including who you were supporting. If you were supporting specific people, including their names, department, and titles, as well.
You also need to include the types of specialized tasks you are familiar with. If there was anything you were responsible for that was outside of the normal Administrative Assistant responsibilities, including arranging travel, running personal errands, or giving presentations, you will want to include that in your skill summary and in each position description.
Lastly, you should include the types of software and tools you know. This will probably include Microsoft Office products, including PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, and Word.
This should also include any relevant hardware, such as printers, phones, and fax machines.
How to write a Professional Administrative Assistant Summary
Your Professional Summary, also known as a Career Objective, is the first thing an employer will read on your resume. It is essentially an appetizer to get them ready for what’s to come.
Since hiring managers are on a tight schedule and don’t have a lot of time to spend looking at each resume, you need to make sure you draw them in within the first few words.
Your Professional Summary should give the reader a broad overview of your past work experience, your areas of specialty, and what you are looking for in a position moving forward.
Start your professional summary with your title, such as Senior Administrative Assistant, followed by your years of experience.
Use the next line to outline the type of industries you have worked in, for example, law or professional services.
Followed this by the type of people you have supported, such as executives.
For the third line, add what responsibilities you are most proficient with, making sure to include the key responsibilities that are in the job descriptions you are applying for.
Administrative Assistant Career Objectives:
4 Years of Experience
“Administrative Assistant with 4 years working for a staffing & recruiting company. Extensive experience supporting sales, recruiting, and managerial personnel. Known by peers and supervisors for the ability to accommodate office visitors, schedule and facilitate meetings, and inventory and order office supplies.”
10 Years of Experience
“Senior Administrative Assistant with 10 years in the law and professional services industries. Extensive experience supporting attorneys, executives, as well as offices as a whole. Known for a superior ability to organize schedules, make travel arrangements, and maintain a rigid filing system.”
Administrative Assistant Responsibilities
After finishing your Professional Summary, it’s time to move on to your Professional Experience section.
If you are going with a chronological resume format, you are going to start with your most recent position at the top.
For each position, include the name of the company you worked for, your position title, the dates of employment (including month and year), and a list of your daily responsibilities.
Even if you were doing the same thing at different companies, don’t repeat responsibilities in your position descriptions. Instead, divide the responsibilities up so you don’t have the same list of tasks over and over again.
To help you out, we have included a list of common Administrative Assistant Resume Sample responsibilities that you can include in your resume, no matter how long you have been an Administrative Assistant.
- Creating and analyzing spreadsheets detailing relevant office metric
- Answering and directing phone calls, taking messages when necessary
- Scheduling and organizing meetings, both in and out of the office
- Managing documents and files in an organized filing system
- Operating a range of office equipment, including printers, fax machines, laminators, and copiers
- Sending and receiving mail and packages
- Making and coordinating travel arrangements, including hotels, flights, and car transfers
- Taking inventory of and ordering new office supplies on a regular and ad hoc basis
- Coordinating interviews for internal hires and following up with candidates on the response
- Preparing business correspondences, including meeting agendas and presentations
Administrative Assistant Resume Skills
Similar to your Professional Experience section, the Administrative Assistant Key Skills section will give an employer a brief overview of your skillset. The Key Skills section is a great place to show off both your functional and technical expertise.
Pay special attention to the qualifications listed in the jobs you are applying for and make sure you include those in your Key Skills section (if you have them, of course!).
To help you get an idea of what employers are looking for, we have included some Administrative Assistant Key Skills below.
Functional Skills: Documentation, Copying, Customer Service, Meeting Facilitation, Mail Distribution, Filing, Travel Arrangements
Technical Skills: MS Office, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, Copy Machine, VoIP Phones, Fax Machine
To give your Key Skills section some additional weight, you may choose to list ‘Beginner, ‘Proficient’, or ‘Expert’ next to each of the listed skills.
Quantifying Your Resume
Employers love numbers because it makes your experience feel more tangible. When writing your resume, if you can answer the questions, “How much?” or “How many?”, you should include that number in your resume. For instance:
- How many employees did you support?
- How many phone calls did you take a day?
- How many meetings did you organize a week?
The Importance of Soft Skills
For an Administrative Assistant, your soft skills are often more than important than your functional skills.
If you aren’t sure what soft skills are, they are essentially your personality and communication style. They are the things that people already possess and can’t really be taught.
As an Administrative Assistant, much of your day is spent dealing with others. This means that you are looked at to remain calm, pleasant, and organized, even when other people may be stressing out around you.
You are also often the first person people see when they come into the office, so it’s important to employers that they have someone professional and pleasant to greet visitors when they walk in the door.
To show employers that you have the soft skills they are looking for, try to incorporate these into your profile, key skills, and cover letter sections:
- Professional
- Personable
- Proactive
- Organized
- Reliable
- Productive
- Problem Solver
Administrative Assistant Resume Keywords
When writing your professional experience section, you never want to make your employment history sound like a passive list of tasks. Instead, you should help potential employers envision you performing the job by using these Administrative Assistant Resume specific action verbs:
| Answering | Directing | Organizing |
| Scheduling | Maintaining | Filling |
| Producing | Distributing | Assisting |
| Supporting | Developing | Booking |
| Arranging | Printing | Faxing |
| Copying | Submitting | Reconciling |
| Greeting | Researching | Creating |
| Handling | Monitoring | Prepairing |
| Ensuring | Checking | Fielding |
Cover Letters & Thank You Notes
Click the images below to learn how to write and download an Administrative Assistant cover letter. Done with your resume and ready to interview? Then you might be looking for a good Thank You Note.
Finalizing your Resume
Congrats! You now have a sparkling new Administrative Assistant Resume Sample! But wait… we aren’t quite done yet. Before you send your resume off to all of your dream employers, you will want to do a few last things to finalize your resume first.
The first thing is to check the formatting. You need to make sure you use the right font and to check that all of your sections are perfectly aligned.
The more important step is to proofread!!
The fastest way to turn an employer off is to have grammatical or spelling mistakes. Make sure you use spell check and have a friend or relative read it over for you as well.
Okay, your resume is good to go. So save it in both Word docx and pdf format. Send it off to those fun new companies in town. And put your interview suit on!
Download Administrative Assistant Resumes in .PDF
