How to Write a administrative assistant resume?

[Click here to directly go to the complete administrative assistant resume sample]

You are not just an "admin. asst.".

To discover the respect, value and power of the administrative profession you must have a resume that sets you apart.

Administrative assistants are the powerhouses of the office.

Without the admins, the gears that keep the office running smoothly would stutter and eventually come to a halt.

Skilled administrative assistants are masters of multitasking, discretion, and time management. Further, they possess the core administrative assistant resume skills.

How do you show these skills and your achievements on a professional administrative assistant resume?

In this blog we will talk about:

• What is administrative resume and how to use it?
• How to write the professional summary of administrative assistant resume?
• How to write the professional experience section in the administrative assistant resume?
• How to craft a perfect education section for the administrative assistant resume?
• How to optimize the key skills section in the administrative assistant resume?

To the greatest extent possible, you need to come up with examples of these traits to show in your resume. Here's where you start:

What is an Administrative Assistant Resume?

An administrative assistant is the office’s one-person special operations unit. You run the office like clockwork.

The key to successfully landing a job you love is to create an admin assistant resume that stands you out among the crowd. Administrative assistant positions often require a high level of attention to detail and superb communication skills.

So, it is imperative for your admin assistant resume to clearly convey your most relevant skills and abilities pertaining to the recruiter's expectations.

You shall find administrative assistant resume examples which shall help you develop your own document.

To begin with, an entry level administrative assistant resume should essentially contain the following expertise:

• Formal/vocational training/education (Eg. Associate’s degree in Administrative Assisting)
• Good command over English and business writing skills
• Familiarity with MS Office Suite
• Word processing/desktop publishing/database management
• Knowledge about office procedures/business communication
• Transcription, proofreading and accounting principles
• Web designing, management skills, and prior work experience

Administrative Assistant Salary

The Administrative Assistant Salary can differ based on different factors like job location, work experience, industry type, and skill expertise. You can check out the average administrative assistant salart in the US as per some renowned career portals:

Portal Name	Average Administrative Assistant Salary
Indeed.com	$15.86 per hour
Glassdoor.co.in	$40,313 per year
Salary.com	$42,966 per year

Who Should Use an Administrative Assistant Resume?

If you're in the administration field, you probably want a resume that reflects your knowledge, skills and experience according to the position you're looking for.

An administrative assistant resume is often helpful for a candidate when s/he is looking to reflect his expertise in the following responsibilities:

• Providing general and clerical support
• Maintaining the filing system
• Prioritizing and managing projects
• Resolving conflicts and critical administrative problems
• Managing calendars and scheduling meetings
• Preparing and modifying documents
• Conducting research and performing data entry
• Processing and managing client calls
• Compliance with office policies and procedures
• Point of contact for clients
• Tracking accounting information
• Coordinating between professionals and departments

When to Use an Administrative Assistant Resume?

An administrative assistant handles a variety of important everyday tasks, and plays an important part in helping businesses and organizations run smoothly.

Different companies have different needs, and therefore there is no single item that every Administrative Assistant employer is looking for on a resume.

Some specialized businesses may require certain kinds of knowledge and experience, but for most positions, simply having education or experience in the business world will give your resume a leg up.

Aim to prove this through either highlighting your past experience or detailing your relevant education. An Associate’s in a business-related field, for example, would certainly make you equipped for the job!

Why Should You Use an Administrative Assistant Resume?

Recruiters usually look for candidates with a fearless approach, a sense of flexibility, and a positive attitude.

While applying for the target job, how do you show off these specific traits in your administrative assistant resume?

It's pretty simple.

1. Chronologically arrange your past positions in a series of headings
2. Draft a brief summary and key skills with your most relevant qualifications.
3. List your educational qualifications at the end
4. Highlight relevant special skills/achievements/projects

Some valuable factors that strengthen your admin resume are:

• event planning
• communication
• budget
• schedule management

Writing a great Administrative Assistant resume starts with 3 simple but important steps:

• Refer to the job description.
• Highlight skills, awards and certifications that match your requirements.
• Create a MasterCV and a summary of your qualifications.

How Do You Write an Administrative Assistant Resume?

To create a resume that helps position you as the most attractive candidate out of a group, it’s critical you are both thorough and concise.

Emphasize your most applicable skills and experience and use key terms that an application tracking system will pick up.

It is also important that you format your resume properly and make sure it is easily readable.

Administrative responsibilities comprise creating, disseminating and managing a large quantity of important data and documents. A messy or incoherent resume may prove that you are unprepared for the task.

Administrative Assistant Sample Resume

Let's look at the following administrative assistant resume sample:

A comprehensive and well-organized resume can make a big difference.

Between getting the interview and missing the job opportunity, we suggest you ensure that your administrative resume has the most important features

To craft a resume that helps you secure that job, check out these administrative assistant resume examples.

First, write your name, followed by your contact details on the top:

This could occur in parallel or in sequence.

However, if you are using a text editor, you may also relay your information in sequence:

Either way, make sure your name, contact information and resume headline are present simultaneously.

Your resume headline for administrative assistant is essentially your profile title.

Hands down, the most relevant title for you administrative assistant resume is "Administrative Assistant".

Include a summary statement that packs a punch and a thorough work history, skills, and education section.

Administrative Assistant Resume Key Sections

Administrative Assistant Resume Summary/ Objective

Admin assistant roles require a blend of soft skills and technical abilities, so your admin resume summary should include examples of both.

If you are a current graduate or a career-changer you might want to go for the resume objective statement.

An effective administrative assistant resume objective should:

• not be generic
• be short, sweet
• take no time in explaining why you should be hired for the specific position
• introduce your years of experience
• relay the main functions you performed

Be selective when choosing between achievements and prioritizing between the duties performed.

• Try limiting them to meet the requirements stated in the target job.
• Relay your most unique qualities that will help the company be successful.
• Showcase the right skills to meet your adaptable personality.

You may further furnish your career objective with your educational degrees, certifications, and language proficiency.

While bilingual skills are not usually required as part of administrative assistant resume skills, it may be a nice bonus for international companies.

If you are an experienced administrative assistant write an administrative assistant resume summary.

Your summary statement should:

• be the first impression to your potential employer
• focus on the most attributive skills, expertise, and characteristics
• be sentence fragments in first-person without the pronouns
• comprise 2-3 sentences
• not have bullet points

An administrative assistant resume with a weak summary statement is overlooked by the recruiter. It is best to get it reviewed by industry experts.

The administrative assistant resume summary should include the most relevant experiences and skills you have obtained as an admin assistant.

Tailor the relevant skills/experience to your target job.

Mention any jobs you held in the past that were in a related field to the one you are applying for and suggest how those experiences would make you a good fit for the position.

Since an admin assistance is usually a junior candidate, the common administrative assistant resume objective is written in the following manner:

However, to turn the same into an effective administrative assistant resume summary, you may exclude sentences like the following:

"Have gained significant experience in conducting different kinds of administrative work."
"Can handle all other administrative tasks to ensure that offices keep on functioning at their peak capacities."
"Looking to apply the acquired gamut of skills in a challenging role."

Skills

Adding the most relevant administrative assistant resume skills is the key to an effective summary.

For instance, adding words per minute (WPM) to a niece’s resume would not be relevant, as most of their job is done physically and not at a computer.

However, adding WPM to an administrative assistant resume should add value and credibility to the applicant.

The necessary administrative skills for resume also contains Microsoft Office Suite. Knowledge of Microsoft Office is often mentioned in administrative assistant job description for resume.

While listing Microsoft Office, do not list each Microsoft Office application, but combine them under the same suite.

The following are core administrative assistant resume skills as used in the administrative assistant resume sample:

Calendar Management	Communication Management	Coordination
Datasheets	Office Management	Team Management

However, may administrative assistant resume examples also showcase skills in:

• PhotoShop
• Illustrator
• Accounting Softwares like QuickBooks

If you are a senior applicant you may want to add the most important skills on your resume:

• Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Outlook, Powerpoint)
• Database management
• Calendar management
• Quickbooks
• Office equipment operation (copiers, fax machines, etc)
• Accuracy
• Data entry
• Supply management
• Inventory control
• Editing and Proofreading
• Billing
• Business Knowledge

Also Read: How to frame skills section of a resume?

Easily customize them with Hiration's administrative assistant resume templates.

Professional Experience Section

Do not list out your day to day responsibilities.

First, be selective and list only the responsibilities and achievements that meet the target job requirements.

For example, the sample candidate chose to prioritize the key point:

• "Managing a team of 3 junior administrative assistants to complete all the assigned tasks"

You may add more information to the same line to make it more valuable:

• "Managing a team of 3 to manage budget of USD 30,000 on a monthly basis to facilitate operations".

However, from the same administrative assistant resume example, the following can be removed as it is clearly reflected from the section title itself:

• "Appointed as the Administrative Assistant in the CEO's office"

Secondly, start each point with an action verb. This should power up your professional experience section.

Refrain from using phrases like "responsible for" or "worked on". Instead use power verbs like "managed", "coordinated" and "enhanced" to catch the recruiter's attention.

Always combine like points and remove fluff to save precious resume space.

Finally, quantify your administrative resume points. For example
Collating 2,000+ datasheets every year
Preparing ~1,000 time sheets and expense reports on a yearly basis

These points denote direct figures which instill confidence in the recruiter about the required functions you are able to perform.

Support your claims from the Administrative Assistant resume objective section with examples in your professional experiences.

Let's look at the following "PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE" section from the experienced administrative assistant resume:

McKinley FMCG
Administrative Assistant New York, US
Apr '13 - Present
(McKinley is one of America's leading producers of FMCG products Md. soups, canned foods etc.)

• Appointed as the Administrative Assistant in the CEO's office
• Managing a team of 3 junior administrative assistants to complete all the assigned tasks
  Calendar Management
• Handling the scheduling of all meetings & appointments for the CEO
• Taking care of all the domestic as well as international travel arrangements for the CEO & the executive team
  Communication Management
• Compiling all the inbound communication (emails, phones etc.; 5k+ per day) & presenting it on a regular basis
• Ensuring that all outbound communication (emails, messages etc.; lk+ per day) is delivered on time
  Coordination between Departments
• Ensuring proper coordination between different departments via the CEO's office such as forwarding the right documents etc.
  Report & Datasheet Compilation
• Compiling datasheets received from different departments including operations, sales etc. and presenting it to the CEO
• Responsible for collating 2,000+ datasheets every year
• Creating —1,000 time sheets and expense reports on a yearly basis
  Office Management
• Managing the office stationary inventory to ensure 100% availability
• Ensuring upkeep & cleanliness of the CEO's office by coordinating with 5+ cleaning staffs

Writing the professional experiences section takes 5 simple steps:

• Write your profile header with all necessary data
• Frame STAR (Situation-Task-Action-Result) points
• Begin each point with an action verb
• Club similar points under one broad umbrella of skills
• Signify this skill with a bucket (function) you are adept at

This is the ideal header as can be formatted on Hiration's online resume builder.

You may also club buckets like "Office Management" and "Calendar Management" together and write all the points under them.

For work experiences in your previous stints, always start with a verb in the past tense as is in the administrative assistant resume sample:

• Worked in a team of 3 to handle all the administrative tasks in the Marketing Director's office
• Responsible for managing the calendar as well as the travel arrangement for the Director & her team
• Maintained the records for all the employees in the marketing department
• Organized weekly sales and marketing conference with 10 other city offices across the country

We have highlighted further points from multiple administrative assistant resume examples for consideration:

"Developed new filing system as per organizational practices to save USD 5,000 YoY in labor expenses"

Proves that the candidate is:

• skilled and competent
• can take the necessary initiative
• acknowledges compliance
• can cut costs for the company

"Trained and led 2 administrative assistants during company expansion while ensuring compliance company policy"

Proves that the candidate is:

• able to train new employees
• competent and confident
• could be trusted by management to handle sensitive tasks
• exhibits sincere compliance with company policy

"Typed documents such as correspondence, drafts, memos, and emails, and prepared 3 reports on a weekly basis for management"

Here, the candidate:

• quantifies the number of reports made on a weekly basis
• gives the recruiter a clear picture of the scope of her responsibility
• shows efficiency in work and excellent time management skills
• relates that the s/he can process data quickly

The first step to writing impactful sentences, is to begin with action verbs.

The following admin resume action verbs are often competent with the roles and responsibilities of an administrative assistant:

Spearhead	Assist	Organize
Generate	Raise	Coordinate
Augment	Document	Distribute
Organize	Schedule	Draft
Oversee	Streamline	Champion

Also Read: How to use action verbs in a resume?

Most candidates do not focus on achievements during their jobs while writing administrative assistant resumes.

However, these details make your resume stand out, instead of daily tasks and duties.

Therefore, instead of writing administrative assistant duties for resume like:

• Unlocked the office each morning
• Wrote letters and emails

You may exemplify your key contributions and achievements for your administrative assistant resume:

• Reduced company expenses by USD 1,500 YoY by designing contemporary organizational policies
• Maintained pancutality by managing appointment calendar for 12 conference rooms

Education Section

Although administrative assistant positions do not typically require a college degree, your educational background is still an important part of your resume.

To add appeal to your application, include:

• Degrees
• Distance/continued Education Courses
• Specific Training

Keep this section straightforward. Employ only a few best practices:

• Begin with your highest level of education
• Order in reverse chronological order
• List all designations/certificates earned

A couple of thumb rules if your job

• only asks for a college degree, you may remove your high school information
• does not require undergraduate coursework, you may include your diploma

However, if you are looking to write your headers on a text editor you may use the following template:

In the given administrative assistant resume sample,

• Course: Bachelor of HRM
• University: NYU
• Location: New York, US
• Dates: Jun '07 - Apr '11
• Company Description: NYU is a top ranked public university in the USA
• Contribution/Development: Top 15 percentile of the class

Projects Section

Selected Projects

You typical project section on an administrative assistant resume, as any other section, comprises the most relevant data for the recruiter to consider.

This example from our administrative assistant resume sample shows one project:
Development of a novel approach for evaluating employees, '09

• Acquired in-depth knowledge on concepts of compensation, reward & equity
• Articulated it in research reports on the facets of Wages & salary administration, installing a salary & wage system etc.

Additional Sections

The additional sections which are relevant to the administrative assistant resume sample are:

CO CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES

• 1st position, national level elocution competition | Harvard University | '08

Scholarships

• Awarded the WO:Wight Scholarship' worth USD 150k for my undergraduate studies | '11

EXTRA CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES

Quizzing:

• 1st position, International Sports Quiz | NYU | '10
• 1st Runners Up, Inter College Science Quiz | UCLA | '09

Literary:

• 1st position, Inter College debate competition | NYU | '09
• 1st position, National Level elocution competition | Harvard University | '08

Resume+

• Use your personal and existing network - friends, family, former clients, etc. - for personalized job alerts.
• Market your skills and expertise.
• Boost your online presence to enhance the chances of getting shortlisted.
• Keep a positive attitude at the interview.
• Revamp your resume before a job search and get it professionally reviewed.

Format it

• Keep it short
  Recruiters skim through ~1000 on a daily basis. Make sure your data is relevant, phrased easily and arranged in bullet points.
• Do not use fancy fonts
  Both the ATS and recruiter may find it difficult to read some fonts. Therefore, stick to professional, serif fonts like Calibri or Verdana.
• Retain white space
  Do not push the margins to the edge. You resume format for administrative assistant should ensure sufficient white space around all margins of the document.
• Use an organized template
  Professionally speaking, fancy is not better. For a successful resume for administrative assistant, simple and professional is the way to go.

Keep your layout organized, with clear breaks between sections and easily available information. You may even use a traditional format.

Key Takeaways

• Administrative assistant resumes are mostly for junior positions.
• Recruiters prefer an administrative assistant resume objective.
• Write your name and contact details on top of the admin assistant resume.
• The resume headline for administrative assistant resume is "Administrative Assistant".
• Frame STAR contribution points to make the best of all your resume points.
• A professional administrative assistant resume has a summary with 2-3 sentences.
• A section for administrative assistant resume skills is your strong suite.

Following these steps will lead you towards a job-winning Administrative Assistant Resume. However, you can leverage Hiration's 360-Degree Career Building Platform to craft your Administrative Assistant Resume. It comes with 24X7 chat support to assist you during every hurdle. Moreover, in case of any query, you can contact us at support@hiration.com.