Administrative Assistant Resume: Examples and Skills

You’re the behind-the-scenes powerhouse that ensures the office runs like a well-oiled machine, making managing calendars and streamlining processes look downright easy. But how can you convey all that on a resume when making a career move? 

In this guide, you’ll find out how to make an administrative assistant resume that showcases your ability to keep things organized and running like clockwork. Get ready to land your next job with a standout resume!

Administrative Assistant Job Description for a Resume

Administrative assistants ensure the efficient operation of an office by managing schedules, coordinating communication, and handling clerical tasks. They support teams by organizing documents, preparing reports, and maintaining records. Key skills include attention to detail and time management.

Here’s a more detailed administrative assistant duties and responsibilities list for resumes: 

• Manage calendars and schedules, coordinating meetings, appointments, and travel arrangements for staff or executives.
• Prepare and organize documents, including reports, memos, and presentations, ensuring accuracy and professionalism.
• Answered and directed phone calls, responded to inquiries, and transferred calls to the appropriate departments.
• Handle correspondence, including drafting emails, sorting mail, and distributing communication across the office.
• Maintain filing systems, both digital and physical, to ensure important documents are easily accessible and secure.
• Ordered and managed office supplies, ensuring the workspace was well-stocked and the equipment was functional.
• Assist with event planning and coordination, such as scheduling meetings, booking venues, and arranging catering.
• Support team projects, performing data entry, research, or other tasks as needed to help meet deadlines.

When writing your administrative assistant job description for a resume, you’ll edit these bullet points to ensure they reflect your accomplishments and experiences. You want a detailed account of your positive impact on your previous workplaces, not a copy-pasted administrative assistant duties resume list! 

First, look at the examples of the administrative assistant resume below. Our career experts wrote them, and they’ll show you how to incorporate these responsibilities into a well-formatted resume, no matter your level of experience: 

1. Format Your Administrative Assistant Resume Template

As an administrative assistant, you keep things organized and efficient every day. A professional, clear layout lets your resume show your organizational skills and eye for detail. It should also reflect the same sense of order and professionalism you bring to your work environment. 

It starts with choosing the correct resume format that instantly presents your experience in the best light. If you’re an entry-level candidate or changing careers, the functional resume format or the combination resume can be viable options. 

These layouts focus on your skills, diverting attention away from your low level of relevant experience. However, recruiters aren’t always familiar with these formats, and your accomplishments may easily get overlooked. 

The best option for administrative assistants is the reverse-chronological resume format, which we’ll use in this guide. This layout is familiar to everyone and focuses on your recent experience, placing your most relevant achievements in the spotlight. It’s also the most universal choice, suitable for experienced professionals and candidates with no experience. 

Let’s start by making an essential structure for your resume. First, divide the page into these sections:

• Professional-style header with your contact details
• One paragraph for your resume summary or objective (you may also know this as a resume profile or introduction)
• Work experience section—this will form the bulk of your resume if you have relevant experience
• Education section—short for experienced administrative assistants, longer if you’re a recent graduate
• Key skills: listing up to 10 of your most important professional abilities
• (Optional) Additional sections for any other relevant information, such as your certifications, volunteering experience, or foreign language skills

Each resume section should have a heading that’s easy to spot. Keep the names simple: “Experience,” “Education,” etc. will work perfectly. Creative section names can confuse recruiters and look unprofessional. Plus, many companies use ATS (Applicant Tracking Systems) to manage applicant data, and this software could misread your resume if the headings are too complicated. 

Having created an outline for your resume, ensure the document is formatted to look professional and easy to read. Here’s a quick checklist to help you out: 

• Pick a simple font. The best resume fonts are classics like Calibri, Arial, or Georgia. Avoid fonts that look out of place in formal correspondence or documentation. 
• Set the font size to 10–12 points for easy readability. Depending on your font choice, the headings should be more significant, around 14–16 points. 
• Your resume should have one-inch margins and be set to 1.15 line spacing to add white space and avoid overloading the page with text. 
• Keep an eye on the length of your resume. One page is the gold standard, although you can consider a two-page resume if you have 10+ years of relevant experience and plenty of accomplishments to share. 

Ready to see some examples of well-formatted resumes? Take a look at these administrative assistant resume templates:

2. Provide Your Contact Details in a Professional Header

Like on any other document, place your resume header at the top of the page. Include the following information.

• Your full name and job title
• Your phone number
• Your email address

If you maintain a well-optimized LinkedIn profile with up-to-date information, add a link to it in your resume header. It can substantiate your experience and show employers more of your professional side.

Pro Tip: Word-processing software allows adding headers and footers to the page. Avoid using this feature; instead, place all your text in the document’s body. That ensures consistent formatting and makes it easier for your resume to pass ATS checks.

3. Write Tailored Administrative Assistant Job Descriptions for Your Resume

Don’t worry about writing the resume summary or objective for now—leave enough space for a single paragraph, and let’s move on to your work experience section. 

Start by listing your work history in reverse chronological order: your current or most recent job should be listed first, followed by your previous role, and so on. 

Include your job title, company name and location, and employment dates for each entry. You do not need to include specific start and end dates—the month and year (e.g., January 2018–April 2022) will be enough. 

Regarding how far back to go on your resume, aim for the past 10 years of relevant work experience unless you believe an older role is instrumental in showing a specific skill. 

Now, let’s dive into how to craft those key bullet points that will demonstrate the value you bring as an administrative assistant. You’ll want to provide 3–5 points for each job you list. These should highlight your key responsibilities and most notable achievements.

Here’s how to make your resume bullet points stand out:

• Emphasize your achievements rather than just listing your duties. Focus on what you accomplished in each administrative role—show how your efforts improved office efficiency or supported team success.
• Begin each bullet point with an action verb to convey your role in the accomplishment. Use words like “organized,” “coordinated,” “streamlined,” and “facilitated” to demonstrate how you took initiative and drove results. 
• Quantify your impact by highlighting measurable outcomes, such as time saved, tasks completed, or improvements in team efficiency.
• Tailor your bullets for each job you apply to. Different companies may prioritize various skills or responsibilities, so adjusting your bullet points to reflect the position’s requirements will help you stand out as the ideal candidate.

If you’re writing a career-change resume, as you describe your experience from other roles, try to focus on your transferable skills. That means skills you’ll apply in your new career as an administrative assistant, such as communication, time management, and attention to detail. 

If you have no experience, you can list volunteering and internships on your resume or skip the work experience section. To see a sample resume for administrative assistants with no experience, look at the entry-level resume example above! 

4. Add an Education Section to Your Administrative Assistant Resume

In a separate section, provide the details of your highest completed level of education, including: 

• What you studied: the name and level of your degree or diploma
• Where: the name and location of the school, college, or institution
• When: your dates of attendance

You can move on to the next section if you have at least a few years of relevant work experience. Employers will be much more interested in your workplace accomplishments than what you did at school. 

However, if you’re a recent graduate with little experience, expand your resume education section to include proof of your administrative skills. Consider mentioning relevant coursework, academic achievements, or extracurricular activities to show that you have the right foundations for starting a career as an administrative assistant. 

Add these as bullet points in your education, highlighting abilities such as communication, time management, organizational, and computer skills. For example, in the work experience section, quantify your accomplishments by providing concrete numbers and percentages. 

5. Create a Tailored Administrative Assistant Skills Resume Section

The skills you list on your resume should match the employer’s needs as closely as possible. To make sure of that, read the job advertisement carefully. What skills does the employer mention or hint at? 

List skills from the job ad and compare them to your skills. Of those that match, pick 10 that seem most relevant or that are your strongest suits. Try to include hard and soft skills to show you’re a well-rounded, adaptable candidate with a versatile skill set. 

Those skills from the ad act as resume keywords: bring professionals, and recruitment software will look for these terms on applicants’ resumes. Including them boosts your chances of getting noticed. 

There’s no one-size-fits-all list of keywords for administrative assistant resumes—it all depends on what the employer is looking for. Still, here’s an example list to get you started: 

Administrative Assistant Resume Skills

• Organizational skills
• Time management
• Calendar management
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite
• Communication skills
• Data entry accuracy
• Document management and filing
• Attention to detail
• Multi-tasking under pressure
• Customer service
• Event planning coordination
• Expense tracking and reporting
• Teamwork
• Problem-solving skills
• Adaptability

If the job ad doesn’t list many skills, use the above list to get more ideas. You can also rely on your knowledge about the company and the role to guess the most valuable skills. For example, if you know the job involves answering customer queries, customer service will likely be a key skill. 

6. Include Other Information in Additional Resume Sections

Add an extra section to your resume for any other information you’d like to share with the recruiter. On a resume for administrative assistant roles, the following are popular choices:

• Courses and certifications resume sections
• Volunteering experience resume section
• A resume section with your language skills
• Memberships in professional associations
• Interests

If you mention interests on your resume, note that it’s best to stick to professional interests or those relevant to your profession. For instance, an interest in technology or finance could be appropriate if you apply to a fintech company. 

For entry-level resumes, consider mentioning your interests that show key skills, such as creative writing (communication), web design (computer skills, attention to detail), or event planning (organizational and interpersonal skills). 

Pro Tip: Nothing extra to say on your resume? Take an online course in a relevant subject. If you’re unsure what course to take, MS Office courses are always helpful, as most administrative assistant roles require some proficiency with this software. 

7. Craft the Perfect Administrative Assistant Resume Summary or Objective

Now that you’re done with the other parts of your resume writing a resume summary or objective will be a breeze! The main goal of this section is to condense your biggest successes into a bite-sized paragraph that points out why you’re the ideal candidate for the role. 

If you have relevant work experience, opt for an administrative assistant summary for your resume. Pick 3–5 of the most pertinent, impressive accomplishments you have outlined on your resume, and work them into a concise paragraph. Wrap it up with an offer to use your skills towards the prospective employer’s success.

Here’s an example of a resume summary for administrative assistants: 

Detail-oriented Administrative Assistant with 5 years of experience providing exceptional support to executives and teams in fast-paced environments. Expert in managing complex schedules, coordinating 50+ meetings and travel arrangements monthly with 100% accuracy. Streamlined office operations, improving workflow efficiency by 20% through process automation and optimized filing systems. Reduced office supply costs by 15% through vendor negotiations and inventory management. Skilled in drafting professional communications, preparing detailed reports, and maintaining confidential records. Eager to leverage my expertise to streamline operations, enhance team productivity, and contribute to the overall success of Beacon Ridge Ltd.

The resume objective is the introduction of choice for entry-level candidates. Use your experience from school, internships, volunteering, or other jobs to show your value to the employer. 

Here’s an example administrative assistant resume objective:

Motivated Administrative Assistant with a strong foundation in office management and professional communication, developed through internships and academic coursework. Completed a 3-month internship at Blue Horizon, where I organized schedules for 10+ staff members, coordinated 5 team meetings weekly, and improved document organization by implementing a filing system that reduced retrieval time by 25%. Volunteered as an event coordinator for a nonprofit, planning and managing logistics for 3 fundraising events, increasing attendance by 20%. Proficient in Microsoft Office Suite and Google Workspace, with hands-on experience in creating detailed reports and tracking budgets. Excited to bring my attention to detail, efficiency, and passion for organization to support the success of Beacon Ridge Ltd.

Every sample administrative assistant resume in this guide features a summary or objective paragraph, so look at those for more ideas!

If you’re looking for other resume guides and examples for similar roles, here’s a selection of related articles written by our career experts:

• Office Assistant Resume Example
• Office Manager Resume Example
• Office Administrator Resume Example
• Executive Assistant Resume Example
• Virtual Assistant Resume Example
• Secretary Resume Example
• Assistant Manager Resume Example
• Personal Assistant Resume Example
• Business Administration Resume Example
• Resume Examples for Every Profession

Sources

1. The Role of an Administrative Assistant, Gwinnett Colleges & Institute, accessed December 7, 2024, https://www.gwinnettcollege.edu/role-administrative-assistant/
2. 10 Skills Every Administrative Assistant Needs To Succeed, Monica Jones, Northwest Career College, accessed December 7, 2024, https://www.northwestcareercollege.edu/blog/10-skills-every-administrative-assistant-needs-to-succeed/