How to write a CV for an administrative assistant role

What a hiring manager scans for first

Most administrative assistant CVs are read by someone who is doing three other things at once, often the office manager or a team lead who will actually hand you work, not a recruiter reading from a script. They are scanning for two things in the first third of the page: which software you use daily, and evidence you can be trusted with things that matter if they go wrong — diaries, confidential documents, money.

So the top third should name the tools you actually use, not "IT literate" or "proficient in Microsoft Office". Say Outlook, Excel (and whether that means pivot tables and VLOOKUPs or just data entry), Word, Teams, and whichever database or CRM the role touches — SAP, Salesforce, Sage, a bespoke case-management system. If the advert names a system, and you've used it, that name needs to be visible on first glance, not buried in a bullet three jobs down. If you haven't used their exact system but have used something comparable, say so explicitly — "managed bookings on [system]; comfortable picking up new booking platforms" — rather than leaving the gap unaddressed.

The second thing they're checking is whether you can be left alone with sensitive material. Confidentiality isn't a personality trait you list; it's something you demonstrate by naming what you handled — board minutes, HR files, client contracts, payroll data — and, where relevant, a one-line nod to GDPR or data-handling awareness if the role involves personal data at any volume.

Qualifications and evidence that actually carry weight

There is no licence to practise as an administrative assistant, which means the CV has to work harder on demonstrated competence than on credentials. That said, a few things do carry specific weight in this field:

• Business Administration qualifications — NVQ/Level 2 or Level 3 Business Administration, or the apprenticeship standard of the same name, signal formal training in office procedure and are worth stating in full, including the level.
• AAT (Association of Accounting Technicians) qualifications, even at foundation level, matter if the role touches invoicing, purchase orders or expense processing — which many administrative assistant roles do, even when the job title doesn't say "finance".
• RSA/OCR typing or shorthand qualifications are largely historic now, but if you hold one and the role involves high-volume correspondence or minute-taking, it's still reasonable to include it — pair it with a current typing speed if you have one, since the qualification alone reads as dated without a number attached to it.
• ECDL/ICDL (European/International Computer Driving Licence) still appears on some job specs in the public sector and larger institutions; if you have it, list it, but don't chase it from scratch — most hiring managers now weight named software experience over this certificate.
• Membership of the Institute of Administrative Management (IAM) is uncommon at assistant level but not unheard of, and worth a line if you have it, since it's a recognisable body specific to this profession rather than a generic "member of professional network" line.

None of these substitute for evidence of the work itself. A hiring manager choosing between a candidate with a Level 3 qualification and no examples, and a candidate with no qualification but three years of concrete, specific duties, will usually take the second. The qualification supports the evidence; it doesn't replace it.

How to describe the work so it reads as experience, not a job description

The single most common failure on administrative assistant CVs is a list of duties that could describe anyone who has ever sat at that desk — "managing diaries, answering phones, filing documents" — with no indication of scale, judgement or outcome. That's a job description, not evidence of what you did with it.

The fix is to attach a number or a decision to each line wherever you honestly can:

• Not "managed diaries" but "managed diaries for three directors with overlapping international schedules, resolving clashes without needing sign-off"
• Not "organised meetings" but "coordinated logistics for a monthly board meeting of twelve attendees, including papers, catering and minute distribution within 48 hours"
• Not "handled correspondence" but "first point of contact for client queries by phone and email, triaging and resolving around 30 a day without escalation"
• Not "processed invoices" but "processed supplier invoices and reconciled the department's monthly expense claims against budget"

If you genuinely don't know the volume — you never counted the calls, never tracked the invoices — it's fine to say less rather than invent a figure. "Managed a high volume of client correspondence" is honest and still better than the bare duty with no scale attached at all. What it can't be is a number you're guessing at, because if you're asked about it in an interview and can't stand behind it, that's worse than not having included it.

Where the role involved discretion — deciding what to escalate, what to file, what to flag to a manager before it became a problem — say that explicitly. "Flagged budget discrepancies before month-end close" tells a hiring manager you exercise judgement, not just process. That distinction is usually the difference between "assistant" and "senior assistant" pay bands, and it's rarely written down even when the candidate clearly did it.

What administrative assistant CVs routinely leave out

A few things get missed often enough that they're worth checking for specifically:

• The scale of what you supported. How many people, how many sites, how big a budget line. "Supported the operations team" tells a hiring manager almost nothing; "supported an operations team of nine across two sites" tells them what you can handle.
• Systems ownership, not just use. If you set up a new filing system, built a template that the team still uses, or trained a colleague on a piece of software, that's initiative and it's routinely left off because it doesn't feel like a "real" achievement. It is.
• Event or project coordination that happened alongside the day job. Organising the office move, the Christmas party, the AGM — these are frequently dropped because they weren't in the job title, but they demonstrate exactly the planning and stakeholder-juggling that the role needs.
• Software you're rusty on but have used. If you learned a booking system or a CRM two jobs ago and haven't touched it since, a short line noting that is often more useful than omitting it entirely, especially if the advert names that same system.
• Line management or oversight of temps and junior staff, which some administrative assistants do without the title ever reflecting it. If you signed off timesheets, trained a new starter, or covered someone's role during leave, that belongs on the CV.

What shouldn't be there, despite how often it is: a long objective statement about wanting a "dynamic role in a fast-paced environment", and a skills list of adjectives — "organised, proactive, excellent communicator" — with nothing under them. Every one of those words needs a line of evidence next to it or it should come out.

What to do next

Pull up the last two or three job adverts you've applied to and check your CV against the software and systems each one names specifically — not the generic list you keep in your head, the actual words in that advert. Then go through your bullet points and attach a number, a scale or a decision to every one that currently just states a duty. If you're applying to several roles with genuinely different systems and priorities and don't have time to rebuild the CV each time, jobmarket.pro reads each advert in full and prepares the application from your existing experience, without inventing anything you haven't done.