Your resume should include at least one skills section consisting of six to eight skills. To maximize your chances of getting an interview, you can increase this number by distributing more skills throughout different sections of your resume, such as in the work history and professional summary.

Besides a listed section, you can have an expanded skills section with three to four bullet points per skill. These bullet points consist of examples of tasks and accomplishments that demonstrate how you executed each skill.

Let’s look at the example below to understand better:

This robust skills section goes into detail when describing tasks and accomplishments while legitimizing them with provable metrics.

It’s important to note that the skills you use here aren’t repeated in other sections throughout your resume. You can diversify the skills on your resume by making sure you have a good mix of all three skills types: soft, hard and technical.

Soft skills are a set of personal abilities that describe the way you work independently of your job or industry. Valuable soft skills for an administrative assistant can be phone etiquette, problem-solving, prioritization, and delegation.

Hard skills are acquired through education, training or practical experience. They relate more closely to your particular job. An administrative assistant should have hard skills like database management, billing and record-keeping, data entry, and editing.

Technical skills refer to your level of understanding of certain technologies and digital tools. For example, an administrative assistant can list the following technical skills: proficiency with accounting software, expertise in MS Office programs, and knowledge of mass-mailing systems.

Take a look at this list of administrative assistant skills, and add the ones you possess to your resume.

You can also find more job-specific skills for administrative assistants in our Resume Builder. Our resume-writing tool automatically suggests skills and pre-written content so you can finish your resume faster!

Your work history consists of your most recent jobs organized in reverse chronological order. You start with your current or most recent role and work your way backward.

Every work history entry needs to include the job title, name of workplace, location, and dates of employment. Follow each entry with three to four bullet points describing your most impressive tasks and accomplishments.

Let’s compare these poor and good examples of a work history to better understand how to write this section correctly.

Poor example:

This example doesn’t go in-depth when describing tasks nor mentions any particular achievements. Without quantifiable achievements or skills, this work history seems generic and unimpressive.

Good example:

This work history entry is much more comprehensive than the previous one. By including specific examples of job duties and backing them up with numbers, the work history accurately conveys the candidate is an efficient professional.

If you want to fortify your work history, even more, follow these tips:

Education

Your education section consists of your degree, institution where you studied, its location and graduation dates. We always advise candidates with a high school diploma or GED to omit that graduation date to avoid hiring bias from employers.

Although employers do not always require it, it’s common to have a postsecondary degree in Business Administration, Office Management, Secretarial Science or Office Systems. For general administrative assistant roles, an associate degree in these fields can suffice. If you’re applying for an executive assistant or executive secretary position, a bachelor’s degree in these areas of study is to be expected.

Administrative assistants can also specialize themselves to work in the medical or legal fields. Whether you have a BA, an AA or an administrative assistant certification, relevant coursework for legal or medical terminology and procedures are crucial if you want to be a specialized administrative assistant in these fields.

Certifications, Licenses and Custom Sections

After including your key resume sections, you can consider adding extra sections to list any certifications, licenses, or training you’ve acquired to advance your administrative skills and knowledge.

Certifications an administrative assistant should have are:

Microsoft Office Specialist

This certifies that you have expert knowledge and management of Microsoft Office Suite products, such as Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, Access and more.

Google Workspace Certification

This certification ensures you have a mastery of all G Suite tools such as Gmail, Drive, Sheets, Forms, Docs and Google Meet.

Certified Administrative Professional

This continuing education certificate guarantees that you have the knowledge and the practical ability to be an administrative professional. It requires you to have at least two years of experience under your belt.

Fundamental Payroll Certification

Show you have a baseline competency in payroll production, payroll accounting, payroll taxation and payroll systems with this renewable certification.

You should also be taking continuing education and training courses throughout your career. Having this in your resume ensures employers you’re keeping up with the latest programs and technologies and you’re interested in advancing your career.

Some training courses you should consider are:

Your contact information should be practical and straightforward. Just add your full name, the city and state you’re based, your phone number and your professional email address.