Administration · written by career coaches
Executive assistant resume example
A finished executive assistant resume you can read end to end — the summary, the bullets, and the keywords these postings actually contain. Adapt the structure; never copy the numbers.
An executive assistant resume is judged on the seniority you supported and the authority you were trusted with. Name the titles, the ratio and the tenure, then evidence delegated judgement — inbox triage, gatekeeping, board preparation — at its real scale. A generic task list reads as an administrative assistant resume, which is a different and more junior job.
Summary section
Executive assistant with nine years at C-level, currently sole support to the CEO and CFO of a 600-person company. Run both calendars and a triaged inbox of 150+ daily emails, own the quarterly board-pack cycle for an eight-member board, and manage 40+ international trips a year.
Achievement bullets that work
Written to show the result first and the method second. Adapt the structure — never copy the numbers.
- Sole support to the CEO and CFO of a 600-person company, running both calendars across three time zones with standing authority to move any meeting except board and earnings.
- Triage an inbox of 150+ daily emails into a 20-minute morning briefing; the CEO answers roughly 15 directly and delegates the rest through drafts I prepare.
- Own the quarterly board-pack cycle for an eight-member board, collating input from six departments to a deadline five days before each meeting — never missed in four years.
- Manage 40+ international trips a year, including rebuilding a four-country investor roadshow overnight after a cancelled flight collapsed the itinerary.
- Hold delegated approval on expenses and invoices to £5,000, screening roughly 60 items a month so only exceptions reach the CFO.
ATS keywords for Executive Assistant roles
Terms that postings for this role commonly contain. Use the ones that are true of you, in the posting’s own wording.
- executive assistant
- C-suite
- complex calendar management
- inbox management
- board meeting preparation
- international travel planning
- expense reporting
- Concur
- Microsoft PowerPoint
- stakeholder management
- gatekeeping
- confidential correspondence
- meeting coordination
- project coordination
The titles you supported are the headline
The first thing a reader wants to know is who you supported, at what ratio, for how long. Sole support to a CEO of a 600-person company is a different job from shared support to three directors, and both are different from supporting a leadership team of ten. State the titles, the company scale and the ratio in your first two lines — they are how the market prices an EA, and leaving them out prices you at the bottom.
Tenure with an executive is evidence in its own right. EAs are the first relationship a new executive re-examines, so five years with the same principal — or being retained through a CEO transition — says more about your judgement than any bullet can. If you survived a transition, say so explicitly; readers who have hired EAs know exactly what it means.
Evidence authority, not activity
What separates an executive assistant from an administrative assistant is delegated judgement: what you could decide, move, approve or send without asking. Standing authority over the calendar, drafts that go out under the executive's name, an approval limit on spend, the discretion to say no to meeting requests on their behalf. Bullets about booking travel and scheduling meetings describe activity anyone at any level performs; bullets about authority describe trust.
Quantify the authority precisely, because interviewers probe exactly this line. "Delegated approval to £5,000" and "standing authority to move any meeting except board and earnings" are checkable claims that establish your level in a sentence. Vague claims of being a "trusted right hand" establish nothing and invite the question you least want asked vaguely.
Board work and discretion, described carefully
Board support is the strongest scope evidence most senior EAs have, and it is usually buried in a task list. Owning a board-pack cycle means running deadlines across departments that do not report to you, and a delivery record — "five days before each meeting, never missed in four years" — is a project-management claim as strong as any coordinator's. Minutes at executive sessions, offsites for the leadership team, investor logistics: name them, with their cadence and scale.
You will also have handled material that cannot appear on a resume: personnel matters, deals, results before release. Evidence the category, never the content — "handled pre-announcement financial materials through four earnings cycles" demonstrates discretion in the same sentence that exercises it. A resume that hints at specifics fails the exact test it is trying to pass.
Which template suits a executive assistant
Its restrained single column suits a document executives will read themselves, and single-column layouts parse reliably through the older systems executive search firms often run.
Fair questions.
Seniority supported and authority held. An EA resume leads with titles, ratio and delegated judgement — approval limits, gatekeeping, board cycles. If those are missing, the resume reads as administrative support regardless of the job title on it.
Name the category and the cadence, never the content: "personnel matters", "pre-announcement financials through four earnings cycles". The description itself demonstrates you know where the line is.
Not necessarily. With eight or more years at C-level, two pages is normal. What matters is that the titles you supported, the ratio and your authority are visible in the first half of page one.
State it plainly: EA roles end when executives move, and every experienced reader knows it. If you were retained by the successor or redeployed, say so — being kept through a transition is strong evidence, not a footnote.
Now write yours. Scored as you go.
Start from your real history — the coach asks for the specifics rather than inventing them, and scores every edit against the posting you're targeting.