Administrative Assistant resume skills. The words recruiters search for.
The 17 skills and tools that come up in administrative assistant job posts, sorted by type, and how to put them in bullets a recruiter believes.
By Nazir Elmurodov, Founder, LaunchCV · Updated
/ The list
Keywords by type. Use only the ones that are true for you.
Hard skills · 9
- Administrative support
- Calendar management (used in Jasmine's sample resume)
- Scheduling
- Travel arrangements
- Data entry
- Expense reports (used in Jasmine's sample resume)
- Meeting minutes (used in Jasmine's sample resume)
- Office management
- Event planning (used in Jasmine's sample resume)
Tools & software · 7
- Microsoft Office (used in Jasmine's sample resume)
- Microsoft 365 (used in Jasmine's sample resume)
- Outlook (used in Jasmine's sample resume)
- Excel (used in Jasmine's sample resume)
- Word
- PowerPoint
- Google Workspace
Soft skills · 1
- Confidentiality
8 of 17 appear in Jasmine's sample resume. See where
/ How to use them
Put keywords in bullets, not just in a skills list.
A skills list tells the software you have a skill. A bullet shows a recruiter what you did with it.
Scheduling
Weak: Managed calendars
Strong: Managed calendars for the COO and 2 VPs, coordinating 40+ meetings a week across time zones
Events
Weak: Planned events
Strong: Organized a 60-person leadership offsite, delivered 8% under budget
Organization
Weak: Organized files
Strong: Moved paper filing to SharePoint, cutting the time the team spent finding documents by about half
Cost
Weak: Ordered supplies
Strong: Consolidated office supply orders and cut monthly supply spend by 12%
Strong bullets come from Jasmine's sample resume and our administrative assistant bullet examples. Names and figures are illustrative.
/ Use them honestly
Keywords get you found. Proof gets you hired.
Mirror the job post's wording for skills you really have. If an administrative assistant post asks for Administrative support and you've used it, say Administrative support, in the post's spelling, and show where.
Mirror the job post's wording
If an administrative assistant post says "Calendar management", write "Calendar management", not a near-synonym — as long as it's accurate. Recruiters search for the post's exact term.
Only claim what you can back up
Expect to be asked about every term you list. If you couldn't spend two minutes on Administrative support — what you did and what changed — leave it out.
Show it in a bullet
Listing Microsoft Office says you've used it; a bullet that says what you did with Microsoft Office and what changed proves it.
No stuffing, no hidden text
Repeating a word or hiding keywords in white text doesn't make you a better match. A person reads the resume in the end.
Which of these does your resume say?
Free ATS score and missing keywords in about 10 seconds.
Applying to one post? Scan its keywords against your resume.
Keep going
/ Questions
Administrative Assistant keywords, answered.
Something else? support@launch-cv.com
How many keywords should an administrative assistant resume have?
There's no magic number. Jasmine's sample resume uses 8 of the 17 terms on this page — the ones that fit that job. Cover what your post asks for that you can back up, each where it fits; repeating a keyword doesn't help.
Should I copy keywords exactly from the job post?
Use the post's wording for skills you really have. If an administrative assistant post says "Administrative support", write "Administrative support" rather than a synonym, so a recruiter searching for that term finds you. Don't add skills you don't have just because the post lists them.
Where should keywords go on my resume?
In your summary, a short skills section and, above all, the bullets under each job, where you show what you did with the skill. Plain text in the body of the page is easiest for applicant tracking systems to read.
Which tools should I list on an administrative assistant resume?
The ones you've used and the post mentions. Common ones in administrative assistant posts include Microsoft Office, Microsoft 365, Outlook, Excel and Word. Name the tool in the bullet where you used it, not only in the skills list.
Keywords for related roles
All 88 rolesSee which of these your resume already says.
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