Office Manager resume skills. The words recruiters search for.
The 17 skills and tools that come up in office manager 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 · 11
- Office management (used in Diane's sample resume)
- Operations (used in Diane's sample resume)
- Budget management (used in Diane's sample resume)
- Vendor management (used in Diane's sample resume)
- Facilities (used in Diane's sample resume)
- Accounts payable (used in Diane's sample resume)
- Payroll (used in Diane's sample resume)
- Onboarding (used in Diane's sample resume)
- HR administration (used in Diane's sample resume)
- Event planning (used in Diane's sample resume)
- Process improvement
Tools & software · 4
- QuickBooks (used in Diane's sample resume)
- Gusto (used in Diane's sample resume)
- Microsoft 365 (used in Diane's sample resume)
- Google Workspace (used in Diane's sample resume)
Soft skills · 2
- Leadership
- Problem solving
14 of 17 appear in Diane'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.
Office management, Operations, Facilities
Weak: Skills: Office management, Operations, Facilities
Strong: Run office management and day-to-day operations for a 35-person architecture firm: facilities, vendors, supplies, IT tickets and the front desk
Vendor management
Weak: Skills: Vendor management
Strong: Own a $180K annual office budget and cut vendor costs by 14% by rebidding cleaning, copier and coffee contracts as part of vendor management
Gusto, Payroll, Onboarding, HR administration
Weak: Skills: Gusto, Payroll, Onboarding, HR administration
Strong: Send biweekly payroll inputs in Gusto, run onboarding for new hires and keep HR administration and personnel files current
Accounts payable, QuickBooks
Weak: Skills: Accounts payable, QuickBooks
Strong: Enter and track accounts payable in QuickBooks and reconcile the office credit card each month
Strong bullets come from Diane's sample resume and our office manager 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 office manager post asks for Office management and you've used it, say Office management, in the post's spelling, and show where.
Mirror the job post's wording
If an office manager post says "Operations", write "Operations", 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 Office management — what you did and what changed — leave it out.
Show it in a bullet
A skills list says you know Office management. A bullet like the one under Office Manager in the example above shows what you did with 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?
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Keep going
/ Questions
Office Manager keywords, answered.
Something else? support@launch-cv.com
How many keywords should an office manager resume have?
There's no magic number. Diane's sample resume uses 14 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 office manager post says "Office management", write "Office management" 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. In Diane's sample, Office management shows up in a bullet under Office Manager. Plain text in the body of the page is easiest for applicant tracking systems to read.
Which tools should I list on an office manager resume?
The ones you've used and the post mentions. Common ones in office manager posts include QuickBooks, Gusto, Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. Name the tool in the bullet where you used it, not only in the skills list.
Keywords for related roles
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