Executive Assistant CV Example & Writing Guide

The full CV example

Read the context lines under each employer first. They carry the scope that the bullets are then allowed to assume.

Fictional example. Use your own name, city, email, phone and one profile link.

Why this CV works

Five things this example does that most assistant CVs do not:

• The headline names the seniority supported

  "Executive Assistant" is the same two words for a job supporting one manager and a job supporting a CEO and a board. "CEO support and board administration" tells a reader in six words which of the two they are looking at, and it is the single fastest way to be read for the right vacancy.

• Scope is given where it is not confidential

  340 staff, three offices, 11 directors, five other assistants. None of that breaches anything, and all of it lets the reader calibrate every bullet that follows. Without those numbers, "managed a complex diary" is a self-assessment.

• The confidential work is described by its shape

  The acquisition bullet names no company and no value. It names what the work actually consisted of: a separate document set, a parallel signature route, a schedule kept off the shared calendar. An assistant reading that knows exactly what was involved, and nothing in the sentence could be repeated back to the other side.

• Systems appear as owned, not listed

  Concur, DocuSign and the board portal each appear attached to a result: a month closed in three days, contract turnaround down to two. A skills block gets the keyword into the file. Ownership is only believable in the second place.

• The travel bullet shows complexity, not distance

  Nine countries is a number. Visas with four weeks of lead time, and a held rebooking plan for every outbound flight, is the part that separates an assistant who books flights from one who has been caught out at an airport and built a habit around it.

Professional summary examples

Entry level

Early on, name the team you supported and the one process you were handed outright. Do not describe yourself as supporting leadership if you supported a department.

Mid level

Mid-level is where volume belongs. Meetings per week, directors served, systems owned: three numbers that a reader can picture.

Senior

At this level the CV stops being about support tasks and starts being about what you decide without asking. The last sentence should say which problem you want.

Experience bullet examples

Twelve bullets in weak and strong form. Every figure below is the fictional example's own: swap in yours, and if you do not know a number, count it for a week before you write it. Where the work is confidential, the strong form names the mechanics and not the matter.

Weak

Managed the CEO's diary.

Stronger

Ran a diary of about 35 meetings a week for the CEO, holding two protected blocks a day for work that needed nobody else in the room.

Why

Volume plus the rule you enforced. Holding a calendar is clerical; deciding what does not go into it is the job.

Weak

Booked travel for senior management.

Stronger

Booked multi-leg travel across nine countries, including visa applications with four weeks of lead time and a same-day rebooking plan held for every outbound flight.

Why

Complexity is the signal: legs, visas, time zones, and what you had ready for the flight that got cancelled.

Weak

Prepared board materials.

Stronger

Produced the board pack for 11 directors on a fixed five-day deadline, collating 12 contributions and chasing the four that were always late.

Why

Deadline, contributor count, and the unglamorous clause. Anyone who has done board support recognises that last part immediately.

Weak

Took minutes at meetings.

Stronger

Minuted two board committees and turned each set into an action log of owners and dates, cutting repeat items on the next agenda from about seven to two.

Why

Minutes are typing. An action log that shrinks the following agenda is administration.

Weak

Handled highly confidential information with discretion.

Stronger

Supported the CEO through a confidential acquisition process, running a separate document set, a parallel signature route and a schedule kept off the shared calendar.

Why

Claiming discretion proves nothing. Describing the machinery you built around a secret, without naming the secret, proves it in one sentence.

Weak

Organised company events.

Stronger

Ran a two-day offsite for 60 staff on a 14,000 EUR budget, closing 600 EUR under after rebooking the venue twice around a date change.

Why

Headcount, budget and variance. An event bullet with no budget in it reads as party planning.

Weak

Managed a busy inbox.

Stronger

Triaged about 300 emails a day into a four-tier queue and answered roughly a third in the CEO's name under a written set of agreed rules.

Why

The written rules are the point: answering in someone else's name is a trust statement, so say what governed it.

Weak

Improved office processes.

Stronger

Replaced a shared spreadsheet of signature requests with a DocuSign workflow, taking contract turnaround from about 9 days to 2.

Why

One process, a before and an after. An improvement with no baseline is an opinion.

Weak

Supported the senior leadership team.

Stronger

Acted as the single point of contact for six executives and their assistants across three offices, running one weekly slot where every diary conflict was resolved in a single pass.

Why

How many people, and by what mechanism. "Supported leadership" hides whether that was two executives or twenty.

Weak

Processed expenses and invoices.

Stronger

Owned expense submission for four executives in Concur, closing each month within 3 working days and cutting rejected claims from about 8 a month to 1.

Why

Finance remembers which assistant files clean and on time. This is a small number that stands for reliability.

Weak

Helped onboard new employees.

Stronger

Built the onboarding checklist used for 24 new joiners, covering laptop, access, payroll and a first-week diary, with nothing chased twice.

Why

A checklist is a system. Name how many people it has survived.

Weak

Liaised with external stakeholders.

Stronger

Was first contact for the chair and two non-executive directors, handling meeting requests and papers so that no director waited on an answer overnight.

Why

Name who the stakeholders were. As written, the weak version could mean the coffee supplier.

Skills that belong on this CV

Education and certifications

A degree is rarely the deciding factor for an assistant role after the first job, and plenty of strong assistants came in through reception or a team-assistant post. Keep education to qualification, institution and years, and give the space to the executives you have supported instead. Two exceptions are worth the line: a second language at a working level, and any secretarial or business administration diploma if you are applying in a market where employers ask for one by name.

Certifications

• Microsoft Office Specialist (Excel or Outlook, Expert level) - Useful when the advert asks for advanced Excel and you have nothing else that proves it.
• PRINCE2 Foundation or a comparable project short course - Worth listing only if you actually run projects rather than support them, and the advert says so.
• Governance or company secretarial short course - Relevant for board-facing roles, where minutes and papers are part of a statutory process rather than a habit.

No certification is required to be an executive assistant. List one when the advert names it, and keep the rest of the space for the scope you have carried.

How an ATS reads this CV

Appliora's ATS Checker runs 14 checks against an uploaded file and shows you the text its parser pulled out. Four of them catch what assistant CVs get wrong most often.

• Recognised sections

  Assistant CVs often invent headings such as "Executive Support" or "Professional Profile" in place of "Experience" and "Summary". The check looks for the conventional section names, because a parser that cannot find an experience section may file your job titles as loose text.

• Format traps

  Two-column layouts with contact details as icons are common in assistant templates, and an icon is a picture: the phone number beside it may not exist in the text layer at all. The checker shows what was extracted, so you can see whether your number survived.

• Consistent dates

  Assistant careers often include temp assignments, maternity cover and agency placements that overlap or run for a few months each. Write every one as month and year, both ends, so the parser produces a clean chronology instead of a gap you never had.

• Bullet quality

  This is the heaviest content check. It counts how many of your bullets carry a figure and how many open with a verb. "Responsible for diary management" repeated down a whole role is the most common reason a capable assistant's file scores poorly.

Templates that suit this role

• ATS Clean

  Single column, conventional headings, nothing in a sidebar. The safe choice for a large employer's application portal, where assistant vacancies attract high volume.

• Executive Premium

  Restrained and formal, which suits a CV that will be read by the executive you would be supporting as well as by HR.

• Two Column Pro

  Useful when you have a long systems and languages list and need it visible on page one, for direct applications rather than portal uploads.

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