The best executive assistant resume is one that helps you land an interview with the chief at the company of your choice. After all, you’re looking for a position with a little more clout than your average assistant. While you might have to do some filing, you want a job with bigger responsibilities, like doing research and compiling important documents for your company. A good resume might get you noticed, a great resume will get you in the door.
Stand Out
Stand out from the mass of resumes that get sent in for the best assistant gigs by coming up with a tag line. Near the top of your resume, under your contact information, center the words “executive assistant” in bold letters and follow below that with a unique moniker in quotation marks. Shoot for something like “Creating the Best for the Best in Business,” or “The Perfect Match for Executives Looking for the Best.” Alternatively, you might borrow one from professional resume creators at Blue Sky Resumes that reads “Making Life Easier for Busy Executives.”
Impress
Once you’ve cleaned up your online presence to make sure nothing you share online will embarrass your or your future boss, list your online handles on your resume to further endear yourself to the busy executive who needs someone who can navigate the social media minefield. While you must provide an email address, make an impression on the recruiter by listing your social media links and addresses, your professional profiles on networking sites and links to published works, degree and award recognitions that were published online and any other links to sources that might impress top executives.
Shine
The best resume might get lost in a Web full of never-seen applications if you can’t make it through an executive’s online search database. Busy execs don’t have time to read every resume that crosses their desks and often employ a computer program to search resumes for keywords, certain traits and phrases they want to see on their next assistant’s resume. You’ll find the important keywords in the job posting or on the company website. Sprinkle your resume with those vital words and phrases that could include detail-oriented, accurate, reliable and confident. As an executive assistant, you’ll probably need a host of technical skills, which will be posted in the ad too and could include MS Word, Power Point, Access and Skype.
Show Off
In the body of your resume, you need to use previous job descriptions and lists of your qualifications to highlight those features most coveted by busy executives. Executives want an assistant who can easily go with the flow and change directions when the need arises. Incorporate examples or tie in your previous experience to a fast-paced environment that you thrive in. Show through your lists of skills and credentials that you’re open-minded and work well under pressure – even that you work best under pressure, because that’s what’s going to be expected of you. Complement your resume with a cover letter that comes right out and tells the busy exec that you are full of energy and are ready to put all your efforts into her and her company’s successful future.
