The Perfect Personal Assistant Resume Writing Tips

Do you want to apply for a Personal Assistant position to help you get closer to your career goals? Applying for jobs on Seek, LinkedIn, and other job boards can be a time-consuming process, however, to streamline the process, you can ensure your resume writing helps you to stand out from the crowd, and your online profile helps you to get an interview!

If a recruiter or hiring manager are looking for a Personal Assistant, they are searching for specific transferable skills. With less than ten people being interviewed for the job and hundreds of people, just like you, applying, The Perfect Resume team have created Resume Writing Tips to help you stand out from the others.

What do recruiters look for in a Personal Assistant resume or an online profile?

Tailoring your resume to a Personal Assistant position is mandatory today to ensure that your application will pass Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS). In doing so, your resume will be read by the prospective employer. Then, fingers crossed, you will be shortlisted as a potential candidate and be called for not one, but multiple job interviews!

Firstly, before you apply to be a Personal Assistant, you need to be acquainted with what a Personal Assistant does!

Personal Assistants handle the secretarial work and day-to-day administrative support.

Hiring Managers are looking for a versatile and highly-organized Personal Assistant to assist in answering phone calls, managing correspondence, scheduling appointments, and making travel arrangements.

To be successful as a Personal Assistant, you should have knowledge of necessary corporate procedures, be open to learning, and have strong communication skills. Ultimately, a high performing Personal Assistant should be able to achieve effective managerial support and exhibit excellent organizational skills.

Knowing this, your resume and online profile should include the hard and soft skills that the recruiter or hiring manager is looking for in a candidate.

The Personal Assistant position description template will also contain pivotal information about what the candidate will need to do daily. Such as:

• Reporting to senior management and performing secretarial and administrative duties.
• Typing, formatting, and editing reports, documents, and presentations.
• Entering data, maintaining databases, and keeping records.
• Liaising with internal departments, answering calls, and making travel arrangements.
• Managing internal and external correspondence on behalf of senior management.
• Scheduling appointments, maintaining an events calendar, and sending reminders.
• Copying, scanning, and faxing documents, as well as taking notes.
• Preparing facilities for scheduled events and arranging refreshments, if required.
• Ordering office supplies and replacements, as well as managing mail and courier services.
• Observing best business practices and etiquette.

You will also have some requirements and personal attributes that you will need to demonstrate in your resume to ensure your potential employer will take your application seriously, such as:

• Certification in secretarial work, office administration, or related training.
• 1-2 years of experience as a personal assistant would be advantageous.
• Extensive experience in creating documents and spreadsheets, using office software such as MS Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
• Advanced typing, note-taking, recordkeeping, and organizational skills.
• Ability to manage internal and external correspondence.
• Working knowledge of printers, copiers, scanners, and fax machines.
• Proficiency in appointment scheduling software such as MS Outlook, as well as call forwarding.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Exceptional interpersonal skills.

You may also want to do some industry research to find out what other companies want in their Personal Assistants.