Executive Assistant CV Examples & Writing Guide

Nine years, moving from department administrator to EA supporting a chief executive and a board. The person is fictional. What makes it work is that every bullet shows scale: how many executives, how many meetings, how much travel spend, how many directors.

Executive assistant roles get hundreds of applicants, so screening is fast and it is about fit to one specific executive.

• Seniority supported. Supporting a CEO and a board is a different job from supporting a team of five. Say the title and the size of the organisation.
• Complexity. Number of executives, meetings per week, time zones, travel volume, whether you manage their inbox. These numbers stand in for how much pressure you can absorb.
• Discretion. Board minutes, remuneration, legal files, redundancies, acquisitions. One line that shows you have handled sensitive material without drama is worth more than the word "confidential" in a skills list.
• Judgement. Can you say no to a director on the executive's behalf, decide what reaches them, and prepare them without being asked? Show it with a decision you made, not an adjective.
• Systems. Outlook or Google, the expenses tool, the board portal, the CRM. Whoever left the role had a set of tools and the company would rather not retrain.

“I look for a number in the first three lines. How many executives, how many meetings, how much travel. After that I look for anything that shows judgement, because the whole job is deciding what gets to the principal. A CV that only says organised and detail-oriented tells me the person has never had to make that call.”

Three or four lines. Years, who you support, the hardest part of the diary, and one measurable thing. Adjust the industry words to the advert.

EA bullets fail in the same way: they list duties everybody in the role does. Add the volume, the seniority or the outcome.

Keep three groups: what you run, what you run it in, and how you behave. Cut anything you would not want tested.

• Executive support: complex diary management, inbox management and drafting on behalf of the executive, gatekeeping and prioritisation, meeting agendas and briefing notes, action tracking, minutes and action logs, board and committee support
• Logistics and money: UK and international travel, itineraries, visas and passports, expense reconciliation, purchase orders, supplier contracts, event and away day planning, office and budget management
• Software: Outlook and Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Teams, Zoom, Slack, Concur or Expensify or Navan, DocuSign, Asana or Monday or Notion, Salesforce or HubSpot, board portals such as Diligent or BoardEffect, Canva or PowerPoint for presentations
• Judgement and manner: discretion with confidential material and personal data, tone in writing on someone else's behalf, staying calm when a day falls apart, saying no politely to senior people, anticipating what the executive will need next

Two skills are worth calling out separately because they show up in adverts and get overlooked: writing (you draft in the executive's voice, so a line about correspondence or presentation preparation matters) and Excel beyond the basics (pivot tables, budget tracking, headcount reports).

People search for both titles interchangeably, but employers do not treat them the same. If you are applying for an EA role from an admin role, reweight the page rather than rewriting your history.

Very few people are hired straight into an EA role for a chief executive, but plenty move in from reception, retail, hospitality, teaching, Armed Forces administration or customer service. All of those involve scheduling, difficult people and confidential information.

1. 1Rewrite your current job in EA vocabulary: diaries, scheduling, correspondence, records, suppliers, budgets, confidential handling.
2. 2Put numbers on it. How many people did you schedule for, how many calls or emails a day, how much cash or budget did you handle.
3. 3Show the software. Outlook and Excel at a real level are the entry bar. A Microsoft Office Specialist exam or a short Excel course is worth listing.
4. 4Add any unofficial support work: you booked the manager's travel, you kept the team diary, you took minutes at the staff meeting.
5. 5Aim at the realistic first step, which is administrative assistant, office coordinator, team assistant or team secretary, then move up in two to three years.
6. 6Use a short career objective rather than a personal statement, and say plainly why you are moving into executive support.

• Qualifications are optional. Recognised options in the UK include a Level 3 or Level 4 Diploma in Business Administration, the Level 3 Business Administrator apprenticeship, minute taking and governance short courses (for example from the Chartered Governance Institute UK & Ireland) and Microsoft Office Specialist. US credentials such as the IAAP's CAP carry weight mainly with US-headquartered employers.
• A degree is not required for most EA roles, though it is common in corporate and finance settings. List it plainly with university, classification and year.
• One page works in your first few years; two pages is normal in the UK once you have supported several C-suite executives or run board support. No photo, no date of birth, no marital status.
• Single-column, standard headings, PDF unless the advert asks for Word. Decorative two-column templates are the most common reason a well-written EA CV comes out scrambled in a parser.
• Mirror the advert's language exactly: diary management, gatekeeper, travel coordination, board support, C-suite, expenses, Concur, PA, executive business partner. These are the phrases recruiters filter on.
• Keep executive names and confidential company details off the page; under UK GDPR their personal details are personal data. Describe the level and the company size instead. Recruiters read that as discretion, which is the trait they are hiring for.
• In the UK the role is often advertised as PA (personal assistant), and senior roles as EA, senior PA or executive business partner. In the US the document is a resume and the title is usually executive assistant; the content is the same.