Administrative Assistant resume examples by experience level

Entry-level Mid-career Senior-level

Use this example

An administrative assistant resume is a one to two page document stating what you were trusted to decide alone: the card you carried and its limit, the purchase orders you could raise, the expense reports you approved rather than submitted, and the systems you administered for other people.

Almost every resume for this job describes tasks instead. Scheduled meetings, managed calendars, ordered supplies. Those sentences are true of a first-week temp and of someone running a $4M cost center, which is why they decide nothing. A hiring manager reading forty of these files wants to know one thing: how much of their department can they hand over without checking it.

Resume guide for an administrative assistant resume

This guide and the corresponding administrative assistant resume example will cover:

• How to write an administrative assistant resume, section by section
• Why an authority block belongs on the page, and what goes in it
• Three adaptable summaries: first role, established, department administrator
• Which systems to name, and at what level of access
• What the job market looks like and what you can expect to earn

How to write an administrative assistant resume

Six sections: contact header, summary, authority and systems, experience, education and certifications, and skills. One page for your first five years, two once you hold real approval limits and a budget.

The authority block sits high because it is the only part of the page a manager cannot read off your job title. Every applicant has a title that says administrative assistant. Only some of them can raise a $15,000 purchase order.

Run the finished file through the free Rezoom ATS resume checker before you apply. Administrative postings attract very high volumes, and the first read is almost always a parser.

Choosing the best resume format for an administrative assistant resume

Reverse chronological. One page for your first five years, two once you have supervised other administrative staff, carried a signature authority or owned a departmental budget.

Functional formats are common here and they work against you. Administrative hiring rewards continuity, because an assistant's value compounds with how long they have known a department. A format that hides the timeline reads as a timeline with gaps in it.

Include your contact information

Put the credential after your name if you hold one, and one authority line under the title. Those two lines do more work than any summary sentence, because they are the only claims on the page that someone who has never held the job cannot make.

Make use of a summary

Four lines: who you supported and at what level, the size of the group, your authority limits, and one operational number.

Administrative assistant with two years supporting an 18-person facilities and operations team, holding a purchasing card with a $2,500 single-transaction and $10,000 monthly limit. Manage three director calendars, code and submit roughly 45 expense reports a month in Concur, and own vendor onboarding paperwork for 26 active suppliers. Microsoft Office Specialist: Excel Expert, and the department's first point of contact for travel booking.

Administrative assistant with seven years supporting a 62-person engineering department and four directors, carrying a $5,000 single-transaction purchasing card with a $25,000 monthly limit and delegated approval on expense reports up to $2,500. Raise and receipt purchase orders to $15,000 in Coupa, administer Google Workspace for 140 department accounts, and reconcile a $1.1M non-labor budget monthly. Certified Administrative Professional since 2020.

Senior administrative assistant and department administrator with 11 years in professional services, holding signature authority to $25,000 on vendor agreements under the company delegation of authority matrix and cost center approval in Workday for a $4.2M operating budget. Administer Concur, Coupa and NetSuite across three departments, supervise three administrative staff, and cut the average purchase order cycle from 11 days to 4. Certified Administrative Professional and BSBA.

Right vs wrong: the same administrative assistant summary, twice

The right column maps onto an open role in about four seconds. A manager reads it and knows whether you can absorb their approvals queue or will be adding to it.

Outline your administrative assistant experience

Employer, department, the level of the people you supported, headcount and dates. Then three to five bullets, each carrying a limit, a volume or a cycle time.

Administrative Assistant, Engineering Operations, Vantage Ridge Engineering, Columbus, OH, March 2019 to Present
Support four directors and a 62-person department, with a purchasing card at $5,000 single transaction and $25,000 monthly.
Raise and receipt purchase orders to $15,000 in Coupa across 41 active vendors, and approve expense reports to $2,500 as delegate for the four directors, roughly 120 reports a month.
Reconcile a $1.1M non-labor budget monthly against NetSuite, closing accruals within two business days of period end.
Administer Google Workspace for 140 department accounts: group membership, shared drive permissions and calendar delegation.
Rebuilt requisition intake around a single form; the average purchase order cycle fell from 11 days to 4.

Show the authority you held, not the tasks you did

This section separates two administrative assistants with identical job titles, and almost nobody writes it.

Every organization runs a delegation of authority matrix: a document naming who can commit money, at what amount, without a second signature. Administrative assistants appear all over it and are rarely told so. Find yours before you write the resume. Finance or procurement holds it, and it states in writing what you were trusted with.

Spending authority: Purchasing card, $5,000 single transaction and $25,000 monthly. Purchase orders raised and receipted to $15,000 in Coupa. Vendor agreements to $25,000 under the delegation of authority matrix.
Approval authority: Delegate approver for expense reports to $2,500 across four directors. Cost center approver in Workday for four cost centers. Time-off approval for three staff.
Systems administered: Google Workspace administrator for 140 department accounts. Concur travel and expense, department configuration and policy exceptions. Coupa requisition intake. NetSuite reporting for cost center reconciliation.
Support scope: Four directors, 62-person department, nine calendars, 41 active vendors, $1.1M non-labor budget.

Four lines, each answering a different question. What money you could commit. What you could sign off for other people. What you administered rather than merely used. And how big the thing you were holding actually was.

The gap between using a system and administering it is worth being precise about. Almost every candidate lists Concur. Very few held the department configuration, set policy exceptions and were the person finance called. Write the second version if it is true, and the first version plainly if it is not.

Build a snapshot of your key administrative assistant skills

Twelve to sixteen entries in four groups: financial and procurement, systems, coordination and communication. Group them, because a grouped list is read and a forty-item line is skipped.

Financial and procurement: Purchasing card administration, Purchase order creation and receipting, Delegated expense approval, Cost center reconciliation, Accrual close, Vendor onboarding
Systems: Concur, Coupa, NetSuite, Workday, Google Workspace administration, Microsoft 365, DocuSign, Smartsheet
Coordination: Multi-calendar management, Meeting logistics, Travel booking and policy exceptions, Onboarding coordination, Shared drive structure
Communication: Executive-level correspondence, Meeting agendas and action tracking, Internal announcements

List your education and certifications

High school diploma or equivalent is the typical entry education for this occupation, so certifications carry more weight here than degrees do.

Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, Franklin University, Columbus, OH, 2024
Associate of Applied Science, Business Administration, Columbus State Community College, Columbus, OH, 2015
Certifications: Certified Administrative Professional, International Association of Administrative Professionals, #CAP-118742, awarded 2020, recertified 2026. Microsoft Office Specialist: Excel Expert, Microsoft, 2016. Coupa Requisitioner and Approver training, 2021.

The Certified Administrative Professional credential is issued by the International Association of Administrative Professionals. Eligibility is four years of relevant experience with no degree, three with an associate degree or two with a bachelor's; the exam runs to roughly 200 to 225 multiple choice questions across six domains, and holders need 36 recertification points every three years (IAAP, accessed September 2026). Put the certificate number on the page, because it is one of the few claims here a manager can check.

Choose the right layout and design

Single column, 11 or 12 point body type, clear headings, no photograph, no skills bars. Large employers parse administrative applications into a structured record before anyone reads them, and two-column layouts and text boxes are where parsing fails.

Keep the authority figures in plain text inside normal sentences. A dollar limit buried in a graphic is one the parser will not index, which defeats the point of putting it there.

Administrative assistant job market and outlook

A very large occupation in slow decline, with hiring driven almost entirely by replacement rather than growth.

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2025-35 projections and May 2025 wage data, published 27 August 2026.

Where the money sits by industry:

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, May 2025 wage data.

What salary you can expect as an administrative assistant

The median annual wage for secretaries and administrative assistants was $48,310 in May 2025, with the lowest 10 percent earning less than $35,360 and the highest 10 percent more than $77,720 (BLS, May 2025).

Most administrative assistants sit in the BLS category secretaries and administrative assistants except legal, medical and executive, which had a median of $47,540 in May 2025 (BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, May 2025). Knowing your category matters when reading a posted range, because the same job title spans very different bands depending on who you report to.

Industry is the largest lever you control. Professional, scientific and technical services paid a median of $54,080 in May 2025 against $46,290 in healthcare and social assistance, for work that looks similar from the outside (BLS, May 2025). Healthcare and social assistance is also the largest employer of the occupation at 32 percent of jobs, so the most available roles and the best paid roles are not in the same place.

Inside a band, what moves an offer is documented authority. An assistant who arrives holding a card limit, a purchase order threshold and administrator rights is absorbing work the department currently pays a manager to do. That argument only exists if the numbers are on the resume before the interview.

Key takeaways for an administrative assistant resume

1. Lead with authority, not activity; the title is identical across every applicant and the limits are not.
2. Give the purchasing card as two numbers: single transaction and monthly.
3. Say approved or submitted. They are different jobs and a manager knows it.
4. Name the headcount and seniority of the people you supported.
5. Separate systems you administered from systems you used.
6. Put one cycle time on the page, with a before and an after.
7. Keep it single column so the parser indexes every figure you earned.

Build your administrative assistant resume in 15 minutes.

Related administrative resume examples

• Office manager resume
• Office administrator resume
• Office assistant resume
• Office clerk resume
• Receptionist resume
• Executive assistant resume
• Administrative coordinator resume
• Data entry specialist resume
• Personal assistant resume
• Virtual assistant resume
• Business manager resume
• Customer service representative resume

Pair it with a matching administrative assistant cover letter.