Personal Assistant Job Description for a Resume

In your search for a job as a personal assistant, your resume is your first impression on a prospective employer. It’s critical you know how to present information that not only shows you’re fit for the job, but also demonstrates the unique skills and qualities you can bring to the position.

You can create the best resume for your job search by reviewing personal assistant resume samples and getting a feel for the types of skills, responsibilities, and successes you should include. Get started by viewing our personal assistant job description for creating a resume. You’ll find the specific writing guidelines you need to strengthen your professional document and succeed in your job search.

Using a Personal Assistant Job Description for a Resume

While it’s unlikely any two personal assistants will share the same educational background, work history, and career trajectory, there are a few standard skills and responsibilities industry employers expect to see on jobseekers’ resumes.

Personal Assistant Summary

The summary section is valuable real estate on your resume. Your professional summary should be a polished “elevator speech” that lists your career successes and unique skills and talents, showcasing the benefits you can bring to the employer and company. Include an example of a key success or accomplishment, and back it up with metrics that feature money and time amounts or percentages. You should also indicate your hard skills here so hiring managers can easily appraise them.

Personal Assistant Education & Certification

While most employers seek a candidate with at least a high school diploma, jobseekers with an associate or bachelor’s degree in a relevant field may have an edge over the competition. Whether you have a high school diploma or a higher education degree, make sure you include any academic honors and student leadership experiences that add to your value as a professional personal assistant.

Further distinguish yourself from the competition by including relevant qualifications and certifications such as word processing, database management, or first aid in your resume. Present each with the name and location of the organization and the year in which you earned it.

Personal Assistant Duties & Responsibilities

When considering your resume, employers are especially interested in your past work experiences, responsibilities, and successes. Review your top successes as a personal or general assistant and incorporate these into your work experience section. Using bullet points, describe how you improved communication or streamlined processes and support these successes with facts and figures. If possible, include examples of going above and beyond the call of duty to demonstrate your indispensability as a personal assistant.

Personal Assistant Skills

Personal assistant positions vary widely in the skills area. You should feature standard industry skills such as communication and time management as well as job-specific skills, which could cover anything from professional driving to social media expertise. Remember to showcase skills that are most relevant to the specific position and company you’re applying for. It’s always a good rule of thumb to include skills and attributes that feature in the job description itself to show you’re the ideal candidate for the job at hand.

Personal Assistant Resume

How To Get Your Personal Assistant Resume Past an ATS

In today’s hiring world, many employers use Applicant Tracking Systems rather than humans to first vet applicants’ resumes. These sophisticated software systems scan applicants’ resumes for the industry-related phrases and keywords that appear in the advertised job description. An ATS uses a scoring algorithm to determine which candidates’ resumes go through to the hiring manager for further consideration. As you create your resume, you should plan to incorporate direct phrases and keywords from the job description into your document.

Review our personal assistant job description for creating a resume and you’ll see certain phrases and industry-related keywords such as “social media platforms” and “database management” repeat no more than two or three times. Stay away from stuffing your resume with these contextual phrases and keywords. A bloated resume can result in a garbled and weak document a hiring manager will likely reject, even if it gets past the ATS. It’s also a good idea to include names and their acronyms so the ATS can pick up either. “Content Management System (CMS)” is an example from our sample resume.

As you create your resume, remember to keep your formatting simple, free from gratuitous graphics or design touches. While there are a variety of fonts to choose from, standard selections such as Times New Roman and Arial are most easily read by the ATS. If submitting your resume by email, send it as a Word document or in rich text format. These formats are currently easier for the ATS to read than PDF documents.

Finally, always make sure you proofread your resume and run multiple spelling checks on it before submitting to a prospective employer. Spelling and grammatical errors can result in rejection by the ATS and create a poor impression on your presentation as a professional.