Administrative roles attract enormous application volume, which means the screening is unusually mechanical: a recruiter with 200 applications filters on software first and reads later. The good news is that the filter is knowable, and most admin resumes fail it for the same two reasons every time.
Software, named exactly
This is the hard filter, and vagueness costs you the most here. "Proficient in Microsoft Office" matches far less than the individual applications do.
Microsoft Outlook, Excel (say what level: pivot tables, VLOOKUP, XLOOKUP, mail merge), Word, PowerPoint, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, Google Workspace (Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets), Zoom, Slack, Asana, Trello, Monday.com, Notion, DocuSign, Concur, Expensify, QuickBooks, Salesforce, Calendly, Canva, and the travel or booking system your employer used by name.
Core responsibilities
Calendar management and complex scheduling, travel coordination and itinerary planning, expense reporting and expense reconciliation, meeting coordination, minute taking, correspondence, inbox management, document preparation, records management, data entry, invoice processing, purchase orders, vendor management, office management, onboarding support, event planning, front desk and reception, confidentiality and discretion.
Terms that signal seniority
If you are aiming above entry level, these are the words that separate an Executive Assistant from an Office Assistant in a search: executive support, C-suite support, gatekeeping, board meeting preparation, stakeholder communication, cross-functional coordination, process improvement, SOP documentation, budget tracking, project coordination, supervising administrative staff.
The two mistakes that sink admin resumes
First: listing duties instead of scale. Every admin resume says "managed calendars". None of them say whose, how many, or across how many time zones. Scale is the whole story in this role.
Second: hiding the software. People write "Microsoft Office Suite" as one line and lose the eight separate keyword matches sitting inside it.
Before and after
Before: "Responsible for managing executive calendars and scheduling meetings."
After: "Managed calendars for 3 executives across 4 time zones in Outlook, coordinating 40+ meetings a week and resolving conflicts without escalation."
Before: "Handled expense reports and travel arrangements."
After: "Processed 60+ expense reports a month in Concur and booked domestic and international travel for a team of 25; cut average reimbursement time from 3 weeks to 8 days by standardizing submissions."
Both "after" versions carry more searchable terms than the "before" ones, and neither reads like a keyword list. Specifics bring the vocabulary with them.
Where to put them
- Headline: the standard title as the posting words it. "Executive Assistant" or "Administrative Assistant", not "Office Superhero".
- Skills line: software first, spelled out individually, most posting-relevant first. One comma-separated line, no tables or columns.
- Bullets: every duty gets a number attached to it where you honestly can. Volume, headcount supported, time saved, money handled.
Check it against the posting
A law firm, a startup and a hospital all post for "Administrative Assistant" and screen for almost nothing in common. Rather than guessing which of these terms this employer weights, paste your resume and the posting into our free ATS resume checker and see what you already cover. Then add back only what is genuinely yours (the full method).