Functional Resume Tips for an Administrative Assistant
A functional resume is one that focuses attention on your skills, not on your chronological work history. Your administrative assistant skills should be at the top of your resume, ready to impress the next potential employer it reaches. Supporting your skills with specific accomplishments and a short work history gives a hiring manager a more well-rounded view of who you are and what you can do.
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Functional Resumes
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Functional resumes are typically the best type of resume for new college graduates, those without much work experience, those who have worked in one or two jobs for a long period of time and those who are changing careers. They highlight your specific skill sets and your accomplishments in your work history.
Work History
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Avoid listing only your job skills and not providing any work history information. Although you will not have a purely functional resume, you will increase your chances of landing a job. It can be frustrating for hiring managers not to be able to connect where you worked, when and what job title you held. If you list a job under a skill, give some general information about it, such as dates you worked there, the name of the company, its location and your job title. You can create a separate work experience section under your skills and accomplishments sections, or you can integrate your jobs into a chronological work history under each set of skills you want to showcase.
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Skills
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When you list your skills, match them to the job description. For example, if you want to apply for a position as an administrative assistant in a company that requires significant amounts of word processing and business communication drafting, write the specific types of word processing software you can use, how fast you can type and the various functions of word processing software you are familiar with, like mail merge. If you are applying for an executive assistant position at a law firm, highlight your legal administrative assistance work experience. The same is also true for other administrative assistant jobs in different industries.
Specific Skills
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List your main skills under your career objective of your resume. Include skills such as purchasing, ordering supplies, doing payroll/bookkeeping, accounts receivable and payable, office budget management, written communication, customer service, conflict resolution and making travel plans. Also include scheduling and preparing for meetings, scheduling office space usage, skillfully using multiline telephones, Internet research, managing databases, drafting correspondence, solving technical problems with office software and overseeing building maintenance.
Accomplishments
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List your accomplishments under your main skill set or under each job you list in a specific skill set heading. You can list all of your main skills at the top of your resume and then provide key accomplishments in another section, listing your jobs in a work history section below that. Or, you can summarize your key qualifications at the top of the resume, list various sections of skills, provide a chronological work history where you often used a specific skill and put your accomplishments for that position under each job. Use numbers and percentages to drive home your specific abilities.
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