Secretary Resume Tips to Make Your Job Application Stand Out

If you’re a secretary or administrative assistant who’s looking for a new position, your resume could be the passport to the job of your dreams. But job-hunters sometimes get the feeling that all the most interesting vacancies are likely to be way over-subscribed and that you run the risk of getting lost in the pack. This is exactly when a targeted resume can be a powerful weapon to catapult your application into the interview shortlist.

One of the biggest problems that many job seekers face isn’t just the scale of the competition — it’s the way they present themselves. It’s easy to get so bound up in the challenge of applying for a new position that you may forget one of the golden rules of job hunting: ask yourself what the hirer is looking for in a new secretary.

So if you feel that your resume is getting ‘lost’ amongst the dozens or hundreds of other applications that are landing on a recruiter’s desk, it could be time to refresh your profile in order to show how you meet the needs of your potential employer and demonstrate how your unique skill set matches the demands of the job you desire.

Here are some suggestions:

Ditch the generic ‘one size fits all’ resume. This needn’t be as drastic as it sounds! It may simply be a question of redrafting the objective or skills summary at the top of your resume. Or perhaps you will need to highlight what you achieved in a previous role to show how well you’d suit the new position.

Conduct an ‘audit’ of the employer’s most urgent requirements. The advertisement or job description will likely identify the abilities and qualities that the secretary will need to have. These might include:

• Excellent oral and written communication skills
• Familiarity with office applications such as word processing, spreadsheet and database software
• Being well-organized and approaching complex tasks in a logical manner
• Being able to manage several tasks or projects at once
• Other job-specific requirements, such as supervising others or dealing with confidential information

Select the elements of your skills, experience and accomplishments that most closely meet the criteria of the job you want. Don’t just leave it up to the recruiter to draw their own conclusions about your suitability for the position. Show how you would be a ‘great fit’ by matching your experience to the secretarial functions and other key words that you’ve already identified.

Give your resume the ‘ten second test’. That’s probably about how much time you may have to catch the eye of the person who’s screening all the applications to make a shortlist. So you need a format and layout that makes your most compelling information stand out at a glance.