Good executive support is invisible. The flight was caught, the board pack arrived on time, the awkward double booking never happened, and nobody noticed because nothing went wrong. That is hard to put on a page, which is why so many executive assistant CVs read like a list of chores.
The fix is not louder adjectives. Whether you call the document an executive assistant CV or a personal assistant resume, it needs context: whose diary, at what level, how much was moving, and what stopped going wrong once you were there.
Start with whose diary it was
The first thing a recruiter looks for is the reporting line. Supporting the chief executive of a listed group is a different job from supporting the founder of a forty-person startup, and both differ from running the diaries of a five-person leadership team. None is better. They are different shapes, and the reader is trying to match yours to theirs.
So put it in the job heading. "Executive Assistant to the CFO, 1,200-person logistics group" tells me more than a paragraph of duties. If you supported several people, say how many and at what level: "PA to three partners", or "EA to the CEO, plus diary cover for the COO".
A few details sharpen the picture:
- One-to-one or one-to-many. A dedicated EA and a shared assistant are hired for different strengths.
- Seniority of the principal. C-level, founder, managing director, partner, head of department.
- Company context. Size, sector, whether it was listed, private equity backed or family owned.
- Geography. One office, or an executive who lives across three time zones.
You do not have to name the executive. Title and company are enough.
Scope: what the role actually covered
The title covers everything from booking rooms to effectively running the chief executive's office. Readers know this, so they scan for scope. Go through the list below and keep only what was truly yours.
- Calendar and travel. Not "managed diary" but the complexity: several time zones, investor weeks, multi-leg itineraries with visas, last-minute rerouting.
- Board and committee work. Compiling board papers, chasing contributors, circulating packs, taking minutes, tracking actions afterwards.
- Budgets and expenses. The executive's expenses, a corporate card reconciliation, a departmental or events budget.
- Gatekeeping. Deciding who gets time with the executive, triaging the inbox, drafting replies in their voice.
- Events. Leadership offsites, client dinners, all-hands meetings, annual general meetings.
- Onboarding. Setting up new senior hires with equipment, access and a first-week schedule.
Gatekeeping deserves more words than most CVs give it. It is a judgment job. If you were trusted to decline meetings on the executive's behalf, or to decide what reached them before a board week, that says more about your level than any software name.
Do not repeat all six for every job. A CV that claims full depth everywhere is less believable than one where calendar and travel dominate the first role and board work arrives in the third.
Showing discretion without breaching it
Every advert asks for discretion, and writing "highly discreet" proves nothing. Worse, the easiest proof is to describe a confidential piece of work, which is exactly what you must not do.
The way out is to describe the category and the trust, never the content. You can say you supported a restructuring, an acquisition or a senior hiring process without naming the target, the people or the numbers. For example: "Sole administrative support on a confidential acquisition project over five months, including data room access and scheduling with external advisers." Nothing leaks. The reader still learns that you were inside the room.
Other honest signals:
- You handled sensitive documents, such as contracts and compensation letters for the leadership team.
- You held delegated access to the executive's inbox and calendar.
- You took minutes at closed board or remuneration committee sessions.
- You stayed. Long tenure with the same principal is a quiet proof of trust.
A CV that names a deal, quotes a figure that was never public or settles scores with a former boss ends the conversation. The reader assumes you would do the same to them.
Describe the kind of thing you were trusted with, and for how long. Never the thing itself.
Turning "organised meetings" into evidence
"Organised meetings", "managed travel" and "provided administrative support" are true and tell the reader nothing. The general method has its own article here, "How to Quantify Achievements on Your CV", so this is only the version that fits support work. Four angles do most of the job.
- Volume. Meetings a week, trips a year, people supported, expense claims a month.
- Complexity. Time zones, number of parties, external stakeholders, short notice.
- Stakes. Board, investors, auditors, a major client, a funding round.
- What stopped going wrong. Fewer reschedules, papers out on time, expenses no longer late.
The fourth is the strongest and the one people forget. Your results are mostly absences, so name the absence. An estimate you can defend in an interview is fine. An invented figure is not.
Three rewrites, as plain before and after.
Before: Organised meetings for the CEO.
After: Ran a diary of around 40 meetings a week for the CEO across London, New York and Singapore, and introduced a weekly priorities review that cut same-day reschedules to a handful a month.
Before: Prepared board papers.
After: Coordinated the quarterly board pack from nine contributors, moved deadlines to a shared tracker, and got papers to directors seven days ahead for six consecutive quarters.
Before: Booked travel and processed expenses.
After: Planned roughly 30 international trips a year for two directors, cleared a three-month expenses backlog in my first six weeks, then kept submissions inside the monthly finance cut-off.
None of these says "excellent organisational skills". They don't need to.
The ladder, and the office manager variant
Support careers have a ladder, even if nobody draws it. It usually runs from team assistant or administrator, to personal assistant, to executive assistant, then to senior EA, executive business partner or a role next to the chief of staff. Your CV should make the climb visible.
The difference between rungs is not workload. It is autonomy. A team assistant is given tasks. A PA anticipates one person's needs. An EA acts on the executive's behalf, and a senior EA starts owning things: the leadership meeting rhythm, a project, the board cycle, sometimes other assistants. If you are aiming one rung up, open each role with the most autonomous thing you did in it.
If you want to move towards chief of staff, show the work that is already adjacent: briefing notes, following up actions with the leadership team, a project run end to end. Don't claim the title. Show the overlap.
The office manager is a cousin, not a rung. That CV is about the place and the people in it: suppliers, lease and facilities, health and safety, the office budget, onboarding logistics, internal events. In small companies the job is often both at once. If yours was, split the bullets so a reader hiring for either can find their half.
A short profile, and where tools go
A profile should fit in four lines and answer the level question straight away. Something like:
"Executive assistant with nine years of C-level support, the last five as sole EA to the CEO of a 900-person software company. Runs a multi-time-zone diary, the quarterly board cycle and leadership offsites. Trusted with delegated inbox access and confidential projects, including two acquisitions. Looking for a senior EA role with a wider remit across the leadership team."
Tools belong in one tidy line, not sprinkled through every bullet. Name the suite you live in (Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace), then the specifics: a travel booking platform, an expenses system such as Concur, a board portal, video and messaging tools, anything used for minutes or project tracking. Languages go here too if you used them at work.
What to do before you send it
Take each bullet and ask one question: could an assistant with half my experience have written this exact line? If yes, add the level, the volume, or the thing that stopped going wrong.
Then check the top third of the page. It should say whose diary, at what level, and for how long. If your LinkedIn profile already carries your roles and dates, a tool like Postulit can turn it into a clean CV layout, which leaves your time for the part no tool can do: remembering what quietly went right because of you.