Executive assistant CV guides · by Lily Shippen, EA recruiter

Executive assistant CV skills: the eight I look for, and how to write a skills section I'll actually read

Written by Lily Shippen, founder of the Lily Shippen EA, PA and chief of staff recruitment agency. Thirteen years of shortlisting, tens of thousands of CVs read, and every rule on this page is one I use at my own desk. Who I am

I've read tens of thousands of executive assistant CVs and almost every one of them has a skills section, and for years I'd have told you that almost none of those sections ever changed my mind, which is still true of the way most are written. "Diary management, travel, minute taking, Microsoft Office, excellent communication skills" is a block I could paste onto any CV in the pile and it would still be true, and that's exactly the problem, because it doesn't tell me what level you're at.

So here's what I'd ask you to do instead, which is to keep the section, because it's genuinely useful to me when it's done well, and then give every skill its context so I can see the world you work in and how much of it you handle. The eight below are the skills I'm looking for, with what each one looks like when it's written properly.

The difference between a shopping list and a skills section

Both lists contain the same words, but the first only tells me you know the vocabulary while the second tells me what level you're at, and that's the question I'm trying to answer in the first twenty seconds. Five to eight lines like that near the end of the CV turn your skills section into one of the most useful things on the page.

The eight skills I shortlist for

1. Judgement without escalation

This is the one that tells me whether you act as an extension of your executive or wait to be told, because it means deciding what reaches them and what doesn't and being right often enough that they stopped checking, and on a CV it looks like a boundary, meaning what you decide alone and up to what limit.

2. Acting in your executive's name

The role has moved on from the gatekeeper whose job was to say no, because the best EAs I place act for their executive, deciding how and when people reach them, sitting in meetings on their behalf and bringing back what matters, and making the right things happen without being asked. On a CV that shows up as specifics such as the spend you approve alone, the meetings you accept or decline in your principal's name, and the meetings you attend for them along with the kind of thing you pick up there and carry back, and those are the details I stop on, because they tell me how much trust you've earned.

3. Board and governance support

Board cycles are where EAs get found out, so if you own one, say how many meetings a year, how many directors and what happens to the actions afterwards, because "Prepared board packs" is a duty whereas "Own the full board cycle for 11 meetings a year: agendas, packs for eight directors, minutes and follow-up actions tracked to completion" is a skill I can picture.

4. Senior stakeholders

Who relies on you and for what is the question here, whether that's investors, the board, a chair, clients or a family office, so name the level and the number, because "First point of contact for the firm's 12 largest investors" tells me more than a paragraph about relationship building ever could.

5. Building something that outlasts you

The EAs I place at the top of the market have all fixed a process nobody asked them to fix, whether that's a board pack process rebuilt after two late distributions, a travel contract renegotiated or an onboarding programme for executive hires that didn't exist before, and if you've done this it belongs in your key achievements with the before and the after.

6. Complex diary and travel

This is still a core skill and still worth stating, but only with scale, such as thirty to forty meetings a week across three time zones, two hundred trips a year or a US roadshow rebuilt overnight after a cancelled flight, because without the numbers the line reads as generic and with them it reads as senior.

7. Budgets, events and money

If you hold a budget, state the figure, and if you run events, state the guest numbers and the outcome, because "Ran the 300-guest annual investor dinner for three years on a £90,000 budget, delivered under budget each year" is a skill, a figure and a personality in one line.

8. Confidentiality you can evidence

Discretion can't be listed and can only be implied, so "Handled privileged client matters daily, trusted with material no one else in the support team saw" implies it without a single adjective, and that's the trick with every skill on this list, which is to show the trust and never claim the trait.

How to write the skills section itself

It sits near the end of the CV after the experience, in five to eight lines, and each one is a skill, a colon and the context that shows the level.

• Skill, then the scale, as in "Events: the annual conference for 300 staff and about ten client dinners a year, on a £45,000 budget."
• Skill, then the authority, as in "Spend: approve to £2,500 on my own signature across travel, hospitality and office costs."
• Skill, then who, as in "Senior stakeholders: the chair, the brokers and the family office, in the chief executive's name when she is unreachable."
• Systems, by name, such as Concur, Diligent Boards, Navan, Salesforce, Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, because the software employers use matches on exact names and so do I when a client has asked for a specific one.
• Languages, with level, because "Conversational French" is useful to me whereas "Languages" on its own is not.
• Nothing you can't back up elsewhere, because if "board support" is in your skills section and nowhere in your experience I notice the gap, and so will the interviewer.

I'd leave the soft skills out altogether, because if your experience section is doing its job I already know you're organised, and "excellent communication skills" on its own has never once got anyone an interview with me.

How this is marked

The free scorer on this site marks a CV out of 100 on five things, and skills run through all of them, because proof is whether your skills carry figures, trust is whether they show authority, and content is whether the skills that matter sit at the top of your most recent role where they're read first. If you'd like to see where yours stands, drop it in, because the score is free and it comes before we ask for anything.

The before and after examples show every one of these eight skills rewritten from a duty into something I can picture, and the template shows where each one belongs on the page.

Lily Shippen

FOUNDER, LILY SHIPPEN, EA, PA AND CHIEF OF STAFF RECRUITMENT · THIRTEEN YEARS PLACING EAS

Lily has read tens of thousands of EA CVs and shortlisted the ones that worked. Margot is her screening interview, written down. About Lily and this site