Executive assistant CV guides · by Lily Shippen, EA recruiter

The executive assistant to CEO CV: what I'm looking for, and why

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

Placing an executive assistant with a chief executive is the hire I'm most careful about, because the cost of getting it wrong is highest for the CEO and for the EA alike, and a chief executive's office runs on trust that has to be earned before the person starts, which means the CV is where that trust begins. When I shortlist for a CEO I'm reading for evidence that you've already been given the kind of authority the role needs, and most CVs I see from very capable EAs hide that evidence under a list of tasks, which is genuinely frustrating because I know the person is in there, so this is what I look for and how to put it on the page so I can find it.

What is different about supporting a CEO

The difference isn't the title and it isn't really the scale, because what sets a chief executive's assistant apart is being trusted to act as an extension of them, so that you decide what reaches the CEO and what doesn't, you represent them to the board and to investors, and you sit in meetings on their behalf. The CV should show the kind of thing you pick up in those rooms and carry back, whether that's a risk the leadership team hadn't spotted, a decision that was drifting or a conversation that needed to happen, along with the confidential material you hold that nobody else in the support team sees and the way you keep the machinery of the leadership team moving when the CEO is on a plane. If that's you, your CV has to say so plainly, because nothing about the words "executive assistant" tells me on its own, and there are four kinds of evidence I read for, in this order.

1. Scale is the size of the business, the number of direct reports the CEO has, the number of board and committee meetings a year, the volume of the diary and the inbox and the size of any budget, given in figures rather than adjectives.
2. Authority is what you decide without asking, meaning the meetings you decline in the CEO's name, the spend you approve, the correspondence you answer as the CEO, and the point at which you escalate and the point at which you don't.
3. The board and the investors covers whether you own the board cycle end to end, whether directors and investors come to you first, and whether you've run anything through a raise, an acquisition, a results day or a crisis.
4. Things you built, whether a process, a rhythm, a programme or a team that didn't exist before you and outlasted you, because this is the strongest single signal that someone can run an office rather than sit in one.

The profile: three sentences that place you

The profile of a CEO's assistant should tell me in three sentences who you support, at what scale, what you're trusted with and the thread that runs through your career, and it should be written in the first person, because a CEO's office is personal and a third-person profile reads as though someone else wrote it.

The second profile could belong to one person whereas the first could belong to ten thousand, and every CEO's assistant I've placed could write the second kind, though most of them arrived with the first.

Key achievements: four to six lines that carry the weight

A key achievements section is where a CEO's assistant shows the difference from a director's assistant, because it's where authority and building show up with figures attached, in four to six lines that are each an outcome and each carry a number, and these are the achievements I see most often on the CVs that get the interview.

• A board process rebuilt or built from nothing, with the before and after, such as "Rebuilt the board pack process after two late distributions, cutting preparation from nine days to four across 11 meetings a year and eight directors."
• Money saved or a contract renegotiated, such as "Renegotiated the travel management contract, saving £38,000 a year on roughly 200 trips."
• The CEO's time protected, with what it was protected for, such as "Held the calendar through the Series C raise, protecting two strategic focus days a week and resolving 60% of inbound requests without escalation."
• An event or programme delivered on a budget, such as "Ran the 300-guest annual investor dinner for three years on a £90,000 budget, under budget each year."
• Something that outlasted you, such as "Designed the onboarding programme for executive hires, now used for every director joining the firm."

You'll notice that none of these mention diary management, because the diary belongs in the experience section, and the achievements are for what you did with the trust the diary gave you.

The experience section: the current role gets the space

The current role is read first and hardest, so it gets a two or three sentence summary and six to eight bullets with a figure in each, while earlier roles get a sentence and three or four bullets, and if the current role is short the previous one carries more of the weight, because someone two months into a CEO's office is largely being judged on the office they ran before.

Under the role title, give a line on what the company does and its scale, because a recruiter outside your sector doesn't know that your employer is a 400-person payments business backed by Series C investors, and the line takes four seconds to read.

The lines that hide a strategic EA

These are the phrases I see on the CVs of assistants who are acting for their chief executive every day and don't sound like it, and each one hides the evidence rather than showing it, so I'd rather you knew which ones.

• "Complex diary management" is an opinion, whereas "30 to 40 meetings a week across three time zones, with authority to decline and reprioritise" is a fact.
• "Liaising with the board" is passive, so tell me whether you own the cycle, write the agenda, chase the papers, take the minutes or track the actions, and say which.
• "Handling confidential information" is something every assistant says, whereas "Handled the Series B and C data rooms" or "held the only copy of the succession plan outside the chair's office" says it with weight.
• "Acting as gatekeeper" is fine if that's genuinely the job, but don't assume it, because the objectives of the role differ in every business, so say what you decide, meaning what reaches the CEO, what you resolve yourself and how much.
• "Supporting the CEO with all aspects of their role" carries no information at all, and it's often the first line of the current role.

Moving up to a CEO's office for the first time

If you currently support a director, a partner or a managing director and want to move into a chief executive's office, the method is the same, which is to find the evidence of authority and building in your current role, however modest the scale, and lead with it, because a recruiter placing a CEO's assistant will happily take someone from a smaller office if the CV shows they were trusted to act in it. What they won't take is someone whose CV reads as though they waited to be told, and the frustrating thing is that the CV is often wrong about that, so the skills guide covers how to evidence judgement and authority when the title is junior, and the chief of staff guide covers the step beyond this one.

Format, length and the scan

Keep to a single column with standard headings, contact details and LinkedIn at the top, and no photograph, graphics or skills bars, and as for length, I'd let it follow the content rather than a page count, because what loses a reader is repetition rather than a third page that earns its place. A CEO's assistant CV goes through the same applicant tracking software as everyone else's, and a recruiter reads it in about eight seconds before deciding whether to read it properly, so the template guide has the full set of rules and the section by section guide has the method for the rest of the document.

The free CV checker marks a CV on the five things I shortlist on, and it's built to notice whether the page shows you acting for your executive or only supporting them, so if you're doing the first and the CV reads like the second, the scorer will tell you where the evidence is missing.

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