Executive assistant CV guides · by Lily Shippen, EA recruiter

From executive assistant to chief of staff: the CV that shows you're already doing it

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 place chiefs of staff as well as executive assistants, and I'd say the two searches are run on different things even though the same person often fits both, because an EA search asks whether you can be trusted with the office while a chief of staff search asks whether you can be trusted with the decision. Plenty of senior EAs I meet are already trusted with the decision, and their CVs just don't say so, because they've been written as a list of what the office needs rather than what they changed.

Before we go further, a word of honesty, which is that chief of staff is a different job rather than a bigger EA job, because it's more exposed and more political and you're measured on whether your leader's plan happened rather than whether their day worked. If that sounds like relief, read on, and if it sounds like loss, there's a great deal of room to grow in the EA role itself, which is what the senior EA guide is about.

What a chief of staff search is actually looking for

• Ownership of a cycle, meaning the leadership meeting, the board cycle, the annual plan or the offsite, and not the diary around it but the thing itself, with the agenda, the papers, the decisions and the actions tracked to completion.
• Work that changes what the executive decides, such as briefings written, options laid out and a recommendation made and taken, because the line I stop on is "the CEO takes my recommendation on".
• Projects delivered end to end, whether an office move, a system implementation, a hiring drive or a reorganisation, with a budget and a result.
• People, meaning anyone you line manage, run, train or coordinate, because a team of six is a team of six whatever their titles.
• Judgement in the room, which is the meetings you attend as a participant rather than a note-taker and what you contribute there, so if you sit in for your executive, say what you pick up and carry back, whether that's the risk nobody had spotted or the decision that was drifting.

Diary and travel still belong on the CV, but they move to the bottom of the current role, because they aren't what this search is run on.

You're probably already doing half of it

Go through your current role and mark everything that fits the five headings above, because in my experience a senior EA to a founder or a managing partner finds more than she expects, from the leadership meeting she runs and the annual planning calendar she owns to the two coordinators she manages and the three projects she delivered last year that nobody else would have. The CV has simply been listing them as duties under a diary-first summary, so reorder it so the chief of staff work sits at the top of the role and the EA work sits beneath it, and the same job reads completely differently.

A profile that makes the case honestly

The second profile states the target in one honest clause and evidences it in the rest, and "has grown into chief of staff work" claims the responsibility without claiming a title she doesn't hold, which is exactly the line to walk and one I'd believe every word of.

Achievements that prove it

Each line begins with what you did, carries a figure and describes work a chief of staff does, and that's the whole test, because if your key achievements section reads like this the title on your current role stops mattering.

What to stop saying

• "Seeking to progress" and "ready for the next step" frame you as a candidate for a promotion, whereas you want to frame yourself as someone already doing the job.
• "Gatekeeper" is fine if that's genuinely the job, but don't assume it, because the objectives differ in every business and the best chiefs of staff and EAs I place decide how and when people reach their principal and make the right things happen without being asked, so write the authority you hold, whatever the label.
• "Supported", "assisted" and "helped with" should give way to "ran", "owned", "led", "built" or "delivered" wherever you can truthfully use them.
• Diary and travel in the first three bullets belong on the CV, just lower down.

Two realities worth knowing

The first is that most chief of staff roles are filled by people who already have the title, or from within the business by someone the executive already trusts, so the EAs who make the move from outside do it with a CV that leaves no doubt, and usually into a smaller business or a founder-led one where the role is being created and the person matters more than the badge. The second is that the move is often made in two steps, from EA to "EA and chief of staff" in the current business and then to chief of staff elsewhere, and if your principal would agree to the first, that title change is worth more than any line on a CV and it's worth asking for.

How this is marked

The free scorer marks trust on how much authority and responsibility your CV shows, which is the dimension a chief of staff search is run on, and when Margot writes your CV she asks the questions above, so if you tell her chief of staff is the target role she angles the profile at it without claiming anything you haven't done. The skills guide covers the eight things I shortlist for, and the profile guide has four more worked profiles.

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