Executive assistant CV guides · by Lily Shippen, EA recruiter

A PA CV example, line by line, with my notes on why it works

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 read PA CVs every single day, and over the years I've come to think the gap between the ones that get the call and the ones that don't is rarely about the career itself but about whether the page brings the job to life or just lists it. A list of duties gives me no idea of the world you're in or how capable you are, whereas a description does, because a figure, a thing that changed or a person who trusted you with something lets me picture you at your desk. Every PA has the duties, but only you have the description, so read the example first, then my notes, and then put yours beside it, because I think you'll find the gap is smaller than you feared.

The CV

My notes

The title line

"Personal Assistant to the Managing Director, family-owned joinery group of 85 staff" does three jobs in one line, because it gives me the role, the person she supports and the size of the business, and before I've read another word I've placed Sophie in my head and I know roughly what her days look like. Most PA CVs put "Personal Assistant" and nothing else, which leaves me guessing about the level, and when I'm guessing on behalf of a client I always guess cautiously.

The profile

It's three sentences in the first person without a single adjective, covering who she supports and at what scale, what she's trusted to decide, and what she wants next, and you'll notice there's no "highly organised", no "fast-paced" and no "seeking a challenging role". I'm not being snobbish about those phrases, because the trouble with them is simply that they're on every CV in the pile and so they can't tell me anything about you in particular, whereas "approve routine spend to £1,000 without sign-off" is on one CV and tells me how capable she is because it shows me that someone trusted her with money.

Key achievements

This is the short list of five lines before the first job, and if your CV doesn't have one it's the single biggest thing you can add, because every line has a figure and not one of them is a duty. The double bookings ended, the board moved from the finance team to her and reimbursement went from six weeks to ten days, and I can picture the person who did each of those things, which is the whole purpose of the section, to show me what you've done before I read what you do. Most PAs have four or five of these in them and leave them out because it feels like showing off, when really it's the thing that brings the job to life.

The current role

The role takes the most space on the CV, because it's the job she's being hired on, and it opens with one line about the business so I know what kind of Managing Director this is, which matters more than people think, because a founder's son running a joinery firm day to day is a very different principal from the chief executive of a listed company and I read the rest accordingly. The bullets are grouped under four headings so a hiring manager looking for board experience or budget holding finds it in a second, every line carries a figure or a decision, and the phrase "responsible for" doesn't appear once, which is something I'd gently suggest you search your own CV for.

The skills section

Four lines, each a skill followed by its scale, so that the section tells me the level she works at rather than listing words I'd find on every CV. A line like "Spend and budget: approval to £1,000 on my own signature, the £22,000 events budget held against forecast" is a skills line I'll actually read, whereas "budget management" on its own would have told me nothing.

The earlier roles

Each one gets a short paragraph, shrinking as it goes further back, and the team assistant role still carries figures because it still shows scale and something built, while the reception role shows the promotion in one line and tells me somebody trusted her enough to move her up. I'd ask you not to cut the early roles to nothing, because a promotion is some of the best evidence on the page.

What I cut, and why

• "Providing full PA support to the Managing Director" is the first line of most PA CVs and it tells me nothing, because I don't know what full support means in your office, so the grouped bullets replace it with what the support actually is.
• "Ad hoc duties as required" describes every job there is, and on a CV it reads as filler at best and at worst as someone who wasn't especially proud of the work.
• The bare skills list of "diary management, travel booking, minute taking, Microsoft Office" told me nothing about her level, so the evidence moved into the bullets and the skills section was rewritten with the scale on every line, which the skills guide explains in full.
• "Excellent communication skills" went because answering 100 messages a day with half of them in his name says it far better, and I believe it because it's specific.

Using this for your own CV

Go through your current role and write down the figures Sophie has, from meetings a week and trips a year to messages a day, the spend you approve, the budget you hold, the number of people who come to you first and the thing you built, and don't write sentences yet, just collect the numbers. Then put the best five into a key achievements section, because that one change moves most PA CVs further than any amount of rewording, and I've watched it turn a no into an interview more times than I can count.

If you want the method in full, including how to write private support for a family, the personal assistant CV guide covers it, the free Word template carries this exact structure with a note in every section, and the free checker marks your CV out of 100 against the same standard in about ten seconds and tells you the three things to fix first. You've done the work already, so let the page say so.

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