Executive assistant CV guides · by Lily Shippen, EA recruiter

From PA to EA: showing the level you already work at

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

When a PA asks me how to make the step to EA, my honest answer is usually that there isn't a step at all, because the job they want is already inside the job they have and their CV has just stopped showing it, usually because somewhere along the way they were taught to write a list of duties, and a list of duties gives me no idea of the world they're in. So this guide isn't about climbing a ladder but about describing what you do in a way that brings it to life, so that whoever reads it, for a role called PA or EA or anything else, can see you doing it.

What I'm actually looking for

When I read a CV for any senior support role, I'm trying to answer three questions, which are whether this person decided things or waited to be told, whether they ran something or helped with it, and whether anything changed because they were there. A list of duties answers none of those, because "diary, travel, expenses, correspondence, events" describes every assistant in the country, whereas the three things below are what let me answer them.

1. What you decide covers meetings declined in your principal's name, spend approved up to a limit, correspondence answered as them and priorities set without a conversation, and it's the clearest picture of trust there is, which makes it all the stranger that most PA CVs never mention it.
2. Scale is the size of the business, the number of people your principal leads, the volume of the diary, the budget you hold and the number of meetings in a cycle, because figures turn a job title into a world I can see.
3. Building is a process, a rhythm, an event, a programme or a way of working that didn't exist before you and carried on after you, and it tells me you improve things rather than just keeping them running.

If you have any of these, and most experienced PAs have all three, the CV needs to say so before it says anything about the diary.

Finding it in your current role

Go through your current role with the questions below and write down a figure wherever you can, without writing sentences yet, because for now you're just collecting.

• What do you decide without asking, which meetings do you decline, move or accept on your own judgement, and is there a spend limit you approve to, formally or in practice?
• Who comes to you first, whether clients, the board, senior colleagues, suppliers or the family, because if people go through you to reach your principal then that's a big part of your world and it belongs on the page.
• What have you fixed, whether a travel process, an expenses rhythm, a meeting cycle, an onboarding checklist or a supplier contract, meaning anything that works better because you changed it?
• What's the scale, in meetings a week, trips a year, guests at events, the budget and the headcount of the team or business?
• What did your principal stop doing because you took it on, which is the clearest evidence of trust there is and the thing almost nobody writes down?

Translating the bullets

Here's the same work written twice, and nothing in the second version is invented, because the figures were always true and the first version simply left them out.

They're the same person describing the same week, and in the first version I can't see her at all, whereas in the second I can see the firm, the board, the thirty clients, the £60,000 and the finance team getting their receipts on time, which is the difference between a CV that gets filed and one that gets a call.

The profile that does it

The profile is the short paragraph at the top, and I'd write three sentences in the first person covering who you support and at what scale, what you're trusted with and the thread through your career, and I'd ask you please not to write "seeking to progress to an executive assistant role", because I know why you applied and I'd much rather you showed me the job instead.

Key achievements before experience

A key achievements section is a short list after the profile and before the first job, with four to six lines that each carry a figure and each describe something that changed because of you, and it's the fastest way to bring a CV to life, because it puts what you've done in front of what you do, and it's the section that most often turns a maybe into an interview for someone whose title is a notch below the advert.

• "Rebuilt the expenses process for a team of 40, cutting the time to reimbursement from a month to five days."
• "Ran the firm's annual client dinner for 150 guests on a £40,000 budget, under budget three years running."
• "Took over the board's quarterly cycle from the company secretary: agendas, papers for eight directors and actions tracked to completion, with no late paper in two years."
• "Negotiated a new travel agency contract, saving £12,000 a year on roughly 90 trips."

If you've never had one, this is the section that will change how your CV reads, and it comes after the profile and before experience.

What to stop writing

• "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.
• "Ad hoc duties as required" describes every job, and on a CV the line reads as filler at best and as a lack of pride in the work at worst.
• "Assisting with" anything undersells you, because if you ran it you should say you ran it, and if you assisted you should say which part you owned.
• "Seeking a new challenge" describes what you want, when what I want to know is what you do.
• A skills list without context, such as "Diary management, travel booking, minute taking, Microsoft Office", is a list of nouns that tells me nothing about your level, so keep the section but write each skill with its scale, as in "Diary management: 25 to 30 meetings a week, declined and moved on my own authority", which the skills guide shows how to do.

When the title genuinely is the barrier

Some employers filter on the title alone and no CV fixes that, which I'd rather you knew, but what a CV can do is make sure that anyone who actually reads it sees the job you do, and recruiters, who are the route into most of the EA roles worth having, do read. In my experience a PA whose CV brings the job to life gets interviewed for EA roles at the same rate as an EA with a vaguer CV, because the title on your last contract is the least important line on the page.

The personal assistant CV guide covers the PA CV in its own right, including private support, the skills guide covers the eight things I read for, and the free CV checker marks trust separately, which is the dimension that usually tells a PA whether the CV is showing the level they really work at. Go and find your figures, because they're already in the job.

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