Admin Manager CV Example

A strategically written admin manager CV strengthens your prospects of advancing through ATS screening and securing the attention of executive recruiters or decision-makers. Refining your CV for each opportunity—by emphasizing measurable outcomes, cross-functional leadership, and strategic decision-making—will strengthen your positioning and establish immediate credibility with senior stakeholders. Next, we’ll review the key sections of a CV and outline how to present them to reflect executive presence and long-term value creation.

Key sections for an admin manager CV

Your admin manager CV writing strategy may vary significantly according to numerous factors, such as your previous experience, your seniority and the requirements in the job description.

At the end of the day, though, an admin manager CV is just a way to tell the story of how you’ve grown in your career. Regardless of your experience level, you want that progression to feel seamless and easy to follow for recruiters. To help you get there, we’re going to walk through each part of the CV step-by-step, starting with the basics in your header and working our way through to your professional achievements.

CV Header

Start your admin manager CV by adding a professional-looking header that contains all your relevant contact information. Include your name, email address, phone number and location (your full address isn't typically necessary for UK job applications). Additionally, listing your LinkedIn profile in your CV header can be valuable. It serves to provide more detailed information about your career journey, your qualifications and your industry standing, in an easily accessible way.

When you're applying for jobs in the UK, it's generally not advisable to include a photo or more personal details than are strictly necessary, such as your age, gender, ethnicity or nationality. Including these can jeopardise the recruitment process by introducing bias, and can fall foul of the Equality Act 2010.

CV Objective

Below your CV header, the next section tends to be a CV summary or CV objective. This paragraph briefly explains a few of your key skills and qualities, so employers can easily understand whether you're likely to be a suitable candidate for the admin manager job. While a CV summary showcases your key skills and achievements in the context of your career to date, a CV objective provides an alternative approach. It focuses instead on your ambitions for the future, making it ideal for junior candidates without much work experience.

Whether you choose to write a summary or an objective, aim for a length of two or three sentences, introducing your key skills, unique qualities and key achievements or ambitions, making sure they reflect what's included in the job description.

A good CV summary will highlight one or two key skills that match those listed in the job description, and show how you've put them to good use in your career to date. You'll want to set yourself apart from other candidates by focusing on unique qualities or particular areas of strength that have shaped your career to date. See below for an example of a strong admin manager CV summary, featuring quantifiable evidence of your impact and concise, easy-to-read sentences.

Above is an example of a less effective CV summary, with some subtle, yet notable differences. Your summary could miss the mark if it's too generic and doesn't describe unique personal qualities and strengths. It might also be vague, use long, unstructured sentences, lack quantifiable evidence of your impact, or not be tailored to the job description.

Professional Experience

The work experience section of a CV is usually the most important part. Employers look for evidence of how you've developed and used your skills to good effect in your career to date, as an indication of your likely future performance. Always take the time to tailor this section, including keywords and phrases that match the job description. This will help employers to judge how strong a fit you are for the role, and how you might apply your skills for the benefit of the organisation.

List only relevant previous jobs, and add your job title, the name of the employer, its location and your dates of employment. Under this, write several bullet points showing employers how your skills and key qualities contributed to positive outcomes.

When writing your work experience section for senior admin manager applications, you may wish to make it longer and more detailed than the same section for a more junior CV. This gives you more space to show the depth and extent of your relevant work experience. You can do this by adding more bullet points for each role, or listing more previous roles.

What differentiates an excellent work experience section from an average one is the use of action verbs and quantifiable evidence, showing how your actions led directly to positive results in previous roles. You'll also want to show how you've added relevant skills and increased your impact throughout your career progression. Take a look at this admin manager CV example work experience section for inspiration:

Take a look at a less strong admin manager CV work experience section above. A less-engaging work experience section might include irrelevant roles or jobs from a long time ago, and generic information that fails to address the requirements of the job description. It could also lack evidence to support the claims made in the bullet points.

Education

With your education section, you'll draw attention to your most recent and highest qualifications, particularly emphasising any qualifications listed as a requirement in the job description.

For working in admin manager positions, it's essential to have a relevant university degree, and as such, you'll want to feature it in your CV. Include your Bachelor of Business Administration or another related degree that qualifies you for the role, in your CV, along with any other degrees or qualifications that highlight your strongest key skills, including spreadsheet data analysis expertise or document management system administration.

When creating your education section, think about which qualifications are most relevant to the role, and list them in reverse-chronological order, starting with the most recent and working back from there. For each entry, include the name and level of the degree or certification, the institution, its location and your graduation date or dates of study. To emphasise your qualifications and achievements, you might wish to include one or two bullet points, which highlight things like specialist areas of study, projects, dissertations or society memberships.

If you have any specialist certifications or licences that are necessary for the role, or help you stand out above other candidates, you may wish to mention them here. When adding any special licences, it's a good idea to also reference their expiry or renewal dates, if applicable.

Key Skills

In your CV's skills section, you'll want to draw attention to some of your strongest skills that make you suitable for the role. Review the job description to get an idea of the most essential skills, and create a list of hard and soft skills, including some of your strongest, most unique qualities that set you apart from other candidates. In an admin manager CV, focus on the most relevant and essential skills in your skills portfolio, such as communication and financial reporting and forecasting, to show you're qualified for the admin manager position and to put you in a strong position to progress.

Hard Skills

Hard skills and technical skills are specialist skills that are essential for carrying out the main responsibilities of the role. You might acquire hard skills through study, or through on-the-job training, and some hard skills may require a certification or licence. For admin manager jobs, critical hard skills you've gained in your career can include CRM software configuration skills, and spreadsheet data analysis expertise. Firstly, check the job description, then add four or five key hard skills in your CV that help the employer to decide if you're a good fit for the role.

You'll want to include a list of hard skills that closely matches the skills listed as 'essential' or 'desirable' in the job description, while also reflecting your own strongest technical skills.

Review the examples below to understand which skills are often added to the hard skills section of an admin manager CV.

Soft Skills

In your soft skills list, add any personal qualities and transferable skills that show you'll be a good fit for the role, you'll settle in well with the organisation and you'll complement other team members. Soft skills are typically more transferable and applicable to different roles than hard and technical skills. Transferable skills are among the most in-demand skills for employers, with rapidly changing and evolving ways of working requiring ever-more flexible and adaptable employees. Soft skills are also highly valuable for junior and entry-level positions, where candidates aren't expected to have a wealth of relevant work experience and career achievements.

Just like the hard skills section, begin by reviewing the job description to learn the most desirable soft skills to include in your admin manager CV. Only add soft skills that you can provide evidence for throughout your CV. Aim to add up to five soft and transferable skills, including a mix of the most essential skills from the job description, together with some skills that make you stand out as a unique and compelling candidate.

For senior and executive positions, your soft skills should showcase your leadership and management skills. Highlight your decision-making, communication, problem-solving and strategic thinking skills.

The section below provides an overview of soft skills often highlighted in an admin manager CV.

Certifications and Licences

Depending on the role you're applying for, and the type of qualifications you have, you might want to include a separate section for certifications, in addition to the education section. It can be a valuable way of differentiating yourself from other candidates and showing employers your dedication, motivation and commitment to professional development. Furthermore, if there are any necessary certifications or licences for the job, this CV section takes on even more importance. If you're applying for a technical role or a position that involves the use of specialist software or equipment, these might make it more necessary to include a section showcasing your training.

Take a look at this list of example certifications and licences for admin manager candidates:

Key Projects and Publications

One way to gain an advantage in your applications is to add a section for key projects and publications, if you have any to showcase. Include any journal articles, research papers, magazine articles or projects that were in receipt of major funding or gained recognition from industry awards or organisations. Any significant to the academic or industry discourse can give you an advantage with your applications.

When listing publications, follow a standard citation format that's widely used in the business administration sector. The most common citation style for UK CVs is the Harvard style, but you could use the APA (American Psychological Association), MHRA (Modern Humanities Research Association) or OSCOLA (Oxford University Standard for Citation of Legal Authorities), if appropriate. See an example citation for an admin manager CV publications section, listed using the appropriate citation format:

Awards and Achievements

Compiling your key career achievements into a single list is an effective way of making your CV more readable at a glance. In this section, add any awards or recognition you've received for achievements, and any career milestones you've reached that show you're a strong candidate for the job.

Furthermore, as a senior admin manager, an achievements section can be a useful way to show your career progression, showing the reader how you've reached your current standing and reputation in the industry.

Language Skills

Adding foreign language skills to your admin manager CV can be a valuable addition that reflects well on you as a candidate. Even if language skills aren't listed as a requirement in the job description, if you speak a foreign language, it can be beneficial to add it to your CV. In the languages section, list the languages you speak to at least a reasonable level, with an indicator of your competency level.

There are several methods of confirming your foreign language skills on your CV. The simplest way is by assigning a basic descriptive word, such as:

• English: Fluent
• Spanish: Intermediate

You could otherwise use an internationally recognised language standard, such as the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR). This assigns your language skills a standardised level of competence, as follows:

• A1: Beginner
• A2: Elementary
• B1: Intermediate
• B2: Upper intermediate
• C1: Advanced
• C2: Proficiency

Most impactful action verbs for an admin manager CV

Adding strong action verbs to the bullet points in your CV's work experience section is a great way to focus on the key skills required for the job, while showing the impact you've made. Start each bullet point with an action word that reflects the job description, so the reader can easily identify your best qualities. Always remember to back up any action verbs you use with evidence that shows the impact it made and the achievements that it led to. Use past tense for action verbs that describe previous roles, and present tense for your current position.

Admin manager CV example

Now that we've covered the main sections to include in your admin manager CV, we can see how it would all come together in its final form in the example below:

Most UK CVs tend to be around one to two sides of A4, but if you're a senior candidate applying for executive or director-level positions, you may wish to make your CV somewhat longer. This will give you space to include sections like awards, publications, key projects and professional memberships, to demonstrate your standing, and your career progression to senior levels.

This means a CV length of longer than two pages is perfectly acceptable for most senior job applications. If you want to get a feel for how your CV will look once you finalise its design and layout, check out our CV examples for inspiration.

Guide to CV ATS optimisation

Applicant tracking systems (ATS) are becoming more and more integral to the recruitment process for many employers. These systems ease the burden of the recruitment process by performing various tasks, including scanning and ranking CVs based on their likely fit to the job description. This saves recruiters and hiring managers the time and effort of reading every CV in detail. With many vacancies often receiving hundreds of applications, ATS software can really relieve the burden on hiring teams and free them up to focus only on the most suitable candidates.

The growing prevalence of ATS means candidates need to write and format their CV in a way that's compatible with the software, giving it the best chance of being accurately scanned and parsed, and ranking highly against other candidates. Here are some tips on how to optimise your CV for ATS screening:

• Include keywords and phrases from the job description that are easy for ATS apps to identify, and help make you appear a strong fit for the role.
• Use clear headings that reflect standard CV conventions, such as 'work experience', 'education' and 'skills'.
• Opt for a simple CV layout with consistent formatting, avoiding any special design elements that could make your CV harder for ATS apps to scan.
• Select a font that increases the readability of your CV, such as popular serif and sans serif fonts, between the sizes of 10 and 12 for main text and 14 and 16 for headings.
• Use bullet points rather than writing long, full sentences, as this will make your CV easier to scan and parse, and help your keywords and phrases to stand out.

You might feel there are a lot of steps to creating an ATS-compatible admin manager CV, but with just a few small changes, you can ensure your CV passes this stage. Use one of our ATS-compatible CV templates, which are designed by experts to give you the best chances of success.

Key takeaways for a winning admin manager CV

To stand out from the crowd with your CV, tailor your approach to each individual application, incorporating keywords and phrases that match the job description. Use a CV format that reflects your experience levels, and emphasise your skills and achievements throughout your CV, to show employers you've got the required skills and experience for the job.

Finally, building your CV using Jobseeker's HR-approved CV templates can help to catch the eye of recruiters and hiring managers, making your application stand out and giving you the best chance of gaining your dream job.

Sources:

1. Public Appointments, Tips for a good CV
2. Jobseeker, HR Trends