Personal Assistant CV Example

If you write a personal assistant CV that's more professional and engaging, it will help you progress through the ATS screening stage. Ultimately, it will also give you the best chance to impress the hiring manager, which will boost your prospects of reaching the interview stage. Let’s take a closer look at the key parts of a CV and how to develop them for maximum impact.

Main sections of a personal assistant CV

Your approach to creating your winning personal assistant CV will differ depending on your experience, your seniority and the details listed in the job description.

At the end of the day, though, a personal assistant 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 personal assistant CV with a header that features subtle, professional design elements and sets the tone for the document. Add your name, email address, phone number and location (your full address isn't normally needed). Additionally, add your LinkedIn profile, if this is in use and up-to-date. A well-utilised LinkedIn profile can give further information to the reader about your skills, experience, industry knowledge and career achievements.

For UK applications, it's not usually advisable to include a personal photo or any other personal details, such as your age, gender, nationality or ethnicity. These can risk introducing bias to the decision-making process and are discouraged under the terms of the Equality Act 2010.

CV Summary or Objective

Under your header, write a brief CV summary or CV objective, outlining a few of your key skills, qualities and achievements. This short paragraph can help employers to quickly assess your suitability for the role, setting the tone for your personal assistant CV. A CV summary focuses on your key skills and achievements, while a CV objective provides an alternative approach, showcasing your career ambitions and how the role fits with these. This makes a CV objective ideal for entry-level candidates.

In your summary or objective, write two or three sentences introducing your key skills, unique qualities and career achievements, making sure they match the key requirements listed in the job description.

The most effective way to approach a CV summary is to focus on one or two key skills that reflect the requirements of the job description and show how you've used them to create positive outcomes for previous employers. You'll also want to showcase your unique personal strengths, and touch on how they've contributed to your career progression up to now. Below you'll find an example of a strong personal assistant CV summary.

The CV summary above contains various red flags and things to avoid. While the differences are subtle, they can make all the difference. An ineffective summary might be vague or generic, failing to highlight specific personal qualities that help you stand out and failing to address the requirements specified in the job description. They might also lack firm evidence of your skills, and be structured with long, hard-to-read sentences.

Employment History

A CV's work experience section is usually its most important element. Employers tend to value the work experience section, as it shows evidence of how you've put your relevant skills to good use in your career to date. Always tailor this section of your CV, focusing on keywords and phrases that match the job description, so employers can assess how you might put the same skills and qualities to good use in the future.

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.

Standing out with your CV work experience section means using action verbs and measurable outcomes to show the impact you made. You'll want to outline a progression in your skills development, and list evidence of the value you added. Here's an example of best practice in a personal assistant CV work experience section:

Take a look at a less strong personal assistant CV work experience section above. A less-effective work experience section could focus too much on irrelevant or out-of-date roles, or include generic information about your responsibilities that fails to show the impact you made. It might lack tailoring to the job description or fail to provide evidence to support the claims made in the bullet points.

Skills

The skills section of a personal assistant CV provides space for showcasing the key skills and qualities that set you apart as a candidate. You'll want to only include the most relevant skills, so review the job description and list hard and soft skills that match the requirements, while reserving some space to mention your own unique characteristics. For a personal assistant CV, it's valuable to highlight essential skills from your skill set, such as multitasking and MS office suite proficiency, to grab the attention of hiring managers and show you're qualified for the personal assistant position.

Hard Skills

Hard skills refer to the technical and specialist skills required for the everyday duties of the job. They might include specialist knowledge, or the use of certain software and equipment. You can gain these skills through study, training or industry experience, and they might require a licence or certification. For personal assistant roles, key hard skills you've gained, such as MS office suite proficiency, and travel itinerary planning skills, are typically among the most critical for the job. After reviewing the job description, compile a list of four or five key hard skills for your personal assistant CV to show you're capable of carrying out the duties required for the role.

The ideal hard skills section will feature the most essential hard skills from the job description, while closely reflecting your own best technical abilities. The closer your strongest skills are to matching the job description, the higher your chances of success.

See below for examples of skills that are frequently included in the hard skills section of a personal assistant CV:

Soft Skills

Your soft skills list should contain a list of your personal strengths that make you suitable for the role, and a good fit for the team and the organisation. In contrast to hard skills, these tend to be transferable and applicable to different roles and levels. The world of work is evolving at a rapid pace, changing the types of hard skills required for many roles, and therefore rendering soft and transferable skills more valuable than ever. Soft skills are also extremely valuable for junior and entry-level roles, where candidates aren't necessarily expected to have a wealth of relevant work experience.

As with hard skills, review the job description to understand the best soft skills to mention in your personal assistant CV. The best CV soft skills section includes specific skills that you can evidence with examples throughout your CV. Craft a list of up to five key soft and transferable skills that reflect the job description, while also including some of your strongest, most unique skills to stand out from the crowd.

Below is a selection of soft skills regularly featured in a personal assistant CV.

Education

Your education section is the chance to list your most recent and highest qualifications, and anything that's relevant or required for the role.

To embark on a career as a personal assistant, you don't tend to need a specific degree. However, you should still add your highest and most relevant certifications, training and formal qualifications to your CV's education section, even if not specified in the job description. These might include Certificate in Business Administration, or any training that shows your skills in expense report preparation skills or calendar and diary management.

Creating the education section of your CV means selecting the most relevant and highest qualifications, and listing them in reverse-chronological order, starting with your most recent achievements and working back from there. When adding each qualification, include the name and level of the award, the institution, its location (if necessary), and the dates you attended or graduated. It can also be valuable to add bullet points outlining your key achievements and activities, such as projects you worked on, modules you completed, awards you won or societies you participated in while studying.

Specialist licences or certifications can also be a valuable addition to your CV's education section. If these are essential for the job and are referenced in the job description, it's a good idea to include them here rather than further down your CV. Include any expiration or renewal dates for certifications, if applicable.

Certifications and Licences

If you've invested your time and resources into gaining extra qualifications beyond the minimum requirements for the role, you could highlight these in a certifications section. It can enhance your chances of success to show specific training and certifications. Not only do these prove you're qualified for the role, but they also indicate proactivity and a dedication to professional development. In addition, the certifications section can be a valuable addition to your personal assistant CV if you're applying for a role that cites certain certifications or licences as a necessity in the job description. These might include roles where the use of specialist software or equipment forms part of your everyday duties.

These example certifications and licences are ideal for candidates applying for personal assistant roles:

Languages

Including a section on language skills can be beneficial, if you speak at least one language to a reasonable level of competency, in addition to your mother tongue. This is true even if language skills aren't a requirement for the role, as foreign language abilities often correlate to other valuable soft skills. Under this section, list any foreign languages you speak to a professional standard, with an indicator of your competency level for each.

There are several ways to cite your proficiency in foreign languages. Firstly, you could use a simple descriptive word to indicate your abilities, such as:

• English: Fluent
• Spanish: Intermediate

You could adopt the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), as this provides standardised levels to describe your competence, as follows:

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

Additional Sections

Including optional sections in addition to the core elements of your personal assistant CV can help you provide further evidence of your suitability for the role. If you're struggling to show all the necessary skills for the job through your work experience or other core sections, optional sections can give your CV the boost it needs to progress you to the interview stage. This could be particularly helpful for entry-level candidates or career changers.

You’ll find more in-depth guidance on structuring your CV in our career resources, designed to help you present your skills as effectively as possible.

Hobbies and Interests

Your hobbies and interests can be a useful way of showcasing additional skills that are relevant to the job description, but that you haven't been able to prove via your work experience. Additionally, this section gives you the chance to show employers different facets of your personality and interests beyond work, which can help them to differentiate you from other applicants. However, a hobbies and interests section is only valuable if it helps you to show relevant skills you've been unable to evidence in other parts of your CV. If your hobbies and interests are unrelated to the job, it's best to leave them off your CV.

Volunteer Roles

Another alternative to showcasing your skills and experience through work experience is by adding a volunteering section. This can give you a valuable showcase of your skills, particularly if you're a junior candidate or career changer without much relevant work experience. Approach your volunteering section in much the same way as your work experience section.

For each entry, include a job title or description of your role, the organisation, its location and the dates you volunteered. Adding bullet points can also help you to show how you developed relevant skills, and used them to good effect.

References

For UK job applications, it's rare to include references on a CV. However, it's a good idea to check the job advert and have some references ready to go in case the employer wants you to include them on your CV. If you need to add them to your CV, include two or three references, adding their name, job title, organisation and contact details.

Be sure to ask their permission before you include anyone as a reference in your personal assistant CV. Alternatively, you could simply add a line to your CV indicating you can provide references when necessary, such as 'references are available upon request'.

Best action words for a personal assistant CV

Using strong action verbs in your work experience bullet points gives you the opportunity to show how you've applied skills to good effect in previous roles. Starting each bullet point with an action verb, such as 'delivered', 'collaborated' or 'developed' also allows you to show your key skills and qualities in a way that's easily identifiable for the reader. Remember to always back up the action verbs you use with quantifiable evidence that shows the impact you made. You can use past tense for any action verbs describing previous jobs, with present tense for action verbs to describe your current role and responsibilities.

Personal assistant CV example

Now we've shown you everything that needs to go into your personal assistant CV, we can take a look at how it comes together in its final form in the following example:

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.

How to make your CV ATS compatible

Many employers now use applicant tracking systems (ATS) to assist with managing the recruitment process. One of the key elements of most ATS apps is the ability to scan CVs and rank them according to their likely match to the job description. This task can relieve some of the strain on hiring managers through the recruitment process, which can become very resource-intensive, with roles often eliciting hundreds of applications.

Because ATS software is becoming more common in the recruitment process, it's important to make some concessions in your CV to give yourself the best chance of progressing beyond the initial screening. With that in mind, here are some tips on preparing your CV for ATS screening:

• Include keywords and phrases that match the job description, making it easy for ATS apps to identify a strong fit for the role.
• Use standard CV headings that clearly identify each section, such as 'work experience', 'education' and 'skills'.
• Choose a standard CV layout that avoids the use of any special design elements that might make your CV less compatible with ATS scanning software.
• 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 in place of full sentences and paragraphs. This can reduce the overall length of the document, make the keywords stand out and make it easier for ATS apps to scan.

You might feel there are a lot of things to remember when writing an ATS-compatible CV, but with just a few small tweaks, you can ensure yours passes this stage. Use one of our expert-designed, ATS-compatible CV templates to avoid the stress of adapting your CV for ATS screening.

Key takeaways for an impactful personal assistant CV

To give you the best chance of success with your CV, tailor it for every specific application, including keywords that reflect 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. JobHelp (UK Department for Work & Pensions campaign), No work experience? Focus on what you do have
2. Jobseeker, Hiring Trends