Keywords for an administrative assistant resume come in two kinds: the tasks you do, and the software you do them in. Calendar management, travel arrangements and expense reports are task keywords. Outlook, Excel and Concur are software keywords. A list of 50 words will not help you. A reader skims past it, and a word only helps in a search if it matches how the posting says it. Below, each keyword comes with a labelled sample line that shows it in use. Copy the structure, then put in your own numbers.
Our sources are public and small. O*NET flags software as "in demand" when it is frequently included in employer postings for that occupation. We also read 7 administrative postings that were live on 9 November 2026, listed under Sources. All sample lines here are invented.
How to use keywords honestly
Three rules cover it.
- Use the posting's words. If it says "Microsoft 365", write that, not "MS Office". If it says "expense reports", do not write "T&E" alone. Our resume keywords guide shows how to pull these out of any posting.
- Bring a posting's named tools in only if you can use them. You may be sitting at that desk on Monday, and a manager will notice within a week if you have never opened Concur.
- Attach each keyword to a job. Software on a skills line gets you found. The same word in a bullet with a number shows you have used it.
One difference between rungs of this job is worth knowing before you write anything. O*NET flags five tools as in demand for general administrative assistants: Outlook, Microsoft Office, Excel, Word and PowerPoint. For executive assistants it flags those five plus four more: SAP Concur, SharePoint, Google Workspace and Zoom. So those four tell a reader you have been working at the executive level. If you have used them, lead with them.
Calendar and scheduling
O*NET's task lists put this near the top for executive assistants ("Manage and maintain executives' schedules") and name it for general assistants as well. Five of our 7 postings mention calendars. Aegis Ventures wants someone to "manage complex, ever-changing calendars for multiple executives". Scope is what separates these lines.
| Keyword | Sample line |
|---|---|
| Calendar management | Manage Outlook calendars for 3 directors, about 40 meetings a week across 4 time zones |
| Appointment scheduling | Schedule and confirm 120 client appointments a month; cut no-shows from 14% to 8% with reminder calls |
| Meeting coordination | Book rooms, video links and catering for 25 meetings a month |
| Agendas and minutes | Prepare agendas and distribute minutes for the monthly leadership meeting within 24 hours |
| Travel arrangements | Book domestic and international travel for 8 staff, including visas and itinerary changes |
| Event coordination | Ran logistics for a 150-person annual meeting, under its $40K budget |
Office software
Vague claims are the problem here. "Proficient in Microsoft Office" is on every resume. Say what you did with it.
| Software | O*NET flag | Sample line |
|---|---|---|
| Outlook | In demand, both levels | Run shared mailboxes and calendars in Outlook for a team of 12 |
| Excel | In demand, both levels | Track $310K of department spend in Excel with pivot tables and monthly reconciliation |
| Word | In demand, both levels | Build mail merges and templates in Word for 600 annual client letters |
| PowerPoint | In demand, both levels | Format the quarterly board deck in PowerPoint from managers' drafts |
| Google Workspace | In demand, executive level; hot, general | Maintain shared Drive folders and Sheets trackers for 3 departments |
| SharePoint | In demand, executive level; hot, general | Moved 4,000 department files to SharePoint with a naming standard |
| Adobe Acrobat | Hot, both levels | Prepare and route contracts as fillable PDFs in Acrobat |
| Zoom, Webex | Zoom in demand, executive level; both hot, general | Host Zoom sessions for 60-person all-staff meetings |
| QuickBooks | Hot, both levels | Enter invoices and vendor bills in QuickBooks for a 20-person office |
"Hot" in O*NET means frequently included in postings across all jobs, so it says less about this occupation than "in demand" does. For more on choosing among tools, see hard skills for a resume.
Posting wording varies more than you would think. Of our 7, four named Microsoft Office or Microsoft 365, and only two went on to name Excel. Typing speed came up in none, so skip it unless the posting asks.
Communication and coordination
This is the part of the job that gets described worst, because it is hard to count. Count it anyway.
| Keyword | Sample line |
|---|---|
| Multi-line phones | Answer a 6-line phone system, about 70 calls a day |
| Greeting visitors, reception | Greet about 30 visitors a day and manage badges and sign-in |
| Correspondence | Draft routine letters and replies for the director's signature, about 15 a week |
| Records management | Moved 11 years of paper files into a digital records system with a retention schedule |
| Data entry | Enter 200 new client records a week with spot checks against source forms |
| Office supplies, vendors | Took over supply ordering and cut monthly spend 18% by consolidating to 2 vendors |
| Onboarding support | Prepare desks, logins and first-week schedules for about 25 new hires a year |
These terms follow O*NET's task list, which leads with answering telephones and greeting visitors, then databases and filing systems. Front-desk postings use these words directly. AEG's receptionist role describes "answering the main phone line and greeting all visitors and guests".
Executive support
This is where pay moves. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a May 2025 median of $76,590 for executive assistants against $47,540 for general administrative assistants, and says executive roles typically need several years of related experience. The postings agree. Aegis asks for 4 or more years as a dedicated executive assistant and its form asks how many you have. Pretium asks for five.
| Keyword | Sample line |
|---|---|
| Expense reports, Concur | Reconcile monthly AMEX statements and submit expense reports in Concur for 2 executives |
| Complex travel | Plan multi-stop international trips, with visas, contingency bookings and briefing packets |
| Board and committee support | Coordinate board meeting logistics and materials 4 times a year |
| Confidential information | Handle compensation files and reorganization plans for the CEO's office |
| Gatekeeping, priorities | Triage about 150 emails a day for the CFO and flag the 10 that need her that day |
| Document tools | Route contracts through DocuSign and purchase requests through Coupa |
Five of our 7 postings name Concur. Our search terms included it in part, so that count runs high, but O*NET's flag backs the direction. Beeline Medicines adds DocuSign, SharePoint, Coupa and SAP, and Legend Biotech asks for calendar, travel and expense tools. If you have only ever done this for a director, say a director. It is still the same work.
Titles matter as much as the words inside the resume. O*NET's reported titles for this work include administrative assistant, administrative specialist, administrative coordinator, office assistant, staff assistant and executive assistant. Search under several.
Credentials are a smaller factor. IAAP's Certified Administrative Professional needs two years of relevant experience with a bachelor's degree, three with an associate degree, or four with none, and costs $400 for members or $600 for others. None of our 7 postings asked for it, so weigh it as career development, not an application requirement. If you hold it, IAAP's correct form is "Jane Doe, CAP".
A full labelled sample
Everything below is invented, including the person, employers and numbers.
RENEE CALDWELL
Omaha, NE (15 minutes from downtown) | (555) 010-8842 | renee.caldwell@example.com
SUMMARY
Administrative assistant with 6 years supporting directors in a 200-person office.
Outlook, Excel, SharePoint, Concur. Available onsite, Monday to Friday.
EXPERIENCE
Administrative Assistant, Prairie Mutual Insurance (sample) | 2022 to present
- Manage Outlook calendars for 3 directors, about 40 meetings a week across 4 time zones
- Book domestic and international travel for 8 staff; submit monthly expense reports in Concur
- Track $310K of department spend in Excel with pivot tables and monthly reconciliation
- Moved 4,000 department files to SharePoint with a naming standard and retention schedule
- Prepare agendas and distribute minutes for the monthly leadership meeting within 24 hours
Front Desk Coordinator, Prairie Mutual Insurance (sample) | 2020 to 2022
- Answered a 6-line phone system, about 70 calls a day; greeted about 30 visitors a day
- Took over supply ordering and cut monthly spend 18% by consolidating to 2 vendors
EDUCATION
Associate of Applied Science, Business, Platte Valley College (sample), 2019
SKILLS
Calendar management, travel arrangements, expense reports, records management,
Microsoft 365 (Outlook, Excel, Word, PowerPoint), SharePoint, SAP Concur, Zoom
Notice that the summary states location and availability. For onsite work, those are keywords too.
Onsite roles and what forms ask
ApplyEze polls more than 100,000 employer boards directly. The chart shows administrative roles in that pool on 9 November 2026: roughly 17,000 open, roughly 2% remote, roughly 62% on application systems ApplyEze applies to once an inbox is connected, and a median advertised pay of about $50,000. Roughly 6% more are hybrid. So about 9 in 10 are not listed as either (169 sampled, minus 4 remote and 10 hybrid). These are rough numbers from a 1% sample, and only about 15% of postings state pay, though the BLS median of $47,540 is in the same range.
With work this local, forms ask about your commute and your hours before anything else. These are real questions from live forms:
| Employer and role | Question or requirement |
|---|---|
| Zenni, Office Coordinator | "Are you able to commute daily to the Novato, CA office?" |
| Zenni, Office Coordinator | "Do you have flexibility to work outside of regular business hours as needed to support ad hoc events?" |
| Beeline Medicines, Senior Executive Assistant | Two named days on site: "Do you currently reside within a reasonable commuting distance of the office?" |
| National Life, Administrative Assistant | Four core days in the office. "When can you start?" and "What is your desired salary?" |
| National Life, Administrative Assistant | "Are you licensed with a broker dealer or have a current FINRA/SEC license?" |
| Aegis Ventures, Executive Assistant | "How many years of experience do you have in an executive support role?" |
| AEG, Receptionist | "Are you able to perform all essential job duties with or without accommodation?" |
Decide these before you apply: how far you will commute, which days and hours you can work, whether you can stay late for an event, your start date, and a salary number. Zenni lists Monday to Friday, 8:30 AM to 5:30 PM, with event hours on top. Pretium's posting also asks for occasional work outside standard hours, and its form has you certify that your answers are true and complete.
Two things sit outside any keyword list. First, the outlook is uneven. The BLS projects general administrative assistant jobs falling 6% from 2025 to 2035, flat for executive assistants and up 5% for medical secretaries, with about 314,400 openings a year across the group, all from replacing people who leave. If you have clinic experience, put that vocabulary forward. Second, a rigorous experiment on this field looked past keywords. Farber, Silverman and von Wachter sent 12,224 fictitious applications to administrative support jobs, for experienced college-educated women, and reported a 10.4% callback rate in their October 2015 paper. Applicants 50 and older got fewer callbacks, and so did those who had taken a low-level interim job. It is old and narrow, but it is a reminder that a resume can be right and a search can still be slow, so keep applications going while you improve the page.
Sending it
ApplyEze's setup asks for your address, locations, salary and start date, which are the fields above, so you settle them once. Hard facts come from your profile. When a required question is not covered by your saved answers, ApplyEze still fills it rather than stopping the run, so that answer may not come from you. Fill in your saved answers, use dry run first, and read your receipts.
For each application, an AI model reads that posting and your real history and writes a resume for it. ApplyEze brings the posting's named skills and tools onto your skills line, even when your own record does not list them. There is no step to remove one before a live run, so use a dry run to see what it writes, and be ready to discuss anything on the page. A certification the posting asks for is not added unless you hold it. Rule 2 above is the test to use here: you pick the matches and queue them yourself in the desktop app, so a posting built around a tool you have never opened can stay out of your queue.
It applies in Chrome on your computer, so keep the computer on and awake until the queue finishes. You can use it in the meantime. Workday and Oracle jobs stay hidden until you connect an application inbox, because those sites email a code. List several target titles when you set up, because a role doing your work under a title you did not list ranks low.
ApplyEze delivered 94,207 applications to 9,769 employers between 14 August and 9 November 2026. So write your keyword lines, settle your commute and hours, and if you would rather spend your evenings on something other than the same form fields, your first 50 applications are free, with no card, and ApplyEze builds a resume for each posting.