- How to Optimize Your Virtual Assistant Resume for Better Visibility
- How to Add a Twist to the Traditional Resume Categories
- Qualities Every Virtual Assistant Needs to Have
- Top 5 Virtual Assistant Resume Templates
Virtual assistant resume. The modern definition of an employee has long gone beyond sitting behind a desk in an office. Some companies have completely remote staff and feel great: work efficiency is in no way inferior to the traditional office setup.
A virtual assistant is just a bright representative of remote work. This person assists the company or an individual, working from any place convenient for himself or herself.
Virtual assistants are in demand: they perform many administrative functions, provide time savings and efficient work of other company employees.
Given that all this happens remotely, their activities must be perfectly tuned and organized. And to prove that, as a virtual assistant, you can work remotely as well as if you were in the office in person, you need to attract the employer's attention with an excellent virtual assistant resume.
Go to digital perfection through our tips and tricks that will help you secure your position and land your dream job.
How to Optimize Your Virtual Assistant Resume for Better Visibility
Yes, a standard boring resume is not preferred when you can attract attention with vivid pictures or fascinating infographics. But this is not always necessary: there are much simpler and more effective ways:
- Formatting matters. Your resume should look attractive and structured even before the recruiter begins to delve into the text. Cluttered resumes cause stress, annoyance, and a strong desire to get rid of them as soon as possible. Don't let this happen: use appealing headers, make each section pop by highlighting key points in bold, and stick to one style.
- Brevity is the soul of success. Paraphrasing a well-known saying, we focus on facilitating understanding and simplifying sentences. An easy-to-understand and accurate virtual assistant resume of one or two pages will win over a manager better than a five-page opus. You can show all your literary talent in it, but your resume is not a book.
- Describe relevant experience. Remove all the information that clutters the facts sought by the recruiter. Seeing the experience they need, recruiters are more likely to continue reading your resume. If you apply for different openings, you should have several resume options that cater to each different position. This will allow you to quickly orientate yourself in openings and not suffer from the constant remaking of your virtual assistant resume.
- Use key phrases from the opening. A little trick that will really please a recruiter. Do not overdo it and do not copy the entire job description into your resume, but add key phrases into it to create the appearance of a perfect match.
- Quantify the results of your work. This is not always possible, but still, try to provide your resume with figures confirming your achievements. This will solidify your results in the eyes of the recruiter and make them stand out from other applicants. Do not lie in any case: if you do not have such information, it is better to skip this step.
These steps are often forgotten; however, not always. Considering that many job seekers are as serious about finding a job as you and follow the above recommendations with the same diligence, you need to try even harder for recruiters to notice you. To do this, you need to add some unexpected twist to your virtual assistant resume that will make the recruiter remember you.
What could it be?
How to Add a Twist to the Traditional Resume Categories
Whether we like it or not, any virtual assistant resume sample consists of standard categories. Often they look like this:
- Contact information
- Summary or objective
- Work experience
- Education
- Skills
You cannot get away from them. However, you can easily vary the form of their submission in order to demonstrate your enthusiasm for the opening and show that you are a perfect match.
Start by optimizing your contact information section. There are often problems with it: there is either too little information or too much of it. What should be exact is your name and several ways to contact you: phone, email, and profiles on social networks. No need to add your place of residence, nationality, date of birth, and marital status.
We are not talking about profiles on Instagram, Pinterest, and Tumblr (unless, of course, your future work is directly related to these social networks). A win-win option is a profile on LinkedIn, be sure to specify it or register there if you have not already done so.
Be careful with your email — it should demonstrate your seriousness, and not reveal your nickname in online games, your pet's name, and certainly should not be just a set of letters and numbers.
The resume summary is a small section of a couple of sentences that demonstrates right off the bat how well you are friends with brevity and whether you know what you want. Do not turn these two sentences into an ode full of pathos and narcissism. Briefly explain what you are looking for and why you are well suited for a particular job.
Use one of the tips from the section above: take the keywords from the opening and add them into the summary. This will immediately contribute to a warming relationship between your resume and the recruiter reading it.
The work experience section is simple: use the reverse chronological resume format and tell the recruiter about all the jobs that are relevant to the opening you are applying for.
As we have already said, the indicators of your work results, keywords taken from the opening and a brief description of your actions in this position will look most attractive here. Most importantly, stay concise but accurate.
This is not to say that your education section will be able to play a key role in hiring. However, a master’s degree will at least show that you are hardworking, diligent, and persistent.
Just after this section, you can create a special twist, which will be a list of specialized courses and pieces of training that are directly related to the work of the virtual assistant. This will be much more useful for a recruiter who can appreciate your serious approach to self-education and continuous improvement of skills.
And finally, include a section of hard and soft skills. It is this section that is inextricably linked as much as possible with the position you are applying to, so be sure to adjust it for each job opening you apply for. Scan it and take ahead those skills that are most important.
This will be another confirmation for the recruiter that you are not only an excellent choice, but that you have carefully studied the opening and are really interested in getting a job.
Qualities Every Virtual Assistant Needs to Have
The qualities that you need as a virtual assistant are, in other words, your soft skills. Often, to indicate them in your resume, it is enough to study the virtual assistant job description. However, it happens that it is more focused on hard skills and you remain in relative ignorance of what to indicate in your virtual assistant resume. For this case, we will list the main skills of a virtual assistant that will be relevant for any opening:
- Reliability. Keeping in touch, providing timely reports, communicating with the client at all stages of work, not disappearing without warning, and keeping up with deadlines are the key characteristics of a good virtual assistant.
- Communication skills. Virtual communication skills are a special topic. A professional virtual assistant must speak the client’s language, be always polite, and be able to diffuse a controversial situation with a calm and rational solution.
- Resourcefulness. Your resourcefulness is your strength. You are an assistant, so first of all, you should be able to help yourself. Faced with a new problem, learn to study and solve it. Continuous self-improvement, skills swaps with other VAs and keeping abreast of the latest trends in the field of virtual assistants is your way to success.
- Openness to criticism. Be prepared for evaluation and new offers, because improvement is possible only if there are ups and downs. Study your strengths and weaknesses and do not give a hostile reception to criticism: it is your stepping stone to increase productivity and work efficiency.
- Focus on details. The work of a virtual assistant includes an abyss of details and none of them should be missed. Your task is to bring them all together and in no case to lose sight of them at all stages of work.
Almost every virtual assistant resume sample includes these or similar skills. They are found in different formulations, but the essence remains the same. Having done a quick study, you can see for yourself that the skills outlined are the basis for any virtual assistant profile sample.
Of course, these are not all of the possible skills; the list may go on for a very long time. However, this is quite enough to indicate in the virtual assistant resume. Your potential employer will already be able to see that you will always be where it is necessary, and will do everything necessary to achieve the desired result.
Well, now the meatiest part of our study today: a selection of awesome resume templates, with the help of which you can create the perfect virtual assistant resume in just a few minutes.
Top 5 Virtual Assistant Resume Templates
David Richards
Perfectly structured, this is a concise and clear template. It consists of two pages and an additional cover letter in the same color scheme.
You can save your A4 resume in three formats (docx, psd and ai) and easily print it at any time. All the main elements and blocks of the template are easily edited and customized to your discretion: you do not need any professional skills for this.
If you have questions about the template, you can use the helpful information provided in the kit.
Daniel Gray virtual assistant resume
With this template, you no longer need to study virtual assistant resume examples on the internet, because this is the resume that will become an example for everyone.
If you choose this template, you can make a resume with or without a photo, save it in any of four different formats (eps, psd, pdf and ai), easily print it and, of course, configure it as you need.
The kit includes a business card that will greatly contribute to promoting your personal brand as a virtual assistant. Pay attention to the ultra-modern possibility of implementing the QR code so that the potential employer can quickly contact you.
Alex Jefferson virtual assistant resume
A virtual assistant with this resume will definitely attract attention. Minimalist design, intuitive customization of any elements and blocks, as well as the ability to select colors will help you make your resume truly unique.
Use the opportunity to save your virtual assistant resume in eps, psd, pdf and ai formats, create your own business card, which is so convenient to offer to future employers if you go to relevant events or conferences.
Be sure to try the function of adding a QR code to your virtual assistant resume: this will greatly speed up the process of contacting you. In addition, this is one of the most trending features working in your favor as a person keeping up to date.
Wiliam Doyle virtual assistant resume
Three templates in one make this your best choice if you are serious about looking for work in different directions at the same time. You can use each of the templates for a specific group of openings and no longer get confused by endlessly changing the same resume.
What you get by choosing this set of templates: three unique A4 designs, three color schemes, the ability to easily customize various elements, as well as a business card that will always be useful.
Templates in eps, psd, pdf, and ai formats, completely ready for printing are at your service. Templates support the implementation of a QR code: this is a very convenient feature for quick contact with you.
Ben Jonathon virtual assistant resume
Here’s another great template for an advanced virtual assistant. With it, you can create a two-page resume and a matching cover letter.
You can change images, elements, text, and even colors. Having saved the resume in one of four formats (eps, psd, pdf and ai), you can easily print it if necessary or leave it in electronic format for further distribution.
You will find answers to any questions included with the instructions in the kit. However, it is unlikely that you will have questions: the template is perfectly structured and you can easily figure out how to customize it without any special knowledge.
Virtual Assistant Resume Table
| David Richards | Daniel Gray | Alex Jefferson | Wiliam Doyle | Ben Jonathon | |
| A4 Size | + | + | + | + | + |
| Print Ready | + | + | + | + | + |
| Fully Editable | + | + | + | + | + |
| DOCX, PSD and AI files | + | + | + | + | + |
| Business Card | - | + | + | + | - |
| Cover Letter | + | - | - | - | - |
| QR Code Implementation | - | + | + | + | - |
| Price | $9 | $17 | $17 | $17 | $10 |
Virtual Assistant Resume FAQ
This is undesirable. Even if the education section does not play a key role in getting you hired, it is necessary so that the recruiter can compose a complete picture of your background.
Do this only if it is agreed with previous employers and is necessary in the light of the opening that you are considering. In general, this information is optional.
If you have a portfolio, it’s best to put a link to it at the very top of the resume, in the contact information section: there it will definitely not be lost and will be awarded the attention of a recruiter.
Since we are reviewing virtual assistant resumes, the answer is probably no: you are a remote employee and your appearance does not matter. In special cases, if a potential employer asks to send a resume with a photo in the text of the opening, you can add it.
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