Operations and admin
Executive Assistant job description template
The job is judgement, not admin. Adverts that describe it as diary management attract the wrong shortlist.
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Executive Assistant job description
About the role
We are looking for an Executive Assistant to support [role or roles]. You will own their calendar and their inbox priorities, prepare what they need before they ask, and act as the first point of contact for people trying to reach them. The role carries real autonomy: you will make decisions about their time without checking first.
What you will do
- Own the calendar, including deciding what does not get a meeting
- Triage the inbox and handle what does not need the executive
- Prepare briefing materials, agendas and follow-ups for meetings
- Arrange complex travel across time zones, and rebuild it when plans change
- Act as the first point of contact for internal and external requests
- Handle confidential information, including commercial and personnel matters
- Coordinate projects on the executive's behalf with other teams
What we need
- Experience supporting senior leadership directly
- Sound judgement about priority and access, exercised without supervision
- Complete discretion with confidential information
- Calm under short notice and frequent change
- Clear written communication, often writing on somebody else's behalf
Nice to have
- Experience in [your sector]
- Board or governance support experience
- A second language relevant to the executive's work
Before you publish the pay
This role pays materially more than general administration and the gap widens with seniority of the executive supported. Say who the role supports, because that single fact sets the expectation. Publish a range.
To appear in Google job results
Fill in title, location or remote, employment type, date posted, a valid-through date and the salary range. If the role requires office presence on specific days, say so in the description, since candidates filter job results by location first.
Adapt it rather than pasting it. The parts worth rewriting are the opening paragraph and the must-haves, because those are what decide whether the right person applies. Our guide to writing a job description covers why.
When it is ready, publishing it on your own site keeps the listing, the applications and the candidate data with you, and generates the structured data that makes the role eligible for Google job results.
Common questions
How is this different from an Administrative Assistant?
Scope and autonomy. An Administrative Assistant supports a team or a function. An Executive Assistant supports one or two named people and is expected to make decisions about their time, access and priorities without asking. The pay expectations differ accordingly, and candidates search for the two titles separately.
Should I mention personal tasks?
If the role includes them, yes, explicitly and with a boundary. Discovering personal errands after starting is a common reason these hires go wrong. Plenty of excellent candidates are happy with it when it is stated and scoped, and resentful when it appears later.
How much detail about the executive should I give?
Enough to describe the job: their function, their seniority, how they work, how much travel is involved. A good Executive Assistant is choosing a person as much as a company, and vagueness here narrows your shortlist to people who did not think about it.
Publish it on your own site.
WP Career Board turns the fields you fill in into the markup Google reads, and applications land in a dashboard instead of an inbox. Free.