Resume Help

by jaebee
(St. Louis)

Hello,I have worked as an administrative assistant but I did not do what I was hired to do. I helped assist my manager with the day to day running of the office. The staff said that I ran the place even though I did not have the title. I also asked the IT Department to create a database for the department that I worked in, but the IT person got paid for it.

How would I list that on my resume?

One more thing, when I was a data entry clerk, the clinic I worked in was not getting any patients to work on, and was not making any money at all. They were getting lost and not coming. So I started a service to bring patients directly to the clinic from wherever they called me from in the hospital, which was made up of 5 or more buildings. I brought them directly to the clinic, and when the Hospital President heard about it from one of his friends who was a patient in the clinic, he started a department doing the same thing for the entire hospital.

How do I put that in a resume and it was not part of my original job?

Answer

Running the office and performing manager responsibilities are accomplishments that you deserve credit for so you definitely want to add it to your resume…. especially if you plan on applying for management positions.

Your management experience could be overlooked if mixed in with the Administrative Assistant position since the two are unrelated. So, I recommend that you place the management experience in your career summary.

The career summary is at the top of the resume and will catch the recruiter’s attention more quickly.

The fact that you created the database is a major accomplishment (You streamlined a process). You want this to stand out early in your resume.

Write a list of everything that you accomplished while assisting with running the office and place the most important information in your career summary.

Examples:

• “Streamlined departmental processes by creating a database that was implemented by IT department.”


• Increased sales by 20% while managing office operations with a staff of 20 direct reports.

I don’t know your exact experience, but you can use the above examples to tailor the information to match your own management skills and achievement.

As far as the service that you started in the hospital, here are some examples of you can word it:

• “Established a process for directing patients through the hospital, which resulted in the formation of hospital-wide department, and increased patient visits and clinic revenue.”


• “Implemented a service to direct patients through the hospital, which led to the formation of a Patient Assistance Department. This resulted in increased patient visits and increased clinic profits.”

Again, since this is a major accomplishment (Your idea led to the creation of a whole new department), you could include this information in your career summary to highlight your major accomplishments outside of you normal responsibilities at the beginning of your resume.

You could even include sub-headings in your career summary. For example…

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Career Summary

Management

• Increased sales by 20% while managing office operations with a staff of 20 direct reports.


• List other management accomplishments here.

Process Improvement

• “Implemented a service to direct patients through the hospital, which led to the formation of a Patient Assistance Department. This resulted in increased patient visits and increased clinic profits.”


• List other process improvements here.

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This is just an example career summary, but it shows how you can highlight accomplishments that fall outside of your normal job or topics that you want to stand out to the recruiter.

As a recruiter myself, a career summary typically tells me whether I want to continue reading the rest of the resume. It also helps me to quickly see what an applicant has to offer.

Kudos to you for taking the initiative to seek opportunity outside of your day to day job! Keep up the good work and good luck with your job search!

Sincerely,

Victoria E.