Administrative Assistant Job Description: A Copy-Ready Example

An administrative assistant job description should include a one-line summary of why the role exists, five to eight essential functions written as outcomes (managing calendars and scheduling, handling correspondence, maintaining records and files, coordinating meetings and travel, preparing documents and reports, and serving as the first point of contact), the required and preferred qualifications, the reporting line, the schedule and location, the pay range, and the exempt or non-exempt classification. Below is a complete example you can copy and adapt.

The generic administrative assistant descriptions floating around the web share one problem: they read as an undifferentiated list of twenty tasks, which tells a strong candidate nothing about whether this is the job for them and tells a hiring manager nothing to screen against. A good description says what the role owns, keeps the reassignable tasks separate from the ones the job exists to perform, and states the pay. Here is that version, filled in for a US small business, followed by the choices that make it work.

Administrative assistant job description (copy-ready example)

Job title: Administrative Assistant
Reports to: Office Manager (or Operations Lead)
Location: [City, on-site / hybrid]
Schedule: Full-time, [hours]
Classification: Non-exempt (hourly, overtime-eligible)
Pay range: [$ low to $ high per hour]

Summary. The Administrative Assistant keeps the daily administrative work of the office moving so the rest of the team can focus on their own work. The role owns scheduling, correspondence, records, and the steady stream of small requests that would otherwise interrupt everyone else.

Essential functions.

• Manage calendars and schedule meetings across the team, resolving conflicts and protecting focus time.
• Handle incoming correspondence: triage email and calls, respond to routine requests, and route the rest to the right owner.
• Maintain accurate, current records and files (physical and digital) and produce documents on request.
• Coordinate meetings end to end: agendas, materials, room or video setup, and follow-up notes with action items.
• Prepare, format, and proofread documents, reports, and presentations.
• Arrange travel and process the expense reports that follow.
• Serve as the first point of contact for the office and for visitors, in person and on the phone.
• Order and track office supplies and coordinate with building and equipment vendors.

Marginal duties. Plan the occasional team event; assist other departments during busy periods; other duties as assigned.

Required qualifications. Two or more years in an administrative or coordination role; strong written and verbal communication; proven organization and follow-through across many small tasks; comfort with a standard office software suite; discretion with confidential information.

Preferred qualifications. Experience supporting a leadership team; familiarity with the specific tools this office already runs; light bookkeeping or scheduling-software experience. Increasingly worth listing as preferred rather than required: comfort with using AI as an administrative assistant, since the drafting and triage parts of the role are the ones changing fastest.

What we offer. [Pay range], [benefits summary], and the honest version of the team and the work.

Equal opportunity. [Your EEO statement.] Reasonable accommodations are available for the application process and for the role.

The full structure this follows, including the marginal-duties split and the classification and pay lines, is on our job description template, which walks through each section and why it belongs there.

Why the essential functions are written as outcomes

Every essential function above starts with a verb and describes a result, not a method. That is deliberate. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, essential functions are the tasks the job exists to perform, and an employer is expected to be able to ask a candidate whether they can perform them with or without a reasonable accommodation. Writing "maintain accurate records" rather than "use [a specific tool] to maintain records" keeps the function about the outcome, widens your candidate pool, and does not quietly rule out an accommodation later. The tool is not the job.

The marginal duties sit in their own section for the same reason. Event planning and helping other departments are real, but they are reassignable: if they moved to someone else, this would still be the administrative assistant role. Keeping them out of the essential list is exactly the line the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission looks at, and it is a two-minute habit that makes the whole description more defensible.

The skills that actually predict success in the role

Administrative assistant postings tend to list the same soft skills every time (organized, detail-oriented, good communicator) without saying how you would know. Screen for the behaviors instead. Organization shows up as follow-through across many small, unglamorous tasks, which you can probe with "tell me about a week when three things were due at once and how you handled it." Communication is best tested by having a candidate rewrite a rambling request into a clear one during the interview. Discretion matters because the role sees calendars, expenses, and sometimes personnel information, so ask about a time they held something confidential.

Be honest about the requirements, too. Every unnecessary "required" line (a degree that the work does not need, a specific software product, an inflated years-of-experience floor) shrinks your applicant pool and skews it, often without improving the hire. List what the essential functions genuinely demand and move the rest to "preferred."

Should the administrative assistant be exempt or non-exempt?

Almost always non-exempt. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, most administrative assistant roles are hourly and overtime-eligible, because the work is executing tasks rather than exercising the independent judgment over significant business matters that the administrative exemption requires. Do not assume that "administrative" in the job title maps to the administrative exemption; it does not, and misclassifying an assistant as exempt to avoid paying overtime is one of the most common and expensive wage-and-hour mistakes a small business makes. When in doubt, classify as non-exempt and pay overtime.

State a real pay range

Put a genuine hourly range in the posting. A growing number of US states and cities now require it, and even where it is not required, a posting without a range gets fewer and worse-matched applicants and wastes time confirming a number on the phone that you could have printed. Anchor the range to what the role is worth in your market rather than to what you hope to pay, and be ready to explain where in the range a given candidate lands.

From description to filled seat

The description is the first document in a chain, not the end of one. Once it is written, it becomes the job posting, the interview scorecard, the basis on which you source and screen the applicants who come in, then the offer letter, then the first-week plan. Each of those is administrative work that has to happen on time, and for an administrative-assistant hire it often lands on the very person the new hire is meant to relieve.

That is the layer Officeagent handles. It drafts the description from a short brief in your house style, turns the essential functions into the interview scorecard and the onboarding plan, and files the signed offer and paperwork where it belongs, while the new hire's first-week steps become tracked items with owners and due dates rather than a checklist someone forgets to open. It pairs with a structured employee onboarding checklist and the new hire paperwork checklist so the role you just defined is staffed and productive without the hiring paperwork eating the office manager's month. Every message it sends and document it files waits on a human approval first.

Frequently asked questions

What does an administrative assistant do? An administrative assistant keeps the daily administrative work of an office moving: managing calendars and scheduling, handling correspondence, maintaining records and files, coordinating meetings and travel, preparing documents, and serving as the first point of contact. The role exists so that the rest of the team is not interrupted by the steady stream of small operational tasks.

What are the top skills for an administrative assistant? Organization and follow-through across many small tasks, clear written and verbal communication, discretion with confidential information, comfort with standard office software, and reliable time management. Screen for the behavior rather than the adjective: ask for a specific example of juggling competing deadlines rather than trusting "detail-oriented" on a resume.

Is an administrative assistant exempt or non-exempt? Almost always non-exempt, meaning hourly and eligible for overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Most administrative assistant work is executing tasks rather than exercising independent judgment over significant business matters, which is what the administrative exemption requires. Classifying the role as exempt to avoid overtime is a common and costly misclassification.

What is the difference between an administrative assistant and an office manager? An administrative assistant executes administrative tasks and supports the team; an office manager owns the operation of the office, including vendors, budgets, and often the administrative assistant. The roles overlap in small companies where one person does both, but the manager role carries more independent decision-making, which also affects how each is classified.