Home Chief of Staff Resume template
Chief of Staff resume template
A clean starting structure with example content grounded in what chief of staffs actually do day to day, not generic filler. Download and replace the bracketed placeholders with your own details.
Which resume format should you use?
Reverse chronological
You have a steady work history. This is the format almost every recruiter and ATS expects by default.
Functional
You're changing fields or have gaps in your employment. Leads with skills rather than a job-by-job timeline.
Combination
You're early career or have worked consistently but for only a few employers. Blends a skills summary with a shorter chronological history.
This template uses the reverse chronological format: the one most chief of staffs should default to, since most Australian recruiters and ATS software expect it.
Professional summary
Chief of staff with a background in strategy, analysis and cross-functional delivery, working directly alongside a chief executive to turn priorities into decisions and action. Comfortable moving between financial modelling, board papers and stakeholder conversations in the same week. Known for triaging what genuinely needs executive attention and keeping strategic projects moving across teams that do not report to me.
Key skills
- Strategy development
- Project management
- Data analysis
- Financial analysis and modelling
- Stakeholder management
- Board paper and executive brief writing
- Problem solving
- Written communication
- Microsoft Excel
- Tableau
- Asana and Monday.com
- Salesforce
Experience: example bullet points
- Triaged the requests, papers and meeting invitations competing for a chief executive's time, setting a weekly agenda that protected blocks for board preparation and major decisions.
- Built financial and operational reporting in Excel and Tableau so the executive team could see performance across four business units in one view rather than four separate packs.
- Coordinated a cross-functional strategic project spanning finance, operations and technology, keeping milestones on track where no single department owned the outcome.
- Wrote board papers and executive summaries that condensed complex issues into a recommended decision, with options and trade-offs stated plainly.
- Ran stakeholder conversations across business units and fed the themes back into leadership planning, so recurring issues showed up on the agenda before they became escalations.
- Prepared the chief executive for external engagements including investor updates and regulator meetings, including briefing notes and likely questions.
Education
Bachelor degree in commerce, business, economics or a related field, with many chief of staff roles also drawing on a postgraduate qualification such as an MBA or a graduate certificate in strategy, policy or organisational change.
Keywords an ATS is likely to scan for
Applicant tracking systems match your resume against terms in the job ad before a person ever sees it. Only include the ones that actually apply to your experience, but if a term below matches something you've done, use the same wording the job ad uses.
- board papers
- executive briefing note
- strategic planning
- business case development
- stakeholder engagement
- risk register
- OKRs
- Agile delivery
- PRINCE2
- AICD
- CPA Australia
- Chartered Accountants ANZ
- Senior Executive Service (APS)
- ASX listing rules
- Workplace Gender Equality Agency reporting
Getting past ATS screening
- Match the specific skills, certifications and terms used in the job ad, not just your own wording for the same thing.
- Keep formatting simple: no tables, text boxes, columns, headers/footers or graphics. Parsers frequently drop content placed in these.
- Submit as .docx or PDF unless the job ad specifies otherwise.
- Use standard section headings (Experience, Education, Skills) rather than creative alternatives.
- List your core skills and technical competencies in their own section so a keyword scan can find them instantly.
This is a starting point, not a guarantee of interviews. Tailor every bullet point to your own real experience and the specific job ad.