Explore the site
Jurisdiction authority guide
Australian Government / APS Executive Assistant jobs
Merit-based recruitment, national agencies and classification-led work value.
How the system works
Read the employment framework before the vacancy.
APS employment is governed by the Public Service Act, agency enterprise agreements and common work-level standards. Similar EA titles can be classified differently because the regular work value—not title prestige—drives the level. APS5, APS6, EL1 and occasionally EL2 executive-support roles should therefore be compared by independence, stakeholder complexity, judgement and accountability.
Application method
Build the submission the panel asked for.
- Follow the applicant pack and word or page limit exactly; the advertisement may ask for a pitch, statement of claims, targeted responses or only a CV.
- Use first-person evidence showing your actions and outcomes. Map examples to the duties, work-level characteristics and agency context.
- Address citizenship, baseline or higher security-clearance eligibility early. Existing clearance is different from eligibility to obtain one.
- Name referees only as instructed and brief them on the role, your examples and the assessment criteria.
Executive-office reality
What the title may hide
Federal EAs may support an SES officer, agency head, commissioner, deputy secretary or program executive. The real work often includes briefing flow, parliamentary or ministerial coordination, records, governance forums and cross-agency stakeholders—not just diary ownership.
Search vocabulary
Use more than “Executive Assistant”.
Review “Executive Officer” results by duties: the title may describe policy, program or secretariat work rather than direct executive support.
Markets to monitor
Conditions and traps
Verify before you apply
- Australian citizenship and security-clearance eligibility
- Ongoing, non-ongoing or temporary transfer basis
- Agency enterprise agreement and superannuation
- Canberra requirement versus distributed office location
- Parliamentary sitting, estimates or ministerial-office peaks
Assessment preparation
Evidence the panel may probe
- Prioritising conflicting requests from SES leaders and external offices
- Quality-assuring a brief or correspondence item under time pressure
- Protecting sensitive information and creating an accurate decision trail
- Applying judgement before escalation rather than forwarding every problem
Government employers in our tracking set
These are historical hiring signals, not current-vacancy claims. Fully researched employer profiles are labelled separately in the directory.
Official source library
Build a government pitch