List the admin tasks first, then say which ones AI drafts and what the person must check. Name the tools by job (Copilot Chat for summarising supplier emails) rather than asking for an "AI expert", state the pay range, and replace the cover letter with a 40-minute task that shows how candidates use and check AI.
The most common mistake is writing the advert for a technologist. An admin assistant who writes clever prompts but doesn't notice that an AI summary moved a delivery from Wednesday to Tuesday will cost you more than one who uses AI less and checks everything. So the advert should screen for accuracy and judgement first and tool familiarity second, because tools can be taught in a week.
Start with the week's admin tasks, then mark where AI drafts
Take an illustrative bakery with nine staff that bakes for its own shop and supplies about 40 cafés. The owner has been doing the office work at 5am and wants 25 hours a week of help. Before writing a word of the advert, she lists what the job actually involves, how long each part takes, where an AI tool does the first draft, and what a person must check by hand.
| Task | Hours a week | Where AI helps | What the person must check |
|---|---|---|---|
| Café orders from email and WhatsApp into the order sheet | 6 | Turning a rambling message into order lines | Quantities, delivery day, and that the café matches the account |
| Weekly invoices and payment chasers | 4 | Drafting polite chasers from a set template | Amounts and due dates against the accounts software |
| Allergen and ingredient sheets for wholesale customers | 2 | Reformatting recipe data into each café's template | Every allergen, line by line, against the recipe |
| Supplier orders and delivery checks | 3 | Summarising long supplier email threads | Prices and dates against the latest email, not the summary |
| Staff rota and holiday requests | 2 | Drafting the weekly rota message | Names and hours against the rota itself |
| One-page weekly sales summary for the owner | 2 | Describing trends from the sales spreadsheet | Totals recalculated in the sheet, never copied from the AI's text |
| Shop phone and front-of-house cover | 6 | Very little | Nothing extra |
This table does three jobs. Its first column becomes the "what you'll do" section of the advert almost word for word. The last column tells you which skills to test. And the hours column is an honest check on whether the role is really 25 hours, before you promise it to someone. If you haven't yet decided whether to hire at all or let AI absorb the work, deciding between AI and a new hire covers that question first.
Five skills that "AI-savvy" should mean in an office role
"AI-savvy" on its own attracts people who talk well about AI. Break it into skills you can see evidence of:
- Checking output against the source. The most important one. The evidence is the application task below, where the AI's answer contains traps.
- Writing clear instructions. Giving an AI tool the context, an example and the format wanted. Evidence: ask for a prompt they reuse at work or at home.
- Knowing what not to paste. Card numbers, a named customer's allergy, a staff member's sick note. Evidence: one interview question, answered without prompting.
- Spreadsheet confidence. AI tools will happily write a formula; the person has to notice when the total is wrong. Evidence: sorting, filtering and a lookup in the interview.
- Keeping a simple automation running (nice to have). For example a two-step Zap that copies web orders into a sheet, which Zapier's free plan allows at 100 tasks a month. Evidence: they can describe one they've built and what they did when it broke.
What the role doesn't need: coding, a "prompt engineering" certificate, or experience with a particular model version. Model names in consumer apps change every few months; the habit of checking doesn't.
Letting a chat assistant draft the advert, then stripping it back
Using AI to draft the advert is fine, and it's a good rehearsal for the checking you'll expect of the person you hire. Give it your task table rather than a one-line request. Here is the bakery owner's prompt:
Write a job advert for a part-time admin assistant (25 hours a week,
Monday to Friday, 7am to 12pm, on site) at a bakery with 9 staff that
supplies about 40 cafés. Use the task table below for the duties.
Tone: plain, friendly, no hype. British English.
Must-haves: accurate with numbers, confident with spreadsheets, uses an
AI assistant regularly and checks its work.
Do not invent benefits, pay, qualifications or company details.
Leave [PAY RANGE] as a placeholder.
[task table pasted here]Even with those instructions, the first draft that came back (illustrative, and typical) opened with "Are you a tech-savvy superstar who thrives in a fast-paced environment?", asked for "a degree in business administration" and "3+ years' experience with ChatGPT and AI tools", and listed "competitive salary, free lunches and a fun team culture" as benefits.
What the owner fixed, and why:
- The opening line. Replaced with what the job is: "We bake for our own shop and about 40 cafés, and need someone to run orders, invoices and supplier paperwork."
- The degree. Deleted. Nothing in the task table needs one, and it shuts out experienced admins.
- "3+ years with ChatGPT". Changed to "regular use of an AI assistant for at least six months". Years of experience with a tool this young mostly measures how early someone signed up.
- Invented benefits. The bakery doesn't do free lunches; it gives staff the day's unsold bread. The model made the benefit up despite being told not to, which is exactly the kind of error the new hire will need to catch.
- "Competitive salary". Replaced with the real hourly range. Leaving pay out invites "what's the rate?" messages and puts off people who can't afford to guess.
For the wider method of prompting for job adverts and checking the wording for bias, see writing job descriptions with AI and job adverts with ChatGPT without biased language. What follows sticks to what's particular to an admin role that works alongside AI.
The bakery's finished advert, section by section
Here is the finished admin assistant job description, with only the pay range left as a placeholder:
Admin Assistant (bakery office, 25 hours a week)
We bake bread and pastries for our own shop and about 40 cafés. We're looking for an organised admin assistant to run our orders, invoices and supplier paperwork. You'll use AI tools to do the first draft of routine work, and you'll check everything before it goes to a customer.
What you'll do
- Turn café orders from email and WhatsApp into our order sheet by 9am each day
- Send weekly invoices from our accounts software and chase late payments politely
- Keep allergen sheets for our wholesale customers up to date, checked against our recipes
- Order flour, butter and packaging, and check each delivery against its invoice
- Prepare the weekly rota message and a one-page sales summary for the owner
- Cover the shop phone for part of each morning
Tools you'll use: Microsoft 365, including Copilot Chat for summarising long email threads and drafting replies; our accounts software; a shared order spreadsheet; a simple automation that copies web orders into that spreadsheet (we'll show you how it works).
What we'll teach you: our order system, our allergen rules, how we write to customers, and which information must never go into an AI tool.
You'll need: accuracy with numbers and names; confidence with spreadsheets (sorting, filtering, simple formulas); regular use of an AI assistant such as ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini or Claude, at work or at home, and the habit of checking what it gives you; clear, friendly writing.
Nice to have: you've set up a simple automation in Zapier, Make or Power Automate; you've worked in a food business.
Pay and hours: [PAY RANGE] an hour, 25 hours a week, Monday to Friday, 7am to 12pm, on site. Unsold bread every day.
How to apply: send your CV and complete the short task below (about 40 minutes). No cover letter needed. You're welcome to use any AI tool for the task; tell us which one and what you changed.
How we use AI in hiring: a person reads every application. We don't use AI to score, rank or reject candidates.
A few choices in there are deliberate. The title uses the words people search for, with the hours in brackets, rather than "AI Admin Specialist". The tools section names products by what they're used for, so a candidate who has used Gemini rather than Copilot can see they'd cope. The "what we'll teach you" line tells good admins without AI experience that they aren't ruled out, and the last line answers a question more applicants now ask.
Wording that attracts AI talkers instead of careful admins
Some phrases pull in the wrong applicants; others date the advert because the tool they name has changed. The left column is taken from real-looking first drafts; the right is what to write instead.
| Instead of | Write | Why |
|---|---|---|
| "AI wizard" or "prompt engineer" | "You'll use AI tools daily to draft and summarise, and check everything they produce" | Describes the work, not a persona |
| "5+ years' ChatGPT experience" | "Regular use of an AI assistant for six months or more" | ChatGPT has only been public since late 2022; the first version rules out every honest applicant |
| "Experience building custom GPTs" | "Experience setting up shared instructions for a team, such as ChatGPT Projects, Claude Projects or Gemini Gems (which become skills from November 2026)" | OpenAI is retiring custom GPTs; they stop running on 11 December 2026 |
| "Familiar with Excel's COPILOT function" | "Comfortable with lookups and pivot tables, with or without Copilot's help" | Microsoft retired the =COPILOT() worksheet function on 14 September 2026 |
| "Uses ChatGPT agent" | "Has used an AI tool to complete a multi-step task, such as ChatGPT Work" | ChatGPT agent was retired on 9 July 2026 and replaced by ChatGPT Work |
| "Digital native" or "young, energetic team" | "Comfortable learning new software" | Age-coded wording puts off experienced admins and invites complaints |
A realistic way this goes wrong: the bakery's first advert (illustrative) asked for "experience with ChatGPT agent and custom GPTs". It drew 70 applications, many of them heavy on AI vocabulary. Of the eight shortlisted, the one who had actually done wholesale order admin was the weakest on the AI questions and the strongest on everything the job needed. The advert had filtered in the wrong direction. The rewrite above named tasks and checking, and the second round's shortlist was smaller and better.
A 40-minute application task in place of a cover letter
Cover letters are now easy to generate, so they tell you little. A short task tells you whether someone reads carefully, uses AI sensibly and catches what it gets wrong. The bakery's task gives each applicant a café's standing order and a messy message, both made up:
STANDING ORDER (every week)
Thursday: 6 sourdough, 12 plain croissants, 12 almond croissants,
8 pain au raisin
Friday: 6 sourdough, 12 plain croissants, 10 brownies
Saturday: 8 sourdough, 20 seeded rolls
MESSAGE FROM THE CAFE
"Hi, it's [first name] from the café with the green door. Can we change
this week: Thursday we need 3 more sourdough than usual, and swap the
almond croissants for plain ones... no wait, the almond ones are fine,
it's the pain au raisin we don't want any more. Friday same as normal
but double the brownies, there's a school fair. Also last month's
invoice says 14 baguettes on the 3rd but we only got 12, can you check?
And please, no sesame on anything for Saturday, we've got a customer
with an allergy coming in for a birthday. Thanks!"
YOUR TASK
1. Write this week's order lines for Thursday to Saturday.
2. Draft the reply to the café.
3. List anything you'd check with a colleague before sending.
4. Tell us which AI tool you used (if any), your prompt, and what you
changed in its answer.The traps are deliberate, and they're the kind of thing AI tools get wrong. A strong answer gives Thursday as 9 sourdough, 12 plain, 12 almond and no pain au raisin, because it follows the café's self-correction. Friday becomes 20 brownies. It asks whether "don't want any more" means this week or for good. It doesn't promise a credit for the baguettes; it says the delivery note will be checked. And it flags Saturday's seeded rolls: seeded bread may contain sesame, and a promise of "no sesame" is the owner's call on the recipe and on cross-contact risk, never something to confirm in a friendly reply.
A weak answer, often pasted straight from a chat assistant, swaps the almond croissants for plain (missing the correction), writes "We'll make sure there's no sesame on Saturday!" and apologises for the "missing baguettes". Each of those would cost the bakery money or put a customer at risk. Scoring the two answers side by side, with 1 to 3 points per line:
| What you're scoring | Applicant A (illustrative) | Applicant B (illustrative) |
|---|---|---|
| Order lines correct | 3 | 1 (almond croissants removed) |
| Spotted the ambiguity about pain au raisin | 3 | 1 |
| Handled the allergy request safely | 3 (flagged to owner) | 1 (promised no sesame) |
| Didn't concede the invoice without checking | 2 | 1 |
| Reply clear and friendly | 2 | 3 |
| Honest, useful account of AI use | 3 (showed prompt and edits) | 2 |
| Total out of 18 | 16 | 9 |
Applicant B wrote the nicer email. Applicant A is the one to hire. That gap is the whole reason for the task.
Interview questions that separate careful AI users from confident ones
"Tell me about a time an AI tool got something wrong and you caught it." A strong answer is specific: "Copilot summarised a supplier thread as delivery on Tuesday; the last email had moved it to Wednesday, so I always read the final message now." A weak one is general: "It's usually right if you prompt it properly."
"What wouldn't you put into an AI tool in this job?" Listen for card details, a named customer's allergy or health information, staff sickness records, and a preference for the business account over a personal one. "Nothing, it's all private" is a red flag.
"Here's a long supplier thread on this laptop. Summarise it and show me how you'd check the summary." Watch whether they go back to the source emails for prices and dates, or read the summary and stop.
"Our web-order automation stopped copying orders on Monday. What would you check first?" Good answers mention the run history, the error message, and whether someone changed the order form. A candidate who knows Zapier might add that it pauses a Zap by itself when 95% of its runs error over seven days, which is precisely why someone has to look.
"The sales summary AI wrote says Saturday sales are up 30%. What do you do before sending it to me?" The answer you want: recalculate it in the spreadsheet, because AI tools describe numbers fluently and add them up unreliably.
How a funeral director's advert changes the AI wording
The same approach reads differently where the admin work involves grieving families. An admin assistant at a funeral director types up arrangement notes, prepares paperwork, orders flowers and orders of service, and sends invoices. The AI section of that advert should be narrower and say so plainly:
We use Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat to tidy the wording of routine letters from our own templates. We never enter a family's details into public AI tools, and you'll learn exactly what can and can't be used in your first week. Accuracy with names, dates and spellings matters more to us than speed.
The task changes too: instead of a café order, give a draft letter with a misspelt name, a wrong date and an over-familiar sentence, and ask the applicant to correct it and explain each change. The funeral director learns more from how someone treats a name than from anything about prompts.
Telling applicants how you use AI in your own hiring
Some applicants will want to know whether a machine is reading their CV. A small business rarely needs AI screening; at a few dozen applications a person can read them in an afternoon. If you do use it, say so, keep a person making every decision, and check it for bias first, as covered in the bias checks for AI CV screening. Wording for the advert:
How we use AI in hiring: we read every application ourselves.
[If used:] We use an AI tool to check our own adverts and messages
for clarity. We do not use AI to score, rank or reject candidates.Two weeks after posting: reading the response
Judge the advert by who it brought in, not by the number of applications. The bakery's second advert (illustrative figures) drew 38 applications; 12 completed the task, five scored 13 or more out of 18, and three were interviewed. That's a healthy funnel for a 25-hour role.
- Few people finish the task: it's too long or unclear. Cut it to the order lines and the allergy question, and say how long it should take.
- Lots of tasks, all pasted straight from AI: keep going. Those are easy to score, and the traps do the sorting for you.
- Strong admins with little AI use: a good sign, not a problem. The advert's "we'll teach you" line is working; AI habits are the quick part to train.
- Applicants asking what the pay is: the range is missing or buried. Move it up.
Once someone accepts, their first week sets their habits for good. Onboarding new hires onto your AI tools and rules covers what to show them, in what order, and how to write down the rules the advert promised to teach.
Admin assistant advert questions
Should I put 'AI' in the job title?
Keep the title to the words candidates actually search for, such as Admin Assistant, Administrative Assistant or Office Administrator, and add hours or a short descriptor in brackets. Put the AI part in the first sentence and the tools section instead. A title like 'AI Admin Specialist' is harder to find and suggests a technical role you aren't offering.
Do I need to pay candidates for the practical task?
Keep the task under an hour, use made-up material rather than real work, and never use the answers in your business. That keeps it a fair assessment rather than free labour. If you want a longer exercise, such as a paid trial morning, pay for the time at the role's hourly rate and say so in the advert.
Should I ask for an AI certificate?
No. Short online AI certificates show someone finished a course, not that they check their work. The application task tells you far more in 40 minutes. If a candidate has a certificate, treat it as a pleasant extra and ask them in the interview what they now do differently because of it.
Further reads
- How to Hire Your First Customer Service Person Alongside AI — The same approach for a customer-facing role that works next to AI.
- How to Hire a Part-Time Marketing Assistant Who Uses AI — How the advert and task change for marketing work.
- How to Set Up an AI-Assisted Hiring Process for a Small Team — Set up the rest of the hiring process with AI help.
- Should a Small Business Hire a Prompt Engineer? — Why a prompt engineer is rarely the hire a small firm needs.
- How to Hire Your First AI Automation Specialist — When the job is building automations, not running the office.
- AI Recruiting Tools for Small Businesses: What's Worth Paying For — Which recruiting tools are worth paying for at small volumes.
- How to Test Job Candidates' AI Skills in an Interview — An AI skills test for small-firm interviews: one realistic task with a planted error, a scoring rubric, and follow-up questions that reveal judgement.
- AI Assistant vs Virtual Assistant: Which Should You Pay For? — A side-by-side comparison, a food truck owner's week sorted task by task, real costs of each and when a small business needs both.
- AI Consultant vs In-House Hire: Which Costs a Small Team Less? — The fully loaded cost of an AI hire, the same year's work priced from a consultant, and the break-even hours a family butcher would need.
- How to Choose a Virtual Assistant Agency: Questions and Prices — Compare virtual assistant agencies on published prices, the cost per hour you'll really use, contract terms, account access and how their assistants use AI.
- AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.
Sources: OpenAI help pages (custom GPT retirement; ChatGPT Work); Microsoft Support (Excel COPILOT function retirement); Microsoft 365 business plan pages; Zapier help pages on plans and auto-paused Zaps. Checked September 2026.