Posted by CV Nation on
If you’re pursuing jobs as a receptionist, it’s important to prepare yourself a compelling CV that demonstrates your skills, experiences and capabilities, including your customer service qualities, in the most effective manner.
In this guide, we’ll show you how to do exactly that. Feel free to use the receptionist CV templates in this guide to enhance your job search.
Begin your CV with a strong personal statement that highlights your suitability for the job you’re applying for. Personal statements, also called professional profiles and personal summaries, are short introductions at the start of your CV.
As a receptionist, you may want to focus on your customer service experience, relevant skills and training when writing your CV’s personal statement.
Draw attention to what makes you unique and how you can add value.
Here is an example of a receptionist’s personal statement:
Enthusiastic, customer-oriented receptionist with over 7 years’ experience in fast-paced, customer-facing environments. Recognised for going the extra mile to meet customer’s expectations and maintaining a hospitable, pleasant demeanour.
Excellent communication skills – honed by competing in public speaking competitions – and is capable of engaging with customers in a polite, professional manner. Proficient with multiple IT programmes and software packages, including Zendesk, Microsoft Office and Salesforce
The skills section enables recruiters to gain a quick insight into your key skills and learn what you can bring to the table.
Include 9 or 10 of your strongest skills and use bullet points to make them stand out.
Aside from listing your skills in the skills section, consider using your work experience section to show how you used the skills to achieve positive outcomes.
Of course, you should only include skills that you do in fact possess. We would never recommend lying on your CV.
Which skills are most important for receptionists?
Here, we detail the five most important skills for receptionists and how to show the skills on your CV.
Receptionists serve as the face of companies. In many cases, they are the only employees who customers come into contact with.
For this reason, receptionists must have excellent customer service skills.
How do you show customer service skills on your receptionist CV?
Use the work experience section of your CV to showcase your experience working with customers to solve problems and meet their expectations. For example, have you got a track record of going the extra mile to help customers? Did you solve a complex problem for a dissatisfied customer that led to new business?
These types of achievements offer tangible evidence of your customer service skills.
As a receptionist, you’ll spend a large portion of your time communicating with customers and liaising with colleagues.
As such, it’s important for receptionists to have good communication skills.
How do you show communication skills on your receptionist CV?
Detail your successes that resulted from your communication with customers and colleagues, such as improving customer satisfaction.
Highlighting relevant extra-curricular activities is also an effective way of demonstrating your communication acumen. For example, if you’ve taken part in public speaking events or delivered presentations to large audiences, it would be beneficial to draw attention to those activities.
Receptionists are required to multitask regularly. From filing and data entry to engaging with visitors and sending emails, there are numerous tasks that they shoudl be comfortable with juggling simultaneously.
In order to do this while maintaining accuracy and quality, they must be highly organised.
How do you show organisation skills on your receptionist CV?
Describe systems you used to improve organisation. For example, did you utilise software to enable you to manage multiple tasks? If so, draw attention to such details to show your organisation skills.
As receptionists are customer-facing employees, they will likely have to deal with complaints and unhappy customers.
To manage these kinds of situations effectively, receptionists should be proficient problem solvers who are able to provide swift resolutions to problems.
How do you show problem solving skills on your receptionist CV?
Highlight accomplishments that came about as a result of your problem solving skills. For example, stating that you resolved a customer’s complaint while maintaining customer satisfaction demonstrates sound problem solving skills.
Professionalism is one of the most important skills for receptionists as they are usually the first impression visitors and guests get of organisations.
How do you show professionalism on your receptionist CV?
One of the best ways to illustrate your professionalism on your CV is to ensure the document itself is professional in appearance. Avoid spelling mistakes, grammatical errors and make sure your CV is polished.
List your work experience in reverse chronological order, starting with your most recent or current job and working backwards.
Include your job title, the name of the company you worked for, the location of employment and the dates of employment.
Then highlight your achievements and duties.
Points to consider when writing your work experience section
- Use numbers to quantify your achievements and provide tangible evidence of your ability to generate results. Here is an example:
Contributed to a 21% reduction in negative reviews by going the extra mile for customers and maintaining a customer-focused approach to tasks
- Be concise and avoid large blocks of text
- Add spacing between bullet points to improve your CV’s reading experience
- Use powerful verbs and adjectives to make your accomplishments stand out
Now it’s time to list your qualifications and training.
Start with your highest form of education or your most relevant qualification. Leave out any training that is not relevant.
For example, it wouldn’t be beneficial to include cooking qualifications on your receptionist CV.
Dedicate the final section of your CV to any further relevant information.
Are you fluent in multiple languages? Are you skilled with software programmes that are vital in your job as a receptionist?
Include such information in this section.
Other relevant additional information may include voluntary work, licences, certifications and clearances.
If you’ve got no experience as a receptionist, try to make your communication acumen and people skills the focus of your CV, as well as any experience working in customer-facing environments.
For example, if you’ve gained experience communicating with customer via telephone, you can use this to showcase your customer service experience.
You may also want to highlight your extra-curricular and academic activities. For example, if you’ve taken part in public speaking competitions, you can highlight this in a section titled ‘Extra-Curricular Activities’ to demonstrate your communication skills.
We hope you’ve found this guide helpful in preparing your receptionist CV. Feel free to make use our receptionist CV templates.
View our guide to receptionist job interviews, which includes 20 common receptionist job interview questions and answers.
Want to view more CV templates? Check out our complete CV writing guide, which includes 21 CV templates. Or view our guide on CV layouts, which includes 10 CV layout ideas.
