Posted by Philip Jewell on
If you’re pursuing jobs in operations management, you will need an effective CV or resume that effectively articulates your experiences, skills and achievements.
In this step-by-step guide, we’ll cover everything related to CV and resume writing for operations managers. We'll also provide two operations management CV/resume examples and usable templates. This guide also includes:
- How to write an operations management CV or resume that gets more job interviews and makes you stand out from the crowd
- Guidance on how to articulate your ability to add value as an operations manager
- Two operations management CV templates
- How to demonstrate your operations management experiences, skills and achievements
- The best way to format your operations management CV or resume
- The ideal length of CVs and resumes for operations managers
There were 2,289,770 operations managers in the United States alone as of 2018, according to the United States Department of Labor.
Competition is high for these roles. Companies are always searching for the best operations managers who can improve business performance by optimising productivity customer satisfaction and revenue while cutting costs.
It’s vital that operations managers approach job applications with a powerful CV that demonstrates their expertise in achieving positive outcomes for businesses. In this guide, we will guide you through the process of preparing a CV or resume that does this.
Operations management is a broad term. Jobs in operations management may come under various different job titles. These include:
- Logistics Manager
- Supply Chain Manager
- Transportation Manager
- Purchasing Manager
- Warehouse Manager
- Logistics Coordinator
- Process Improvement Specialist
- Inventory Manager
While the roles above all vary in terms of responsibilities and objectives, they all follow the principles of operations management. In essence, those who operate in these roles are operations managers.
Operations managers coordinate and oversee all operational activities within companies. Their success is measured by various factors, such as cost reductions and efficiency improvements. In 2020, operations managers are often focused on implementing mobile communication tools and process automation.
Let’s jump straight in with step one.
All good CVs and resumes start with a strong introduction. These are usually called professional profiles, personal statements or summaries. They consist of between 50 to 100 words.
What is the purpose of personal statements in operations management CVs and resumes?
Your personal statement should be a lucid summary of your career. It should convince hiring managers and recruiters to consider you as a candidate for roles while articulating your experiences, skills and achievements in a way that makes you stand out.
How can you make yourself stand out in under 100 words?
It's easy. Follow our advice and use our samples in this guide to prepare a hard-hitting personal statement.
Start by identifying three or four of your key strengths and selling points. These might involve your achievements and experiences in operations management. Be specific and use numbers and statistics to back up your statements if possible.
Use concise language and keep the sentences short. Don’t go into too much detail. Focus on the key information that will make an impact on hiring managers.
The best CV personal statements and professional profiles are unique and tailored to job applications/person specifications. By preparing your professional profile in line with job applications and person specifications, you will ensure it is sending out the right message.
If you can’t find the job description for the role you are pursuing, find one for a similar role. Examine the essential and desirable qualities expected in candidates, then identify how you can demonstrate those qualities in your professional profile/personal statement.
Some people include an objective at the start of their CV or resume, either alongside their personal statement or in place of their personal statement.
Unless you’re a recent graduate with little professional experience, you should not include an objective on your CV.
Why?
Because it should be completely obvious what your objective is – to do a great job as an operations manager.
Instead of writing an objective, focus on preparing a high-quality personal statement/professional profile that showcases your qualities and expertise as an operations manager.
Pragmatic, commercially-astute senior operations manager, with over 10 years’ experience leading logistics activities on a regional basis. Recognised for improving financial performance by enhancing supply chain processes, such as the consolidation of suppliers, which generated a four thousand pound cost saving.
Experience extends to managing 10,000 sq. ft. warehouses and fleets of over 200 vehicles while providing leadership to diverse Management teams across multiple sites. Adept at automating business processes and implementing digital communication tools to achieve high levels of productivity.
In this section, you have the opportunity to communicate your key skills to hiring managers and recruiters. This is your chance to showcase a number of your specialties that make you the ideal candidate for operations management jobs.
KPI delivery, customer service, system implementation, production planning, quality control, production control, process improvement, budget management, business optimisation, logistics management, fleet management, supply chain processes, performance measurement, financial management.
As mentioned earlier in this guide, operations management is a diverse profession. The skills that are required for operations management jobs in different industries vary significantly.
In this section, focus on hard skills that are necessary to perform your daily activities as an operations manager.
When you write your career summary – which we will cover later in this guide – you will have the opportunity to draw attention to your soft skills while writing about your duties.
The reason we recommend this approach is that soft skills need to be backed up with examples of times you have utilised them. You need to show your soft skills, rather than tell hiring managers about them.
This way, you’ll stand out from hundreds of other applicants who include the same soft skills on their CV or resume.
Here is an example of how to show your soft skills in your CV or resume's career summary:
‘Improved productivity by overhauling the staff scheduling process and reorganising staff member’s daily tasks.'
This demonstrates the operations manager’s organisation skills in a much stronger way than simply stating that he possesses the skill.
Now that you’ve added your personal statement and key skills to your CV, it’s time to include your career summary. This is the section where you write about your work experiences.
The career summary is arguably the most important section of your CV. Here, you can showcase your achievements, demonstrate your competencies and draw attention to your key experiences.
How to structure your career summary?
1. Before writing about your experiences and achievements for each role, include your job title, company name, location of employment and dates of employment. One of the best formats for this is demonstrated in the operations management CV sample in this guide.
2. Following this, it’s usually beneficial to provide some context by including a sentence or two that describes your role. This helps hiring managers understand your role.
Here is an example:
'Managing all logistics operations within the EMEA region for this global manufacturer of agricultural and construction machinery, which has an annual turnover of over £500M.'
3. Then include your responsibilities and achievements. Focus on how you added value to your employer, rather than simply detailing what you did.
The best CVs and resumes showcase applicants’ achievements. Achievements make you stand out. They show hiring managers and recruiters how you can make a difference.
Operations management achievements are usually related to improvements in productivity, customer satisfaction, waste management and revenue.
Christopher Hill, operations manager at Marine Components International, outlined his work activities in a discussion with IBI News. His comments provide insight into operations management achievements.
He said: “I have been working with the team looking at a range of improvements including better stock rotation and shorter lead in times to offer customers more value and better service.”
As can be seen, Christopher Hill focused on improving stock rotation and delivering shorter lead times. Ultimately, this was about improving customer satisfaction and value.
When writing your own CV or resume, identify time that you have optimised processes. Then draw attention to this in your CV or resume.
A great way of optimising your CV or resume and making your achievements stand out is using powerful verbs and adjectives. Weak verbs and adjectives make for weak writing. Weak writing reflects negatively on your communication skills.
So it’s important to ensure you use hard-hitting verbs and adjectives in your CV or resume.
Here is an example of two identical sentences, except for one verb and one adjective. Note the strong impact that the two words in the second example have on the quality of the sentence.
Bad: ‘Led the company to become the best footwear supplier in the Middle East’.
Good: ‘Positioned the company as the most profitable footwear supplier in the Middle East’.
As you can see, the second sentence makes a much greater impact, simply by using a better verb and adjective.
Examine your CV or resume and try to find words that can be replaced with hard-hitting verbs and adjectives.
Engineered
Positioned
Executed
Initiated
Pioneered
Spearheaded
Cutting-Edge
Superior
Methodical
Profitable
Enterprising
Instrumental
As soft skills – people skills such as communication and organisation – are more difficult to evaluate, it’s important to back them up with examples in order to ensure that they hold weight.
As mentioned earlier in this guide, the career summary provides a great opportunity to do this. This is because the career summary enables you to provide tangible evidence of times you have utilised your soft skills.
Here is an example of how an operations manager demonstrated her soft skills in her resume:
‘Increased delivery times by 14% by rescheduling staff activities.’
This example achievement draws attention to the operations manager’s organisation skills.
Use your career summary to articulate your own soft skills by providing examples of times you have used them, as demonstrated in the example above.
Operations managers spearhead operational activities within companies. To ensure these operations run efficiently, operations managers must understand the importance of effective leadership and be able to develop cultures in which their colleagues can excel.
Joanne Branker – the National Operations Manager at DavidsTea – gave her opinion on leadership in an interview with Noibu.
She said: ‘Leading with kindness can improve your interactions and create a safer environment. This will also help you create a team atmosphere formulated for growth.’
How to demonstrate leadership skills on operations management CVs or resumes
The most effective way of showing your leaderships skills on your CV or resume is to draw attention to your successes.
As a leader, your ultimate goal is to get results. So show off your successes and achievements in operations management and your leadership qualities will be evident to hiring managers.
Operations managers need to be focused on achieving excellence in regards to customer satisfaction. Whatever area operations managers operate in, they must understand their customers’ requirements and be actively focused on delivering against those requirements.
When writing your CV or resume, show your passion for customer service and customer satisfaction. Providing specific examples of times that you have met customer-related objectives will demonstrate your customer-driven approach to operations.
Communication is perhaps the most important soft skill, not just for operations managers but for those in all professions.
Strong communication enables teams to operate more efficiently and achieve goals. It also plays a key role in developing positive workplace cultures. Without effective communication, teams will struggle to hit targets and productivity levels will slump.
How to show your communication skills on your CV or resume
The best way to demonstrate your communication skills is to highlight your successes that came about as a result of your communication skills.
Here is an example:
‘Introduced weekly meetings with colleagues to confer on strategy, which contributed to decreasing customer waiting times by 4%.’
Modern day operations managers are often required to analyse large sets of data, both qualitative and quantitative, in order to facilitate sound decision-making. This might involve mining customer data or evaluating employee performance data.
As such, operations managers benefit from strong analytical acumen - an ability to get to grips with complex data with ease and generate value-adding solutions.
In order to maintain levels of efficiency and achieve performance goals, operations managers need to be adept at motivating multi-disciplinary workforces. Alongside this, the best operations managers are able to align teams with overall vision and objectives.
As an operations manager, you will have experience leading teams. So think about the times you inspired your colleagues to turn visions into reality. Then write about these accomplishments in your CV or resume.
Now it’s time to add your education and training. Start with your highest form of education or your most relevant qualification. If you’ve obtained any certifications that are relevant to operations management, ensure to include those too.
This section is usually positioned at the end of CVs or resumes because it’s more beneficial to place the focus on your work experience and skills.
However, if you’re a recent graduate or have little to no operations management experience, then it is usually beneficial to include this section before your career summary.
This is an effective approach if you have obtained qualifications that are relevant to operations management, such as a degree in business management.
The final section of your CV or resume will be dedicated to any additional information, such as languages, licences, IT skills and voluntary activities.
When you’ve finished preparing your professional CV, it’s time to iron out any errors. Minor grammatical mistakes or spelling errors can have an extremely negative impact on your CV or resume. Errors indicate poor attention-to-detail and a lack of professionalism.
This is not the first impression you want to make on hiring managers and recruiters.
Don’t put too much faith in spell checkers. While spell checkers identify spelling mistakes, they can’t flag up mistakenly written words.
For example, if you wrongly write ‘ensue’, instead of ‘ensure’, your spell checker won’t identify a mistake.
Operations management CVs and resumes should be two pages long, in most cases.
If you have a lot of experience, you might want to consider extending your CV or resume to three pages, but certainly no more than that. If you don’t have a great deal of experience, a one-page CV or resume may be more fitting.
Use classic fonts that are easy to read, such as Arial, Times New Roman and Calibri. Avoid fancy, over-the-top fonts; these may make your CV or resume appear unprofessional.
Select font sizes between 9.5 and 12. The specific size you select will depend on the font you are using, as some fonts are larger than others. For example, the Arial font can be reduced to as low as 9.5, but the Calibri font should not be reduced below 10.
Our comprehensive guide on CV format, which includes 12 CV samples, goes into much more detail on formatting and preparing your CV.
Hopefully this guide will help you prepare a professional operations management CV or resume that makes a powerful impact on recruiters and hiring managers. To optimise your job search, feel free to use the CV templates provided in this guide.
Alternatively, consider using our Premium CV service to equip yourself with a CV written by an expert.
For more in-depth guidance on CV writing, view our ultimate guide on how to write a CV. Our view our article on CV layouts, which includes 10 great CV layout ideas.
