Retail Manager CV Example & Complete Writing Guide

Retail has traditionally been a dominant industry when it comes to labour-market share. It’s not surprising, then, that the best posts are so heavily coveted. There’s the constant flow of managers looking for their next challenge and another rung on the corporate ladder.

Don’t despair, though: with our advice, you'll write a retail manager CV that highlights your key achievements in retail industry and gets you more interviews than ever. 

In this guide, you'll learn how to write a strategic retail manager CV based on an expert retail job CV example that reads well. Plus, you'll get plenty of tips to prepare a competitive CV for a retail manager.

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Looking for a different CV example? See: 

• Account Manager CV
• Customer Service CV
• Manager CV
• Marketing CV
• Pharmacist CV
• Retail CV
• Sales CV
• Shop Assistant CV
• Sales Assistant CV
• Team Leader CV

Haven't found what you're looking for? Check all our CV examples.

Retail manager CV template

Here’s how to write a CV for retail managers:

1. Open your retail manager CV with a strong personal statement

It’s cliché to say that first impressions are important. It’s also true, and that’s as clear in the retail industry as it is anywhere else. The stakes are high in your retail manager CV. Your personal statement will either make recruiters keep reading or scroll absent-mindedly for a few seconds before clicking close.

A good personal statement has to be short—only 3–4 sentences and 50–150 words—and it has do a lot quickly. It should introduce you as a retail manager, give some indication of what it is that you have to offer the company, and describe how it is that your goals line up with the company’s stated goals.

So begin your CV with showing what kind of retail manager you are, how many years’ experience you have, and where you got that experience (in which branches or niches of the retail industry). Then, describe what benefits you brought to a past employer in order to show what you bring to the table in your application.

You can do this best by including an achievement from your current or previous job. An achievement, in this context, is the description of an action you took (often in response to a problem or challenge) and the benefits that your employer got as a result of that action. Be as specific as you can.

Not only specific, but concrete—quantify the benefits you brought to your employer. So ‘increasing sales’ becomes ‘increasing sales by 14%’. Quantify other elements of your achievement too, but go for the benefit first and foremost. Use something like the PAR (Problem Action Result) method.

To describe how your goals line up with the company’s stated goals (check its website) or actual goals (higher profits), simply state what it is that you hope to be able to achieve for the company and how.

Your CV is likely to be processed by an ATS (Applicant Tracking System) before a real recruiter even lays their eyes on it. Increase your chances of getting past this obstacle by mentioning the name of the company to which you’re applying and referring to the position by name exactly how it’s written in the job advert.

The personal statement clearly comes first in your retail manager CV, but it’s actually better to write it last (and that’s why it’s also called a CV summary). You’ll be better equipped to do a good job once you’ve prepared your work history and skills sections. So keep it in the back of your mind for now and come back to it later.

Retail manager CV personal statement

A strong CV summary will convince the recruiter you’re the perfect candidate. Save time and choose a ready-made personal statement written by career experts and adjust it to your needs in the LiveCareer CV builder.

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2. Stock your retail manager CV with the right job descriptions

There are some aspects of becoming a retail manager that you can only learn by working in retail. It’s little wonder, then, that employers put such stock in experience. Make sure yours shines through by getting the overall format right and then stacking each description with achievements rather than duties.

Go with a chronological CV format, it’s what retail employers are most used to seeing and what ATSs can process most easily. This means that your CV job descriptions will be listed in reverse-chronological order. Use the following retail manager CV template to generate a heading for each prior job:

[Job Title]

[Company Name, Location]

[Dates of Employment]

Add up to six bullet points under each heading. Each bullet point should be an achievement, just like the one you wrote for your personal statement. Remember to quantify everything you can. It’s totally fine to estimate things like the benefits you brought your employer, but keep it realistic and justifiable.

If you don’t have any paid work experience, then you can put placement work on your CV. Any internships or volunteer work you’ve done count too. It you have no experience at all, then consider writing a student CV instead, it’ll be better suited to your circumstances and boost your chances of success.

Retail manager job description

3. Keep your retail manager CV education section neat and tidy

There are many paths to becoming a retail manager and there’s no one academic qualification that’s needed in all of them, although GCSEs in Maths and English are usually a given. Make sure your education section does its job with an absolute minimum of fuss by sticking to the following guidelines.

List your academic qualifications in reverse-chronological order. There’s no need to mention your high-school education if you have a tertiary qualification (university degree, NVQ or similar) and more than a couple of years of experience under your belt. Use the following template for all post-secondary qualifications:

[Degree Type] [Degree Name](Degree Class), [Years Attended]

[Institution Name], [Institution Location]

Include an expected graduation date if you haven’t graduated / completed your studies yet. Use the following templates to detail your high school education if you don’t have a university degree or other tertiary qualification:

A-levels: [Subject Name 1], [Subject Name 2], [Subject Name 3]

[School Name], [School Location], [Years Attended]

[number of GCSEs completed] GCSEs (including Mathematics and English)

[School Name], [School Location], [Years Attended]

Don’t mention grades and don’t list subjects other than A-levels (if you’re including your high-school education). You may want to add bullet points here to highlight your achievements or areas of excellence if you lack work experience (for example extracurricular activities).

Sample retail assistant manager CV education section

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4. Showcase your skills in your CV for retail manager

There are many skills that go into being a good retail manager, some of them are developed over years of hard work. The problem is that it’s not difficult to just make a list of impressive skills, whether you have them or not. This means that it’s doubly difficult to jump out at recruiters who’ve seen it all.

There’s a better way. You can wow recruiters with skills pre-packaged with proof of their authenticity. You’ll need a new skills section for each and every job application so let’s make the process of coming up with these skills as easy as copying and pasting from a master file. It’ll take two minutes once set up.

Open a new document and list as many retail management skills as you can think of (communication skills, leadership skills, IT skills). Then go back and add a sentence to each skill in which you describe how you’ve demonstrated that skill at work. If you can’t come up with a sentence like this for a given skill, then it gets deleted from your list.

Save this file as your retail manager skills master list. Go back to the job advert or notice to which you’re responding. Copy 5–10 skills from your master list into your retail manager CV. Ensure that you at least cover what the advert requires in terms of skills and aim for a mix of hard and soft skills.

Retail manager CV skills

5. Use additional sections in your retail manager CV to your advantage

There’s a lot of what makes you an effective retail manager that doesn’t fall under the headings of work history, education or skills. Don’t just let these things just fall by the wayside in your CV. Add extra sections to really fill out the portrait of you as a retail worker that your retail manager CV paints.

You can add CV sections that detail any extra certifications you have or that list awards you’ve won, accolades you’ve received, even your personal interests and hobbies. There’s just one golden rule to keep in mind here: anything and everything you add has to be directly relevant to the job.

One thing that’s always relevant, even if not always obviously so, is the ability to speak a language other than English. This is a quality that employers very much value and it’s something you should always mention, even if you don’t anticipate using your language skills on the job.

When it comes to adding references on a CV, save space for something else–it’s an outdated practise. 

Retail store manager CV example extra sections

6. Include a cover letter with your CV for a retail manager

Your retail manager job application is a single thing that’s made up of two key documents: your retail manager CV and a cover letter. Sending one without the other is leaving the job half-done, and there’s no such thing as half-applying for a job. Always include a cover letter unless explicitly asked not to. To nail it, follow these tips:

The overall structure of your cover letter will be determined by the standard UK business letter format. It’ll dictate what your header looks like and how you sign off. The main body paragraphs are where the craft and the art of writing a cover letter meet. Open strong with an attention-grabbing introduction.

Show what it is that you have to offer the company right from the outset. Showcase your previous achievements in rapid-fire succession. Wow recruiters not with fluff but hard facts and figures. Wrap up your cover letter by tying up any loose ends and dropping a bold call to action, suggesting the next step.

How long should your cover letter be? Hiring managers prefer short cover letters so aim at 200-350 words.

What else to remember about when writing a retail manager CV

A lot of what you do, whether on the sales floor or in the office, boils down to improving customer experience and that, in turn, can be made or broken by the little things. Show your understanding of this fact by letting your attention to detail shine through in your retail manager CV. Here’s what to remember about when formatting your CV.

Nothing says ‘careless’ and ‘lazy’ like spelling and grammatical mistakes throughout a CV. Proofread yours over and again and run it through whatever software you trust to catch the most mistakes. Get someone to read over your work—they’ll catch things you missed, it’s why proofreaders exist.

Leave your contact details near the top of your CV. Use a professional, understated CV font, like Noto, Garamond, Liberation or even Calibri. For a neat CV layout, lock the font size in at 11–12 points. Make good use of subheadings and as much white space as possible to clearly break your CV structure down into subsections.

Keep the length of your CV down to a single page unless you have more than 20 years of experience, in which case don’t go over two pages. Always save or export your CV and cover letter as PDF documents. Go with a less stable file format only if you’ve been explicitly asked to do so.

If you’re using a free CV template, see to it that it is suitable for the British market—most CV designs you can find online have a place to add a picture and your CV shouldn’t contain any personal information that others can judge you on—the way you look, your date of birth and your marital status.

One last CV tip: if it’s been a week since you submitted your application, follow up with a quick phone call or email. It literally can’t hurt and could make all the difference.

A cover letter alone simply won’t be enough—you need an impactful CV, too. Create your CV in minutes. Just follow our wizard and fill in every CV section with ready-made content. Get started by choosing a professional CV template.

The LiveCareer online CV maker lets you build a professional CV fast and download it as a PDF or DOC.

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I hope this article helps you maintain your momentum on your retail manager career path. Is there anything I’ve covered here that you’d like more information on? Leave any questions, comments, feedback, and experiences you’d like to share in the comments section below.

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Our editorial team has reviewed this article for compliance with Livecareer’s editorial guidelines. It’s to ensure that our expert advice and recommendations are consistent across all our career guides and align with current CV and cover letter writing standards and trends. We’re trusted by over 10 million job seekers, supporting them on their way to finding their dream job. Each article is preceded by research and scrutiny to ensure our content responds to current market trends and demand.