Graduate CV Examples, Templates & How to Write in 2024
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Your sales assistant CV can be the gateway to a new work environment—one with great pay, benefits, and respectful customers.
In this article, you'll see a sales assistant CV example that’s better than four out of five in the window display. You'll also get a retail assistant CV example you can get inspiration from. Follow the instructions to create a UK-specific sales assistant CV template and use our advice to make sure your dream job chooses you.
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Based on over 6 million CVs created in our builder, we found out that*:
*The data comes from a period of the last 12 months (August 2023-August 2024).
John Elliott
077 2222 2222
john.elliott@lcmail.co.uk
linkedin.com/in/johnelliott
Personal statement
Dedicated and entrepreneurial sales assistant with over 5 years’ experience in retail, including both fashion and consumer electronics. Retained approximately £25,000 of business for Oak & Fire by carefully monitoring and anticipating trends and adjusting inventory flow accordingly. Looking to put proven sales skills and entrepreneurial attitude to good use in helping Weiss & Weiss continue to expand onto the UK market.
Work experience
Retail Sales Assistant
Oak & Fire Menswear, Southam
June 2018—present
Sales Assistant
Alf’s Electrical, Southam
November 2016—May 2018
Education
NVQ 2 in Retail Operations, 2017
Kane Ward College, Southam
A-levels: English, Geography, Mathematics, 2013–2015
Dellaster High School, Southam
8 GCSEs (including Mathematics and English), 2011–2013
Dellaster High School, Southam
Skills
Languages
Awards
Now that you know what a perfect CV looks like, it's time to write your own CV. Here’s a step-by-step guide to making your sales assistant CV at least as impressive:
First impressions last. They’re important, that’s why the personal statement on your sales assistant CV has to make recruiters sit up and take notice from the get go. A good CV personal statement will do three things well:
You’ll be writing a new personal statement (CV summary) for each new job application so it’s a good idea to make the whole process as simple and reproducible as possible. You can generate a new personal statement for a sales assistant CV simply by answering the following questions in a total of 3–4 sentences or about 50–150 words:
Your whole application, including your sales assistant personal statement, is likely to be processed by an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) before a human being even lays eyes on its contents. There are some things you can do to grease the ATS wheels on a sales assistant CV:
Your sales assistant personal statement clearly comes first in your CV, but it’s best to write it last (it's basically a CV summary). If nothing else, you’ll find writing achievements a lot easier after you’ve prepared your job description. So leave it in the back of your mind for now and come back to it later, if not at the very end.
Dedicated and entrepreneurial sales assistant with over 5 years’ experience in retail, including both fashion and consumer electronics. Retained approximately £25,000 of business for Oak & Fire by carefully monitoring and anticipating trends and adjusting inventory flow accordingly. Looking to put proven sales skills and entrepreneurial attitude to good use in helping Weiss & Weiss continue to expand onto the UK market.
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.
It’s hard to describe all the subtle things that go into making a good sales assistant. There are a lot of people skills involved that are difficult to pin down, just for a start. So rather than even trying to describe these things on a sales assistant CV or a retail assistant CV, show them in action. Use your sales assistant job description to do this.
First, though, you need to decide on a CV format. The chronological CV format is easily the best option for a sales assistant CV, although you may want to look at other options if you’re changing careers, transitioning from military service or have long gaps in your employment.
Order your sales assistant CV job descriptions from most recent to least recent. This is what hiring managers expect to see and what ATSs can parse most readily. Use the following sales assistant CV template to create a subheading for each job description:
[Job Title]
[Company Name, Location]
[Dates of Employment]
Now fill each job description with up to six bullet points. Do not put your sales assistant duties or responsibilities into these bullet points. Instead, fill them with your achievements. Put simply, an achievement is the description of an action you took and the benefits your employer got from that action.
Start each achievement with a strong verb, like ‘negotiated’, ‘led’ or ‘expanded’ be sure to put numbers to the benefits you brought to your employer. Quantify everything you can, but focus on these benefits first and foremost. Use accomplishment statements to help structure your achievements.
If you’re writing a sales assistant CV with no experience, you can focus on any internships, placement work, and volunteer work you’ve done and put this section after your education section. If you have zero experience at all, then a student CV might be a more effective approach for you to take to get the ball rolling.
Retail Sales Assistant
Oak & Fire Menswear, Southam
June 2018—present
Sales Assistant
Alf’s Electrical, Southam
November 2016—May 2018
There are many ways to become a sales assistant and academic qualifications aren’t always required (beyond the usual GCSEs in English and Maths). Still, you need a clear education section in your sales assistant CV no matter what road you’re on. Work from most recent to least and don’t mention grades.
If you have a university degree or an NVQ level 3 and some work experience under your belt, then you can leave your high-school education off the list entirely. Use the following sales assistant CV template for both university degrees and other tertiary qualifications when writing a school leaver CV:
[Degree Type] [Degree Name](Degree Class), [Years Attended]
[Institution Name], [Institution Location]
If you’re still studying (and writing your first CV), then include an expected graduation date. If you don’t have a university degree, then use the following templates to detail your high school education:
A-levels: [Subject Name 1], [Subject Name 2], [Subject Name 3]
[School Name], [School Location], [Years Attended]
[n] GCSEs (including Mathematics and English)
[School Name], [School Location], [Years Attended]
where n is the number of GCSEs you completed.
You may want to add bullet points to this section to highlight your achievements or areas of excellence while studying if you don’t have much experience. Otherwise, keep it short and sweet and just stick to what’s listed above.
NVQ 2 in Retail Operations, 2017
Kane Ward College, Southam
A-levels: English, Geography, Mathematics, 2013–2015
Dellaster High School, Southam
8 GCSEs (including Mathematics and English), 2011–2013
Dellaster High School, Southam
This probably won’t be the only sales assistant CV you send out this week or maybe even today. That’s just the nature of job hunting. Your sales assistant skills on a CV have to be written to match the employer’s requirements as they appear in the job advert every time.
But if you invest a little time in building up a master list of sales assistant CV skills now, this section becomes a matter of copying and pasting different skills into future CVs. To make a master list, simply open a new document and start listing as many of your sales assistant skills as you can (hard, soft and IT skills).
Now go back and add a sentence to each skill that describes how you’ve demonstrated that skill at work. Be as specific and concrete as you can. Quantify what you can but it’s fine if you can’t put numbers to any of your sales assistant skills. If you can’t add a sentence like this onto a skill, then remove it from your list.
Now that you have your personalised sales assistant skills master list, go back to the job advert and see what skills they mention there. Copy 5–10 skills from your master list that at least cover what the advert is asking for. Finally, play around with keywords to mirror those used in the advert.
Let's say that you and your competition all have two years experience in retail and a high-school education on a sales assistant CV. According to your job descriptions and education sections, you’re the same. But what if you speak three languages and volunteer in a charity shop on weekends? Add extra sections to your CV to fill in the grid.
You can add sections that list any additional certificates, achievements, awards, even hobbies to enhance your retail assistant CV. Not many people do this and that’s exactly why it can make such a huge difference. Just keep it professional and 100% relevant to the job at hand and you can hardly go wrong.
Definitely include any foreign languages you speak. This is still a relatively rare trait in the UK and can really set your sales assistant/retail assistant CV apart.
Languages
Awards
As a sales assistant, you know that there are things that just go together. Handing over purchased goods with a receipt, for example. It’s one and the other, not one or the other. It’s the same with job applications. A job application is made up of two parts: a CV and a cover letter.
So don’t leave your sales assistant CV to go it alone—be sure to write a crisp, new sales assistant cover letter to complete every application. A good sales assistant cover letter will follow the standard UK business letter format and include:
Where the main body paragraphs are made up of:
How long can a cover letter be? Aim for around 250–400 words in total, about half an A4 page to a single A4 page.
Include a cover letter unless it’s been made clear to you that one’s not required. Writing an effective cover letter can be a little daunting at first, but you might be surprised at how painless it can be. Even a simple cover letter can make all the difference.
There’s window-dressing and then there’s making sure the aisles aren’t cluttered with disused pallets and boxes. Poor attention to detail reflects badly on a sales assistant and can make your sales assistant CV just difficult enough to read that it gets rejected before it has a chance to dazzle with its brilliance.
Basic CV formatting rules to keep in mind:
Get someone to read over your sales assistant CV and cover letter. They’ll find mistakes you overlooked, that’s just how it works. It’s why writers have editors and editors have proofreaders. Use any built-in spellcheckers, apps or web apps that can help you get your spelling and grammar perfect.
It’s been a week or two and you haven’t heard back? Follow up with a quick email or phone call. This will send all the right messages and you might even get an update on how your application’s going.
You don’t have to be a CV writing expert. In the LiveCareer CV builder you’ll find ready-made content for every industry and position, which you can then add with a single click.
I hope this article has been useful to you. Please let us know in the comments below if you’d like me to elaborate on anything I’ve touched upon here. You can also leave any questions, feedback or experiences you’d like to share down below
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.
About the author
Since 2013, the LiveCareer UK team has shared the best advice to help you advance your career. Experts from our UK editorial team have written more than one hundred guides on how to write the perfect CV or cover letter.
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