Five pro tips for making an impressive retail resume

Considering the expertise that is required to work in the retail industry, it is important to make your resume impressive. Possessing a gamut of skills is futile if you are not able to reflect it in your resume. 

As the retail industry attracts a huge number of candidates, it is important to make your resume stand out. 

Here is how you can create an impressive retail resume: 

Stellar professional experience

While you are writing your resume, you need to think along the lines of your most essential contributions and accomplishments during your professional journey. As recruiters are most likely to pay attention to your achievements, do not go into detail when explaining your responsibilities.

Here is how you can create a stellar experience section: 

●     Create action-oriented points by beginning points with power verbs. Further, the STAR format (situation-task-action-result) comes in handy when you need to showcase your contributions efficiently. 

●     Include a one-liner description of all the organisations/stores you worked at, and mention the location as well. 

●     Highlight essential words and phrases, and create buckets for three to four relevant points. For example, Merchandising & Client Relationship, etc. 

 Importance of keywords and why you should include them

Your resume defines your suitability towards the job you are applying for. It should be embedded with keywords that are in-line with the job requirements. For example: 

●     Job description: Read the job description and research on the job profile the company is hiring for. Sprinkle these fetched keywords throughout the resume. For example, if you are applying for the position of retail store manager. Then read the job description carefully and search the internet to filter keywords that are relevant to the profile, and include them accordingly. Further, you need to make sure that you are validating this information. 

●     Applicant tracking system: It is a software application that shortlists resumes with respect to the job specific keywords. Hence, keywords are of the utmost importance when it comes to passing this test. So, ideally, your resume should have keywords that are relevant to your target profile. 

 Highlight your skills

Your core competencies should be systematically highlighted in a resume. To do that, you need to create a skills section that lists all your expertise. A better way to write this section is after completing the professional experience section so that you have a certain set of core competencies to include. 

Here are a few skills that you should include in a retail resume: 

●     Merchandising

●     Inventory management

●     Sales and marketing

●     System Implementation 

●     Warehousing 

●     Team management

●     Product management 

●     Customer service

 Career summary

Avoid jotting down cliched statements in this section. A career/professional summary should be composed of your significant attributes that gain the recruiter’s attention.

You should write your summary in paragraph form and begin sentences with “adept at”, etc. And do not write it from a third person perspective. It is your resume and you are writing it. 

An example of a good summary: 

Four plus years experienced Retail Manager adept at effectively managing a store with 15+ employees. Proficient in attending to customers and resolving queries involving apparel and staff behaviour. Skilled at exhaustively implementing trends to improve customer retention and increase sales. 

Profile title and resume format

The retail industry is not immune to the economic recession. This has led thousands of employees to lose their jobs. Under such circumstances, it is important to modify your resume as per the industry you are targeting.

Let’s say you worked in a clothing store and were laid off. Now, you are planning to move to a different sector in the retail industry. In such a case, it would be ideal to use a functional resume format. 

This format majorly showcases the skills that are relevant to the job profile. In the professional experience section, you merely list work profiles and create a separate section in your resume that is composed of points that are in-line with the job profile. 

In addition to that, modify the profile title as well. It should showcase your functional industry. However, if you are applying for a job within your domain then just include your current/previous job title. 

Conclusion

Try to personalise your application by attaching a cover letter. List your work profiles in reverse chronological order and keep your resume restricted to two pages. Further, include links to LinkedIn, etc. in your resume, and avoid filling your resume with irrelevant personal information.