Bank Teller CV Example

A bank teller CV that's well-written, engaging and showcases the most relevant skills and experience gives you the best chance of progressing to the next stage of the recruitment process. Let’s break down the core components of a CV and examine how to build them effectively.

Main bank teller CV sections

Your bank teller CV writing strategy may vary significantly according to numerous factors, such as your previous experience, your seniority and the requirements in the job description.

However, regardless of your years of experience, a bank teller CV needs to connect the dots of your career into a cohesive story. In the following sections, we’ll dive into the specific chapters of your CV step-by-step, showing you how to refine everything from your initial introduction to your long-term achievements.

CV Header

Start your bank teller CV with a professional-looking header that includes all the relevant contact information. This usually includes your name, your email address, your phone number and your location, but not your full address. If you have a LinkedIn profile, consider adding a URL to this in your header, to help the reader easily find more information on your career and credentials.

When you're applying for jobs in the UK, it's generally not advisable to include a photo or more personal details than are strictly necessary, such as your age, gender, ethnicity or nationality. Including these can jeopardise the recruitment process by introducing bias, and can fall foul of the Equality Act 2010.

CV Objective

Under your header, write a brief CV summary or CV objective, outlining a few of your key skills, qualities and achievements. This short paragraph can help employers to quickly assess your suitability for the role, setting the tone for your bank teller CV. While the CV summary focuses on your key skills and achievements, a CV objective highlights your career ambitions, making it more suitable for junior candidates.

In your summary or objective, write two or three sentences introducing your key skills, unique qualities and career achievements, making sure they match the key requirements listed in the job description.

A good CV summary will highlight one or two key skills that match those listed in the job description, and show how you've put them to good use in your career to date. You'll want to set yourself apart from other candidates by focusing on unique qualities or particular areas of strength that have shaped your career to date. Find an example below of a positive bank teller CV summary, characterised by evidence to support your claims and well-structured, easy-to-read sentences.

Above is an example of CV summary that doesn't follow best practice, with some subtle shortcomings and failings. For a summary to make less of an impact, it might include generic or vague information, lack evidence of your impact, or fail to highlight specific personal qualities that make you stand out from other candidates. It may also lack tailoring to the job description or include long, poorly structured sentences.

Work Experience

Work experience is usually the most important section of any CV. Employers will be looking for evidence of how you've developed relevant skills in your career to date, and how you've used them to positive effect in previous roles. Always tailor this section of your CV, focusing on keywords and phrases that match the job description, so employers can assess how you might put the same skills and qualities to good use in the future.

List only relevant previous jobs, and add your job title, the name of the employer, its location and your dates of employment. Under this, write several bullet points showing employers how your skills and key qualities contributed to positive outcomes.

Standing out with your CV work experience section means using action verbs and measurable outcomes to show the impact you made. You'll want to outline a progression in your skills development, and list evidence of the value you added. Take a look at an example of a strong bank teller CV work experience section below.

Above you'll find a less effective example of a bank teller CV work experience section. A less-engaging work experience section might include irrelevant roles or jobs from a long time ago, and generic information that fails to address the requirements of the job description. It could also lack evidence to support the claims made in the bullet points.

Skills

A CV's skills section is the place to show the reader, in an easily accessible format, that you have the necessary skills for the job. Read the job description to understand the most essential skills, and create a list of both hard and soft skills, ensuring you include some of your strongest, most unique characteristics and qualities to set you apart from the competition. For a bank teller CV, you'll want to focus on the most relevant skills for the role that match your skill set, including attention to detail and foreign currency exchange, to catch the reader's attention and show you're qualified for the bank teller position.

Hard Skills

Hard skills and technical skills are the specialist skills required for completing the everyday duties of the role, such as the use of certain software or equipment, or specialist industry knowledge. You can develop these skills through study, training, on-the-job or through completing industry certifications. For bank teller positions, hard skills that match your abilities, such as cheque processing expertise, and foreign currency exchange tend to be valued by recruiters and hiring managers. Firstly, check the job description, then add four or five key hard skills in your CV that help the employer to decide if you're a good fit for the role.

You'll want to include a list of hard skills that closely matches the skills listed as 'essential' or 'desirable' in the job description, while also reflecting your own strongest technical skills.

The following section highlights skills that are commonly listed under hard skills in a bank teller CV:

Soft Skills

Soft skills are distinct from hard skills and tend to reflect your inherent personal qualities and strengths. These are often more transferable to different roles, and help the reader understand your working style, and your likely fit to the team and the organisational culture. Owing to the rapidly evolving nature of the work landscape, soft skills are growing in importance for a number of roles and industry sectors where technology is replacing hard skills. Additionally, soft skills are particularly valuable for junior and entry-level candidates, who might not have much work experience but have the right building blocks for a successful career.

Adopt the same approach as you did with your hard skills list, reviewing the job description to understand the requirements, before assessing which soft skills you can provide evidence for throughout your bank teller CV. Draft a list of up to five key soft and transferable skills, combining the most essential skills from the job description with your strongest personal qualities.

Here are typical soft skills candidates include in a bank teller CV.

Education

Your education section should showcase your most recent and highest qualifications, paying particular attention to anything that's specifically required for the role.

Your career as a bank teller typically won't require a specific degree or degree-level equivalent qualification. However, you should still include your highest certifications, training and formal qualifications in your CV's education section, even if not specified in the job description. These might include Diploma in Banking Operations, or any other relevant training that demonstrates your skills in foreign currency exchange or MS office proficiency.

When creating your education section, think about which qualifications are most relevant to the role, and list them in reverse-chronological order, starting with the most recent and working back from there. For each entry, include the name and level of the degree or certification, the institution, its location and your graduation date or dates of study. To emphasise your qualifications and achievements, you might wish to include one or two bullet points, which highlight things like specialist areas of study, projects, dissertations or society memberships.

Specialist licences or certifications can also be a valuable addition to your CV's education section. If these are essential for the job and are referenced in the job description, it's a good idea to include them here rather than further down your CV. Include any expiration or renewal dates for certifications, if applicable.

Certifications and Licences

Depending on the role and your qualifications, it might be necessary to include a certifications section. It can be a valuable way of differentiating yourself from other candidates and showing employers your dedication, motivation and commitment to professional development. In addition, the certifications section can be a valuable addition to your bank teller CV if you're applying for a role that cites certain certifications or licences as a necessity in the job description. These might include roles where the use of specialist software or equipment forms part of your everyday duties.

Here is a list of some key certifications and licences that can be particularly useful for bank teller applications:

Language Skills

Including a section on language skills can be beneficial, if you speak at least one language to a reasonable level of competency, in addition to your mother tongue. This is true even if language skills aren't a requirement for the role, as foreign language abilities often correlate to other valuable soft skills. In the languages section, list the languages you speak to at least a reasonable level, with an indicator of your competency level.

The methods for indicating your foreign language skills on your CV include assigning a basic descriptive word, such as:

• English: Fluent
• Spanish: Intermediate

You could otherwise use an internationally recognised language standard, such as the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR). This assigns your language skills a standardised level of competence, as follows:

• A1: Beginner
• A2: Elementary
• B1: Intermediate
• B2: Upper intermediate
• C1: Advanced
• C2: Proficiency

Optional Sections

In addition to the core sections of your CV, optional sections can be a useful way of proving you've got the necessary bank teller skills. Consider optional sections for your CV if you're looking for ways to show you're right for the job, beyond your work experience. Optional sections are particularly valuable if you haven't had the chance to build up relevant work experience, for example, if you're applying for entry-level roles or you're changing careers to a new industry or role.

You can find more detailed advice on tailoring your CV in our career resources, where we cover proven ways to highlight your skills effectively.

Hobbies and Interests

Hobbies and interests are a legitimate way to showcase your skills, if you have any hobbies relevant to the role. In addition, this section is the ideal way to show aspects of your personality that might not otherwise shine through in your CV, helping to offer a point of difference compared to other candidates. However, only mention hobbies and interests that are relevant to the role, and that help you prove skills that you haven't been able to show in your work experience or other CV sections.

Volunteer Roles

Another way of showing employers your skills and experience is through volunteer roles. If you're struggling to show you have the necessary credentials through your work experience, volunteering can provide valuable examples of how you've put your skills into action. Approach your volunteering section in much the same way as your work experience section.

For each entry, include a job title or description of your role, the organisation, its location and the dates you volunteered. Adding bullet points can also help you to show how you developed relevant skills, and used them to good effect.

References

In the UK, it's not normal for references to be requested as part of a CV, or at the early stages of an application. However, it's worth checking the job advert and being ready to supply them if necessary. If needed, include two or three references, adding their name, job title, organisation and contact details.

Always be sure to approach your referees and ask permission before including them in your CV. Alternatively, you may wish to simply indicate that you can provide references if and when necessary, with a line such as, 'references are available upon request'.

Most effective action verbs for a bank teller CV

Starting each of your work experience bullet points with strong action verbs is a great way to showcase your key skills and qualities, and demonstrate the impact they've had in your career to date. Start each bullet point with a verb linked to the skills required in the job description, to add focus to your work experience section and make it easy for the reader to identify your strengths. Remember, it's essential to evidence any action verbs you add to your work experience. This will help show your achievements and the impact you made in previous roles. Use past tense for action verbs that describe previous roles, and present tense for your current position.

Bank teller CV example

Now we've shown you everything that needs to go into your bank teller CV, we can take a look at how it comes together in its final form in the following example:

To get an idea of how your completed, one-page CV will look once its been fully designed, see our selection of CV examples.

How to optimise your CV for ATS screening

Employers and recruiters now routinely use applicant tracking systems (ATS) to ease the burden of the selection process. One of the key functions of these systems is CV screening, which reviews CVs and ranks them based on their likely fit for the role. By taking on this task, the systems can save hiring managers the time and effort of reviewing every CV in detail. With vacancies regularly receiving hundreds of applications, this can increase the efficiency of the recruitment process.

The increasing usage of ATS apps by recruiters and employers means it's critical to adapt and prepare your applications to successfully navigate this stage of the selection process. Following the tips below will give you everything you need for an ATS-compatible CV:

• Include keywords and phrases that match the job description, making it easy for ATS apps to identify a strong fit for the role.
• Use clear headings that reflect standard CV conventions, such as 'work experience', 'education' and 'skills'.
• Choose a standard CV layout, avoiding special design elements such as text boxes, columns or unlabelled graphics that can confound ATS scanning apps.
• Select a font that increases the readability of your CV, such as popular serif and sans serif fonts, between the sizes of 10 and 12 for main text and 14 and 16 for headings.
• Use bullet points rather than writing long, full sentences, as this will make your CV easier to scan and parse, and help your keywords and phrases to stand out.

You might feel there are a lot of steps to creating an ATS-compatible bank teller CV, but with just a few small changes, you can ensure your CV passes this stage. Use one of our ATS-compatible CV templates, which are designed by experts to give you the best chances of success.

Key takeaways for a successful bank teller CV

For the best chance of impressing employers, always tailor your CV for every application and include keywords and phrases that reflect the job description. Pick a CV format that matches your experience level, and focus on showing the reader how you've developed relevant skills and put them to good use to add value for previous employers.

Finally, building your CV using Jobseeker's HR-approved CV templates can help to catch the eye of recruiters and hiring managers, making your application stand out and giving you the best chance of gaining your dream job.

Sources:

1. JobHelp (UK Department for Work & Pensions campaign), No work experience? Focus on what you do have
2. Jobseeker, HR Statistics