Barber CV Example

A meticulously crafted, tailored barber CV gives your application the best chance of passing the ATS screening stage, impressing the hiring manager and progressing to the interview stage. We’ll now review the essential sections of a CV and outline how to write each for the strongest results.

Key sections of a barber CV

Your approach to creating your winning barber CV will differ depending on your experience, your seniority and the details listed in the job description.

However, no matter where you are in your career, a barber CV must present a clear, compelling narrative of your professional journey. To help you build that story, we’ll now break down the document piece-by-piece—from the initial contact header to your most significant career milestones.

CV Header

Start your barber CV with a header that features subtle, professional design elements and sets the tone for the document. Add your name, email address, phone number and location (your full address isn't normally needed). Additionally, listing your LinkedIn profile in your CV header can be valuable. It serves to provide more detailed information about your career journey, your qualifications and your industry standing, in an easily accessible way.

For jobs in the UK, a personal photo is usually not required on your CV. That, along with any other personal details such as age, gender, ethnicity and nationality, are generally discouraged under the terms of the Equality Act 2010, which aims to reduce and eliminate discriminatory practices, such as recruitment bias.

CV Summary

Below your contact information, a short, concise CV summary or CV objective can set the tone for your application and provide brief, basic information on your key skills and qualities that gives a strong indication to the reader about your suitability for the barber role. As an alternative to the CV summary, you might wish to write a CV objective. This serves a similar purpose, but instead of focusing on your experience, it highlights you career ambitions and objectives.

Both a CV summary and objective should be concise, with an ideal length of two or three sentences. List your key skills, personal strengths and career achievements or ambitions, taking care to ensure the content reflects the requirements listed in the job description.

A good CV summary would typically focus on a couple of key skills that match the job description, demonstrating how you've used them to good effect in previous roles. It's important to focus on your unique qualities and provide a preview of how they've made an impact in your career to date, which you'll unpack later in the document. See below for an example of a strong barber CV summary, featuring quantifiable evidence of your impact and concise, easy-to-read sentences.

See above for an example of an ineffective summary, with subtle differences leading to a reduction of impact. 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

A CV's work experience section is usually its most important element. Employers will want to see how you've developed relevant skills in previous roles, and how you've put them to good use in successful projects and career achievements. Remember, it's essential to tailor this section to match the job description, including keywords and phrases to help employers see how you'll fit the role, and how you might put the required skills to good use in the future.

List only your most relevant jobs, and go back up to 10 or 15 years, depending on your experience levels. List your job title, the name of the employer, its location and the dates you worked there. Also include bullet points for each entry, highlighting how you used your skills to add value for the employer.

What differentiates an excellent work experience section from an average one is the use of action verbs and quantifiable evidence, showing how your actions led directly to positive results in previous roles. You'll also want to show how you've added relevant skills and increased your impact throughout your career progression. See below for an example of a strong work experience section for a barber CV.

Above you'll find a less effective example of a barber CV work experience section. An unengaging work experience section could be too generic, focusing too much on day-to-day duties rather than skills and achievements. It could also fail to address the job description or lack evidence to show the impact you've made in your career to date.

Skills

In your CV's skills section, you'll want to draw attention to some of your strongest skills that make you suitable for the role. Review the job description to get an idea of the most essential skills, and create a list of hard and soft skills, including some of your strongest, most unique qualities that set you apart from other candidates. For a barber CV, it's essential to include relevant skills for the role that match your skill set, such as time management and expert clipper handling technique, to impress the reader and show you're qualified for the barber position.

Hard Skills

Hard and technical skills are the essential skills required for carrying out the everyday duties of the role. They might include specialist operation of certain software or equipment, or knowledge of certain industry standards and regulations. You could gain these skills via training, certifications or industry experience. For barber positions, hard skills that match your abilities, such as expert clipper handling technique, and specialised beard trimming technique tend to be valued by recruiters and hiring managers. Review the job description, and include four or five key hard skills in your CV that show employers you're capable of completing the key duties of the role.

The best hard skills section will contain a mix of your strongest technical skills and those listed in the job description as 'essential' or 'desirable'. The closer your skills list is to matching the essential job description skills, the better your chances of success.

Take a look below to see the type of skills that are commonly listed in a barber CV hard skills section:

Soft Skills

In your soft skills list, add any personal qualities and transferable skills that show you'll be a good fit for the role, you'll settle in well with the organisation and you'll complement other team members. Soft skills are typically more transferable and applicable to different roles than hard and technical skills. 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.

As with your barber CV hard skills list, review the job description to learn the key soft skills for the role. Include the best soft skills that you can provide evidence for throughout your CV. Create a list of four or five transferable skills, combining the most essential skills from the job description with the skills that help you to stand out as a unique and compelling candidate for the position.

Below is a selection of soft skills regularly featured in a barber CV.

Education

With your education section, you'll draw attention to your most recent and highest qualifications, particularly emphasising any qualifications listed as a requirement in the job description.

Working as a barber doesn't tend to require a specific degree. However, while employers may not request a degree in the job description, it can be useful to include other relevant qualifications, certifications or training in your CV's education section. These might include VTCT Level 2 Barbering Certificate, or courses that show your skills, such as specialised beard trimming technique or advanced razor shaving technique.

Creating the education section of your CV means selecting the most relevant and highest qualifications, and listing them in reverse-chronological order, starting with your most recent achievements and working back from there. For each qualification, add its name and level, the awarding body or institution, its location (if necessary) and your dates of attendance or graduation. If you want to emphasise your education in your CV, include bullet points showing specialist areas of study, projects, awards, society memberships or anything else that helps show you've got the necessary skills for the job.

If you have any specialist certifications or licences that are necessary for the role, or help you stand out above other candidates, you may wish to mention them here. When adding any special licences, it's a good idea to also reference their expiry or renewal dates, if applicable.

Certifications, Training and Licences

Depending on the role you're applying for, and the type of qualifications you have, you might want to include a separate section for certifications, in addition to the education section. It can enhance your chances of success to show specific training and certifications. Not only do these prove you're qualified for the role, but they also indicate proactivity and a dedication to professional development. Furthermore, the CV certifications and training section is a great showcase for official licences and certifications when applying for roles where these are a key requirement listed in the job description. These could include positions where the use of specialist software and equipment is a routine part of your everyday responsibilities.

Take a look at this list of example certifications and licences for barber candidates:

Languages

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. Within this section, list the foreign languages you speak to a reasonable degree of competence, together with an indicator of your skill levels.

The ways to indicate your foreign language skills depend on the level of detail you want to provide. They include assigning a basic descriptive word, such as:

• English: Fluent
• Spanish: Intermediate

You might wish to use an internationally recognised standard for your language skills, such as the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR). This divides your language skills into the following categories:

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

Additional Information

In addition to the core sections of your CV, optional sections can be a useful way of proving you've got the necessary barber skills. Consider including a few optional sections to your CV if you think you need to provide extra information to prove your credentials. These sections can be particularly valuable if you lack relevant work experience, such as for entry-level roles, or if you're changing careers to a completely new field or specialism.

And if you'd like more tips on making your CV stand out, explore our career resources. They’re designed to help you showcase your strengths and boost your chances of landing the job.

Hobbies and Interests

Your hobbies and interests can be a useful way of showcasing additional skills that are relevant to the job description, but that you haven't been able to prove via your work experience. 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, hobbies and interests can only add value to your CV if they provide evidence of skills and experience that you can use in the role you're applying for. As such, only add hobbies as a way of filling gaps in the skills you've developed or used through work experience.

Voluntary Work

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

References aren't usually required on a UK CV, so leave them out in most cases. However, it's always worth checking the job advert and being ready to include them if requested. If you need to add them to your CV, include two or three references, adding their name, job title, organisation and contact details.

Be sure to ask their permission before you include anyone as a reference in your barber CV. Alternatively, you could simply add a line to your CV indicating you can provide references when necessary, such as 'references are available upon request'.

Most impactful action verbs for a barber CV

Including strong action verbs with your work experience bullet points can help you show the impact you made in previous roles. Starting each bullet point with an action verb is a great way to match your experience and achievements to the job description, giving the reader an easy way of identifying your key skills and seeing how you've applied them. You'll also want to back up any action verbs you're using with quantifiable evidence that showcases the value you added for previous employers. Use the past tense for action verbs that describe previous roles, with the present tense for any current responsibilities and achievements.

Barber CV sample

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

If you're not sure what your one-page, finalised CV design might look like, check out our examples.

Guide to making your CV ATS compatible

Applicant tracking systems (ATS) are becoming more and more integral to the recruitment process for many employers. These systems ease the burden of the recruitment process by performing various tasks, including scanning and ranking CVs based on their likely fit to the job description. By taking on this task, the hiring manager can reduce the time and resources they spend on the initial selection process, making recruitment more efficient and cost-effective.

The growing prevalence of ATS means candidates need to write and format their CV in a way that's compatible with the software, giving it the best chance of being accurately scanned and parsed, and ranking highly against other candidates. Here are some tips on how to optimise your CV for ATS screening:

• Include keywords and phrases that mirror the job description to maximise your chances of ranking highly in the ATS screening stage.
• Use clear headings that reflect standard CV conventions, such as 'work experience', 'education' and 'skills'.
• Choose a standard CV layout that avoids the use of any special design elements that might make your CV less compatible with ATS scanning software.
• Select a widely-used font in either serif or sans serif style, with a font size between 10 and 12 for body text and 14 and 16 for heading text.
• Use bullet points in place of full sentences and paragraphs. This can reduce the overall length of the document, make the keywords stand out and make it easier for ATS apps to scan.

It's easy to get overwhelmed by the steps to creating an ATS-compatible barber CV, but a few small changes can make a big difference. To smooth the process, use one of our expert-designed, ATS-optimised CV templates to increase your chances of success at this stage of the screening process.

Key takeaways for a winning barber CV

To grab the attention of the reader with your CV, tailor it to the exact specifications of the job description, incorporating keywords and phrases that match the employer's requirements. 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, enhancing the look and feel of your CV using one of Jobseeker's HR-approved CV templates can help leave a lasting impression on the reader, and boost your chances of success with your job applications.

Citations:

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