Freight Forwarder CV Example

A meticulously crafted, tailored freight forwarder CV gives your application the best chance of passing the ATS screening stage, impressing the hiring manager and progressing to the interview stage. Now let’s explore the main sections of a CV and see how to structure each one for maximum impact.

Main sections of a freight forwarder CV

How you approach writing your freight forwarder CV will vary according to your experience, your level and the details outlined in the job description.

However, at any stage of your career, a freight forwarder CV serves as a professional biography that must clearly illustrate your career trajectory. To help you tell that story effectively, we will now break down the document piece-by-piece, starting with your contact header and moving through the key pieces of your professional path.

CV Header

Start your freight forwarder 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, including your LinkedIn profile as a URL can be useful, as it will help the reader to quickly and easily access further information about your career and credentials.

For UK applications, it's not usually advisable to include a personal photo or any other personal details, such as your age, gender, nationality or ethnicity. These can risk introducing bias to the decision-making process and are discouraged under the terms of the Equality Act 2010.

CV Summary or 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 freight forwarder CV. 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.

Whether you choose to write a summary or an objective, aim for a length of two or three sentences, introducing your key skills, unique qualities and key achievements or ambitions, making sure they reflect what's included 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. See below for an example of a strong freight forwarder CV summary, featuring quantifiable evidence of your impact and concise, easy-to-read sentences.

Above is an example of a less effective CV summary, with some subtle, yet notable differences. An ineffective summary might be vague or generic, failing to highlight specific personal qualities that help you stand out and failing to address the requirements specified in the job description. They might also lack firm evidence of your skills, and be structured with long, hard-to-read sentences.

Professional 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.

What differentiates one CV work experience section from all the others is the use of action verbs and quantifiable evidence in your bullet points. It should showcase how your actions led to positive outcomes for the employer, and show a progression in your skills throughout your career. See below for an example of a strong work experience section for a freight forwarder CV.

Above you'll find a less effective example of a freight forwarder CV work experience section. A poor work experience section might look more like a generic list of responsibilities rather than an account of how you've used your skills to positive effect in previous roles. It might also include old or irrelevant job entries and lack tailoring to the job description.

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.

For careers as a freight forwarder, you don't generally need a specific degree. However, it can still be useful to include relevant certifications, training or formal qualifications in your CV's education section, even if these aren't requested by the employer. These could include Customs Brokerage Certification Programme, or any training that shows your skills development in warehouse inventory management or customs clearance procedures.

Your education section should contain only the qualifications that you consider most relevant to the role. List them in reverse-chronological order, starting with the most recent and working back from there. Add the name and level of the award, the institution, its location and your dates of study or graduation. If you have space or if you particularly want to emphasise your qualifications, you could add one or two bullet points under each entry, highlighting specialist areas of study, projects you worked on, awards you won or societies you were a member of.

It may also be useful for you to add any specialist industry qualifications, certifications or licences that you might require for the role. If you choose to add these, remember also to add an expiration date, if the licence requires renewal in the future.

Skills

The skills section of a freight forwarder CV provides space for showcasing the key skills and qualities that set you apart as a candidate. You'll want to only include the most relevant skills, so review the job description and list hard and soft skills that match the requirements, while reserving some space to mention your own unique characteristics. For a freight forwarder CV, you'll want to focus on the most relevant skills for the role that match your skill set, including problem solving and freight cost negotiation, to catch the reader's attention and show you're qualified for the freight forwarder position.

Hard Skills

Hard skills are the specialist technical skills that are essential for carrying out the duties of the role. They might be developed through study, on-the-job training or experience in the industry, and some hard skills may require a licence or certification. For freight forwarder roles, key hard skills you've gained, such as customs clearance procedures, and freight cost negotiation, are typically among the most critical for the job. After checking the job description, include a list of four or five key hard skills in your CV to confirm that you have the necessary expertise for 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 freight forwarder CV hard skills section:

Soft Skills

Soft skills are the personal strengths and qualities that show employers how well you'll fit into the role and complement other members of the team. Soft skills tend to be 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 freight forwarder 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. Aim to add up to five soft and transferable skills, including a mix of the most essential skills from the job description, together with some skills that make you stand out as a unique and compelling candidate.

The section below provides an overview of soft skills often highlighted in a freight forwarder CV.

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. Under this section, list any foreign languages you speak to a professional standard, with an indicator of your competency level for each.

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

Alternatively, use an internationally recognised framework for languages, such as the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR). This gives your language skills a standardised competence indicator, as follows:

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

Certifications, Training and Licences

To showcase additional qualifications and training beyond the basic requirements for the role, consider adding a certifications section to your CV. 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, if there are any necessary certifications or licences for the job, this CV section takes on even more importance. If you're applying for a technical role or a position that involves the use of specialist software or equipment, these might make it more necessary to include a section showcasing your training.

See below for a list of example certifications and licences you might add to your CV for freight forwarder roles:

Additional Information

Optional sections can be useful to add to your CV, to provide additional evidence that you have the skills for the freight forwarder job. If you're struggling to show all the necessary skills for the job through your work experience or other core sections, optional sections can give your CV the boost it needs to progress you to the interview stage. This could be particularly helpful for entry-level candidates or career changers.

You’ll find more in-depth guidance on structuring your CV in our career resources, designed to help you present your skills as effectively as possible.

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, a hobbies and interests section will only make an impact with the reader if the skills you showcase are relevant to the role. As such, only include this section if it helps you fulfil requirements of the role that you've been unable to show elsewhere.

Awards and Achievements

Creating a list of your key career achievements can be an effective way of drawing attention to the things you're most proud of from your career. In this section, add any awards or recognition you've received for achievements, and any career milestones you've reached that show you're a strong candidate for the job.

Volunteering

Listing any previous voluntary work is another useful way of showing you have the necessary skills and experience for the job. If you don't have much relevant work experience, either because you're a junior candidate or you're changing jobs from an unrelated field, volunteering can provide valuable examples of your skills in action. Your volunteering section should follow much the same structure as your work experience section.

Add a description of the volunteer role or a job title if you had one, the name of the organisation, its location and the start and end date of your volunteering. List bullet points that show how you put relevant skills to good use to create positive results for the organisation.

Best action words for a freight forwarder CV

Using strong action verbs in your work experience bullet points gives you the opportunity to show how you've applied skills to good effect in previous roles. Starting each bullet point with an action verb, such as 'delivered', 'collaborated' or 'developed' also allows you to show your key skills and qualities in a way that's easily identifiable for the reader. When adding action verbs to your work experience bullet points, just remember to always provide quantifiable evidence that shows the value you added for each employer. Use past tense for any action verbs that describe previous roles (for example, 'developed') and present tense for current roles (for example 'collaborating').

Freight forwarder CV example

Now that we've covered the main sections to include in your freight forwarder CV, we can see how it would all come together in its final form in the example below:

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

How to make your CV ATS compatible

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 growing prevalence of ATS apps requires a shift in approach by jobseekers, to prepare a CV with the best chance of passing the ATS screening stage. That's why we've put together a list of key ATS CV tips, to maximise your chances of success:

• Include keywords and phrases from the job description that are easy for ATS apps to identify, and help make you appear a strong fit for the role.
• Use clear, standard CV headings that are easily recognisable, 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 in place of full sentences and paragraphs, as these are easier for ATS apps to scan and parse, and help your keywords stand out.

You might feel there are a lot of steps to creating an ATS-compatible freight forwarder 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 freight forwarder CV

To give you the best chance of success with your CV, tailor it for every specific application, including keywords 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, creating your CV using one of Jobseeker's expert-designed CV templates can give your application the edge, placing you among the leading candidates and positioning you for success with your job applications.

Citations:

1. Barnet Council (UK local government), Recruitment tips: How to write a supporting statement
2. Jobseeker, HR Trends