Mixologist CV Example

A mixologist 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. Now let’s explore the main sections of a CV and see how to structure each one for maximum impact.

Main mixologist CV sections

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

However, regardless of your seniority, a mixologist CV needs to tell a cohesive story of your professional growth. In the following sections, we’ll dive into each part of the CV step-by-step, starting with your header and moving through to your professional achievements.

CV Header

Start your mixologist 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. 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.

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 Summary or Objective

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 mixologist 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.

In your summary or objective, write up to three sentences outlining your key skills, unique personal qualities and career achievements or ambitions, taking care to always reflect 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. Find an example below of a positive mixologist CV summary, characterised by evidence to support your claims and well-structured, easy-to-read sentences.

The mixologist CV summary above gives you an idea of what to avoid. The differences are subtle, yet significant. Your summary could miss the mark if it's too generic and doesn't describe unique personal qualities and strengths. It might also be vague, use long, unstructured sentences, lack quantifiable evidence of your impact, or not be tailored to the job description.

Employment History

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 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 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. Take a look at this mixologist CV example work experience section for inspiration:

The example above shows what not to do with your mixologist 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.

Education

Your education section is the chance to list your most recent and highest qualifications, and anything that's relevant or required for the role.

To work as a mixologist, it's not necessary to have a specific degree. However, while a degree isn't usually requested in the job description, it can be useful to include other relevant qualifications in your CV's education section. These might include Professional Bartending Certification, or other courses that show your hard skills, such as cocktail recipe formulation expertise or spirits flavour profiling proficiency.

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. When adding each qualification, include the name and level of the award, the institution, its location (if necessary), and the dates you attended or graduated. It can also be valuable to add bullet points outlining your key achievements and activities, such as projects you worked on, modules you completed, awards you won or societies you participated in while studying.

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.

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. In a mixologist CV, only list the most relevant and essential skills you possess, such as customer service and bar equipment operation skill, to make a positive first impression and show you're qualified for the mixologist 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 mixologist jobs, essential hard skills from your career-to-date might include cocktail garnish presentation knowledge, and cocktail recipe formulation expertise. 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 ideal hard skills section will feature the most essential hard skills from the job description, while closely reflecting your own best technical abilities. The closer your strongest skills are to matching the job description, the higher your chances of success.

Review the examples below to understand which skills are often added to the hard skills section of a mixologist CV.

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. The world of work is evolving at a rapid pace, changing the types of hard skills required for many roles, and therefore rendering soft and transferable skills more valuable than ever. Soft skills are also extremely valuable for junior and entry-level roles, where candidates aren't necessarily expected to have a wealth of relevant work experience.

Just like the hard skills section, begin by reviewing the job description to learn the most desirable soft skills to include in your mixologist CV. Only add soft skills that you can provide evidence for throughout your 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.

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

Language Skills

If you speak any additional languages, you might want to consider adding a languages section to your CV. Even if languages aren't a requirement of the job description, speaking a foreign language can reflect well on you as a candidate, and correlate with other soft skills that can increase your employability. In the languages section, list the languages you speak to at least a reasonable level, with an indicator of your competency level.

There are a few acceptable ways of citing your foreign language proficiency levels. The simplest way is to assign a basic descriptive word to indicate your skills, 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

If you have extra qualifications beyond the basics of what's expected or required for the role, you might want to include a separate certifications section in your CV. 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 mixologist 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 are some key examples of certifications and licences that you could add to your CV for mixologist positions:

Additional Sections

Including optional sections in addition to the core sections of your mixologist CV can help you to show employers you're a strong candidate for the job. If you're unable to show you have all the necessary skills for the job through your work experience, optional sections can be a valid way of providing further evidence of your suitability, to give you the chance of gaining an interview. If you're an entry-level candidate or a career changer, optional sections can be particularly valuable.

Explore our career resources for practical strategies to make your CV stand out and move you closer to landing an interview.

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. Additionally, hobbies and interests are an ideal way to show the employers some elements of your personality and interests beyond work, which can set you apart from other candidates. However, a hobbies and interests section is only valuable if it helps you to show relevant skills you've been unable to evidence in other parts of your CV. If your hobbies and interests are unrelated to the job, it's best to leave them off your CV.

Key Achievements

Listing your key career achievements in a distinct section can be an effective way of drawing attention to them. In your list, add any awards you've won, industry recognition or key career milestones that tell a story about your suitability for the role and place you ahead of other candidates.

Voluntary 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. 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 mixologist 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. 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.

Full example of mixologist CV

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

To see how your CV might look after finalising its design and layout, take a look at our CV examples.

Guide to making your CV ATS compatible

Applicant tracking systems (ATS) are a valuable tool for many recruiters and employers, helping them manage the recruitment process by scanning and assessing CVs based on their likely fit to the job description. This saves recruiters and hiring managers the time and effort of reading every CV in detail. With many vacancies often receiving hundreds of applications, ATS software can really relieve the burden on hiring teams and free them up to focus only on the most suitable candidates.

With ATS apps becoming more prominent, it's essential for candidates to optimise their CVs to increase their chances of passing the initial screening stage. You can read a list of the top tips for ATS optimisation below:

• 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'.
• Opt for a simple CV layout with consistent formatting, avoiding any special design elements that could make your CV harder for ATS apps to scan.
• Select a font that's widely used and maximises readability, including popular serif and sans serif fonts between size 10 and 12 for body text, and 14 and 16 for headings.
• 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.

You might feel there are a lot of things to remember when writing an ATS-compatible CV, but with just a few small tweaks, you can ensure yours passes this stage. Use one of our expert-designed, ATS-compatible CV templates to avoid the stress of adapting your CV for ATS screening.

Key takeaways for your mixologist 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. Use a CV format that reflects your experience levels, and emphasise your skills and achievements throughout your CV, to show employers you've got the required skills and experience for the job.

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.

Sources:

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