Recruitment Manager CV Example

A recruitment manager 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 recruitment manager CV sections

Your recruitment manager CV strategy will depend on various factors, including your previous experience, your seniority and the details listed in the job description.

However, no matter where you are in your career, a recruitment manager 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 recruitment manager CV by adding a professional-looking header that contains all your relevant contact information. Include your name, email address, phone number and location (your full address isn't typically necessary for UK job applications). 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 jobs, it's generally not a good idea to add a photo or any other personal details beyond your basic contact information. This means leaving off details such as your age, gender, ethnicity and nationality, as these can introduce bias to the selection process and complications related to 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 recruitment manager role. A CV summary focuses on your key skills and achievements, while a CV objective provides an alternative approach, showcasing your career ambitions and how the role fits with these. This makes a CV objective ideal for entry-level candidates.

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.

An effective summary will include brief reference to one or two of your strongest skills, ensuring they reflect the skills listed in the job description. It's important to make your skills and qualities feel unique to you, and show how you've used them to positive effect in your career to date. Below you'll find an example of a strong recruitment manager CV summary.

See above for an example of an ineffective summary, with subtle differences leading to a reduction of impact. There are several factors that could make your summary less engaging. These include using long, poorly-structured sentences, failing to add evidence of your impact, being too generic with the skills you mention and not adapting your CV summary to specifically respond to the job description.

Work 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 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.

To differentiate your work experience section from other candidates, include action verbs and quantifiable evidence that showcases the impact you made. Show your career progression through the skills you developed and used in each role. See below for an example of how to put the work experience section best practice into action:

The example above shows what not to do with your recruitment manager 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

In your education section you'll want to list your highest and most recent qualifications, particularly if they're a requirement for the role.

For careers as a recruitment manager, 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 LinkedIn Certified Professional Recruiter, or any training that shows your skills development in competency framework development or applicant tracking system 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 into your education section, add the qualification name and level, the institution or awarding body, its location and your dates of study or graduation. For extra emphasis on your education section, include bullet points showcasing projects you worked on, modules you studied, awards you won or societies you participated in, if they help you to prove you're a suitable candidate.

You might also wish to add specialist qualifications, certifications or licences that are required for the role. If you add any of these, include the expiry date, if the qualification requires renewal in the future.

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 recruitment manager CV, you'll want to focus on the most relevant skills for the role that match your skill set, including negotiation and employment law compliance knowledge, to catch the reader's attention and show you're qualified for the recruitment manager position.

Hard Skills

Hard skills and technical skills are specialist skills that are essential for carrying out the main responsibilities of the role. You might acquire hard skills through study, or through on-the-job training, and some hard skills may require a certification or licence. For recruitment manager jobs, essential hard skills from your career-to-date might include competency framework development, and applicant tracking system proficiency. 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.

The best hard skills to include are typically listed as 'essential' or 'required' in the job description. Aim for a mix of the most desirable skills, together with those you have the highest proficiency in. For the best chance of success, you'll want your strongest skills to match closely with those most desired by the employer.

Below, you can find the types of skills typically featured in the hard skills section of a recruitment manager 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. As a result of rapid technological changes in the world of work, soft skills are becoming ever-more valued by employers. Soft skills can also be particularly valuable for junior or entry-level roles where candidates haven't necessarily had the time to develop hard skills and career achievements.

Similar to your hard skills section, it's best to first review the job description to know which soft skills to focus on in your recruitment manager CV. You'll want to include a combination of soft skills that you can provide evidence for throughout your CV. Craft a list of up to five key soft and transferable skills that reflect the job description, while also including some of your strongest, most unique skills to stand out from the crowd.

Below is a selection of soft skills regularly featured in a recruitment manager 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. List any foreign languages you speak, together with an indication of your proficiency level.

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 could adopt the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), as this provides standardised levels to describe your competence, as follows:

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

Certifications, Training and Licences

If you've invested your time and resources into gaining extra qualifications beyond the minimum requirements for the role, you could highlight these in a certifications section. Having a separate section can draw more attention to your training, and show employers your proactive, motivated mindset towards professional development, which could be a key asset. 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.

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

Additional Sections

Including optional sections in addition to the core sections of your recruitment manager CV can help you to show employers you're a strong candidate for the 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

If you participate in hobbies and activities that are related to the role, or use some of the same skill set, you could include them in a hobbies and interests section. 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 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.

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.

Volunteering

Another alternative to showcasing your skills and experience through work experience is by adding a volunteering section. This can give you a valuable showcase of your skills, particularly if you're a junior candidate or career changer without much relevant work experience. For this section, use a similar structure to your work experience section.

List your job title or a description of the role, the organisation name, its location and the dates you occupied the role. Use bullet points to show employers how you put your skills to use, and any positive achievements from your time in the role.

Best action words for a recruitment manager 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').

Recruitment manager CV example

Now that you know exactly what to include in your recruitment manager CV, we can take a look at a final, finished example below:

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 make 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. 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.

Because ATS software is becoming more common in the recruitment process, it's important to make some concessions in your CV to give yourself the best chance of progressing beyond the initial screening. With that in mind, here are some tips on preparing your CV for ATS screening:

• Include keywords and phrases that mirror the job description, increasing your chances of ranking highly in the ATS screening stage.
• Use standard CV headings that make your CV easier to navigate, 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 instead of writing full sentences, to reduce the overall length of your CV, make it more keyword-dense and help ATS apps to scan it more easily.

You might feel there are a lot of steps to creating an ATS-compatible recruitment manager 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 your recruitment manager 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. Choose the most fitting CV format for your experience level, and focus on showcasing how you've developed the necessary skills for the role, and used them to positive effect in previous roles.

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 Trends