Security Supervisor CV Example

A security supervisor 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. We’ll now review the essential sections of a CV and outline how to write each for the strongest results.

Standard security supervisor CV sections

Your approach to creating your winning security supervisor 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 security supervisor 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 security supervisor 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.

For UK applications, it's not usually a good idea to add a personal photo or any other personal details, such as your age, gender, nationality or ethnicity. These can risk introducing bias to the selection process and, as such, are often discouraged in job adverts under the terms of the Equality Act 2010.

CV Summary

Underneath your contact information, write a brief CV summary or CV objective to introduce yourself and highlight a few key skills and qualities. This can help the employer to quickly form a first impression on your suitability for the security supervisor 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.

The most effective way to approach a CV summary is to focus on one or two key skills that reflect the requirements of the job description and show how you've used them to create positive outcomes for previous employers. You'll also want to showcase your unique personal strengths, and touch on how they've contributed to your career progression up to now. Below you'll find an example of a strong security supervisor CV summary.

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.

Employment History

As with most CVs, your security supervisor CV work experience section tends to be the most vital part of your application. Employers tend to look to this section for evidence of how you've developed useful and relevant skills, and used them to add value for previous employers. 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.

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 this security supervisor CV example work experience section for inspiration:

Take a look at a less strong security supervisor CV work experience section above. 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.

Education and Qualifications

In your education section, list any formal qualifications you've gained, particularly those that are most recent or required for the role.

For working in security supervisor positions, it's essential to have a relevant university degree, and as such, you'll want to feature it in your CV. Include your Bachelor of Science in Security Management or another related degree that qualifies you for the role, in your CV, along with any other degrees or qualifications that highlight your strongest key skills, including risk assessment protocol creation or access control system management.

When listing your qualifications in your education section, select only the most suitable qualifications and list them in reverse-chronological order, starting with the most recent and working backwards. 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.

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.

Key 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 security supervisor CV, you'll want to focus on the most relevant skills for the role that match your skill set, including leadership and access control system management, to catch the reader's attention and show you're qualified for the security supervisor 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 security supervisor jobs, essential hard skills from your career-to-date might include emergency evacuation process implementation, and incident response plan development. After reviewing the job description, compile a list of four or five key hard skills for your security supervisor CV to show you're capable of carrying out the duties required for the role.

The best hard skills section would be based around skills listed as 'essential' or 'required' in the job description. To give yourself the best chance of success, you'll want your strongest skills to match closely with those most desired by the employer, and your hard skills list should reflect this.

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

Soft Skills

Your soft skills list should contain a list of your personal strengths that make you suitable for the role, and a good fit for the team and the organisation. In contrast to hard skills, these tend to be transferable and applicable to different roles and levels. 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.

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 security supervisor 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.

Explore the examples below to identify soft skills commonly presented in a security supervisor CV.

Languages

If you speak a foreign language, it can be beneficial to include a languages section on your security supervisor CV. Whether languages are a requirement of the job description or not, if your CV lists additional languages, this typically reflects well on you as a candidate. 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

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

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's often beneficial to include it as it can illustrate a positive attitude towards self-improvement and professional development, as well as a proactive mindset. All these qualities will appeal to most employers and decision-makers. In addition, some roles require specific licences or training just to be eligible for the job, making the certifications section more important. This might include technical roles or positions which require the operation of specialist software, equipment or machinery.

These example certifications and licences are ideal for candidates applying for security supervisor roles:

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 security supervisor 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

One valid way to show you have relevant skills for the job is by listing your hobbies and interests. 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, it's important to only mention hobbies and interests that are relevant, or related to, the role you're applying for. If your hobbies don't help you to show skills required for the role, that are missing elsewhere in your CV, it's best to leave this section out.

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. If you've been awarded any prizes or accolades, or reached any key career milestones, these can all help to show you have the required status and experience for the role.

Volunteer Roles

Listing volunteer roles is another effective way of showing employers your skills and experience. If you're lacking work experience, either as a junior candidate or a career changer, adding volunteering activities gives you a chance to show 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.

Top action words to use in a security supervisor 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. Remember to always back up the action verbs you use with quantifiable evidence that shows the impact you made. You can use past tense for any action verbs describing previous jobs, with present tense for action verbs to describe your current role and responsibilities.

Example of a security supervisor CV

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

If you want a sneak preview of what your one-page, fully designed and finalised CV might look like, see our completed 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. This task can relieve some of the strain on hiring managers through the recruitment process, which can become very resource-intensive, with roles often eliciting hundreds of applications.

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 match the job description, giving you the best chance of appearing as a strong fit for the role.
• Use clear, standard CV headings that are easily recognisable, 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 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 throughout your CV in place of full sentences. This serves a few purposes, reducing the overall length, helping keywords stand out and making it overall more scannable by ATS apps.

It might seem like there's a lot to remember when it comes to making an ATS-compatible CV, but taking care with this stage can really improve your chances of success. To make the process as easy as possible, use one of our expert-designed, ATS-optimised CV templates and boost your chances of success.

Key takeaways for success with your security supervisor 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, 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.

Citations:

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