How to sell my CV to leave retail

cheesefest

cheesefest

cheesefest

Soldato
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18 Jul 2021
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Land of Gin (I wish)
Read somewhere that my CV needs to list my achievements at my current work. How does one do this when worked in retail at bottom of the rung? I did get colleague of the year at my store 3 times and colleague of the region (18 stores).

The sort of achievements other people have put in management roles are things like turning sales from £Xm to £Ym, part of biggest contract etc
 
cheesefest said:
Read somewhere that my CV needs to list my achievements at my current work. How does one do this when worked in retail at bottom of the rung? I did get colleague of the year at my store 3 times and colleague of the region (18 stores).

The sort of achievements other people have put in management roles are things like turning sales from £Xm to £Ym, part of biggest contract etc
Click to expand...

You mention colleague of the year, there must be a reason for that right? There must be some metric they used to determine that. Also think of transferable skills such as team-working, customer service, dealing with conflict, prioritising tasks in a busy retail environment. All of those are useful skills in pretty much any job.
 
So colleague of the year/region is worth mentioning, but use the opportunity to (succinctly) say why you won it and try to make it relevant to admin roles.

Then look at what else you have achieved, how have you:
  • Improved efficiency of processes
  • Supported the wider team
  • Handled complex/challenging situations (and crucially what was the end result)
  • Dealt with / optimised administrative duties
  • Organised things
 
cheesefest said:
Admin roles.
Click to expand...

Sounds like, with your achievements, that you are very 'people focused' so you know how to deliver a high level of service. :)

I'd also phrase it like 'you've completed this part of your career and looking for the next challenge' or something like that.

With admin roles, is there a specific industry? Or perhaps job titles you have seen and thought 'yeah, I'd love to do that!'
 
Have a look through some job descriptions or person specifications of roles you're interested in and see what skills relate back to your retail experiences. That's the easiest way to build and tailor your CV for a job you want.

As a side note don't sell yourself short, a long time in retail will give you tonnes of transferable skills that recruiters are after.
 
cheesefest said:
Read somewhere that my CV needs to list my achievements at my current work. How does one do this when worked in retail at bottom of the rung? I did get colleague of the year at my store 3 times and colleague of the region (18 stores).

The sort of achievements other people have put in management roles are things like turning sales from £Xm to £Ym, part of biggest contract etc
Click to expand...
Delivered high levels of customer satisfaction.
Managed many difficult situations and turned them into reputational successes for the company.
Achieved colleague of the year three times by <insert reason here>.
etc
etc
 
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