How to sell my CV to leave retail

cheesefest · 25 Jun 2022 at 21:05

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

HangTime · 25 Jun 2022 at 21:25

What sort of roles are you targeting? This would help steer what you should focus on in your CV.

flibbage0 · 25 Jun 2022 at 21:36

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

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.

cheesefest · 25 Jun 2022 at 21:48

HangTime said:
What sort of roles are you targeting? This would help steer what you should focus on in your CV.

Admin roles.

HangTime · 25 Jun 2022 at 22:03

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

SideWinder · 27 Jun 2022 at 14:46

cheesefest said:
Admin roles.

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!'

explicit4u · 28 Jun 2022 at 18:10

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.

Hades · 29 Jun 2022 at 16:01

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

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

hannah.21 · 23 Sep 2022 at 11:21

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

Retail gives you so many transferrable skills, it is genuinely quite easy to bullsh*t a bunch on a CV with a retail job, especially one you've been at for so long. If your company doesn't have hugely personal references either (eg. my old retail job gave references that are literally just "X worked here for Y amount of time in Z job role") you can stretch truths a bit more. Definitely mention the colleague of the year achievements, that's a great thing to add! What did you do to get those awards? Mention them as separate achievements. Did you ever rearrange stock to make things easier? That can be 'stock management' and 'maximising worker satisfaction/ease'. One afternoon in my retail job I wrote on our shelves in Sharpie to label where we should put our overstock and then subsequently put that on my CV as 'created a stock filing system from scratch' or something along those lines. It may seem like you are 'just' in a retail job at the bottom of the rung but you can extrapolate so much from it. Good luck!

SideWinder · 23 Sep 2022 at 13:03

@cheesefest - How's it all going?

I am sure everyone would be more than happy to help with adding additional help/advice.

cheesefest · 23 Sep 2022 at 14:19

Had a couple of interviews but nothing else

SideWinder · 23 Sep 2022 at 14:27

cheesefest said:
Had a couple of interviews but nothing else

Its good to get interview experience so nothing lost there.

If you haven't already, could reach out to recruiters and 'sell' yourself to them. All they want to know is you are motivated, ready to start a new job and know roughly what you want.

cheesefest · 23 Sep 2022 at 18:17

SideWinder said:
Its good to get interview experience so nothing lost there.

If you haven't already, could reach out to recruiters and 'sell' yourself to them. All they want to know is you are motivated, ready to start a new job and know roughly what you want.

Will knuckle down to contact more recruiters. Holiday mode and Queen’s funeral stopped me