Bagging yourself a team leader role will provide a lucrative salary and exciting challenges.
But to land one, you’re going to need an attention-grabbing CV which showcases your managerial potential and sets you apart from other candidates.
This guide, which includes an example team leader CV, will teach you everything you need to know to put forward a winning application.
Guide contents
- Team leader CV example
- Structuring and formatting your CV
- Writing your CV profile
- Detailing work experience
- Your education
- Skills required for your team leader CV
Team leader CV example
The CV example above will help you to visualise what your own CV should look like – simple, professional, clearly structured and highly legible.
I’ll talk you through how to get a similar finished result and instantly impress recruiters.
Team leader CV structure & format
Don’t underestimate the importance of your CV design, layout and presentation – it could mean the difference between an interview and a rejection!
Recruiters are busy, so you need to make it as easy as possible for them to scan through your CV and pinpoint your essential information.
Take a look at my top CV structure and format tips below:
Formatting Tips
- Length: Aim for no more than 2 sides of A4 – anything longer can become tedious and probably won’t be read anyway!
- Style: Simple is always best when it comes to CVs. Opt for a clear and modern font, such as Arial, Calibri or Verdana, in size 10 or 12. Keep your colour scheme muted – black text on a white background is ideal.
- Readability: Whilst formatting your CV content, always keep the needs of a time-strapped recruiter at the forefront of your mind. Make it easy for them to skim through your application, by breaking up large blocks of text into small paragraphs, utilising lists and bullet points and clearly labelling each CV section.
- Images: Whether it’s a profile photo or company logos, images won’t add any value to your CV – avoid including them.
Structuring your CV
Structure your CV content into the easy-to-follow sections below:
- Contact details – Always list these first.
- Profile – Create an introductory paragraph, which sums up your skills, experience, qualifications and achievements.
- Work experience / Career history – Working backwards, list your relevant work experience.
- Education – Note down your academic and/or vocational qualifications, especially those related to the role.
- Interest and hobbies – Share any value-adding hobbies or interests – optional.
As we move through this guide, I’ll teach you what to include in each section, in order to write a CV that lands interviews.
CV Contact Details
Make it quick and easy for recruiters to contact you, by listing your contact details at the top of your CV.
Keep this section short and simple – recruiters don’t need to know your entire address or date of birth. Here’s what you should include:
- Phone number
- Email address – This should be professional, with no nicknames or slang – make a new one if you need to.
- Location – List your vague location, for example, ‘Liverpool‘ or ‘Kent’.
Team leader CV Profile
The first main section of your CV is your personal profile, which is a short and snappy overview of why the company should hire you.
Recruiters will read often read this first, so your aim is to hook their attention and convince them to read the rest of your application.
Sum up your skills, experience, knowledge and achievements and don’t be afraid to brag – this is your opportunity to sell yourself!
Tips to consider when creating your profile:
- Tailor it to the role: The most powerful CV profiles are heavily tailored to the target role. Take a careful look over the requirements for the position you are applying for and ensure you reflect them in your profile.
- Keep it short and sweet: A length of 5-10 lines is enough space to give recruiters a good overview of your skills and experience, whilst remaining punchy and impactful – ultimately, enticing them to read further.
- Avoid clichés: Recruiters read through hundreds of CVs every week, many of which are packed with generic phrases like ‘I always go the extra mile’ or ‘I give 110%’. These might sound fancy, but they don’t actually say anything about you and won’t impress recruiters. Instead, pack your CV with hard skills, real-life experience and impressive facts.
Quick tip: A poorly written CV will fail to impress recruiters and employers. Use our quick-and-easy CV Builder to create a winning CV in minutes with professional templates and pre-written content for every industry.
What to include in your team leader CV profile?
- Relevant experience – If you’re applying for team leader roles, you’ll probably have built up some relevant experience within a particular industry/sector or have some form of leadership experience. So, provide a snappy summary of your experience level and the sectors, companies and roles you’ve worked in.
- Leadership & managerial skills – No matter what the specific sector, the role of a team leader will always be to manage, lead and motivate a team. Therefore, it’s important to pack your CV profile with relevant leadership and managerial skills and experience – for example, delegating, training, conflict resolution and decision making.
- Product and/or industry knowledge – Depending on your unique career path, you might hold some relevant product or sector-specific knowledge, experience and skills – if so, make this clear in your profile.
- Qualifications – Highlight any relevant qualifications or vocational training you’ve undertaken.
- Facts, results and achievements – Quantifying your value with hard facts, results and achievements helps employers to gauge how they could specifically benefit from hiring you. For example, maybe you resolved 95% of team complaints within 48 hours, boosted team results by 40% within 6 months, or ran a successful employee wellness program?
Core skills section
Adding a core skills section, just underneath your CV profile, is another great way to grab the reader’s attention.
This is a short and snappy bullet-point list of your key skills and knowledge. It gives a snapshot of what you can offer, allowing busy recruiters to see your potential at a glance.
For maximum impact, you should tailor this list to the target role.
Look over the job description and note down the skills the employer is seeking.
Then, if you can match these skills, include them in your core skills list.
Work experience/Career history
Next up is your work experience section, which gives you another opportunity to highlight your leadership and managerial skills and experience.
Start with your most recent (or current) position and work your way backwards.
Is this your first shot at a leadership role? You should still list your work experience to show your career path and display the fact that you’re working your way up the ranks. However, if you can, try to draw out examples of when you lead a team, solved conflicts, made decisions or were in charge of projects, throughout your previous roles.
Do you have too much work experience to list? Prioritise space for your most recent and relevant roles, particularly those where you managed a team. Your oldest, less relevant roles can be shortened right down to a job title, company and dates of employment.
Structuring your roles
Your work experience section can become bulky, especially if you’ve held numerous roles.
My 3-step structure outlined below will help you to break up your experience into manageable chunks.
Following these tactics will allow recruiters to easily pick out the information they need and ensure your key achievements aren’t missed.
Outline
Firstly, write a brief overview of the role as a whole, detailing the type of company you worked for, the environment you worked in (on the shop floor, in a call centre, warehouse or office…) and what the overarching goal of your job was.
E.g.
“Provided direction, instructions and guidance to a team of 25 staff at a busy high street supermarket, acting as the key point of liaison between store assistants and management.”
Key responsibilities
Then list your key duties and responsibilities, using brief, snappy bullet points. Try to showcase as much managerial, leadership, decision making and morale-boosting experience as you can.
E.g.
- Monitored new employee’s work: provided clear instructions, promptly solved issues and identified areas for additional training.
- Supported store managers and undertook management duties when the manager was absent.
- Created weekly reports to inform management of team achievements, issues and targets.
Key achievements
Add impact to each role by listing 1-3 key achievements or results.
If you can, quantify these with facts and figures to give recruiters a real view of the value you could bring.
E.g.
- Created and implemented workflow and process improvements, increasing productivity by 35%.
- Mentored employees to ensure thorough product knowledge, resulting in a sales increase of 25% in 6 months.
- Provided confidential help and support to all team members, bringing about a 30% improvement in employee satisfaction.
Education
For team leaders, experience is generally more important than qualifications. Many successful team leaders work their way up from customer assistant roles.
However, a good level of education and relevant qualifications could significantly accelerate this process and improve your chances of landing a role.
So, note down your educational background, starting with your highest qualification and working backwards.
If you’ve undertaken any leadership or management qualifications, such as ILM or CMI, make sure to include them – they’ll give you serious brownie points!
Interests and hobbies
By now, you may have limited space left on your CV – so you’ll be pleased to hear that this section is optional!
If you have hobbies or interests outside of work that showcase your leadership, interpersonal and decision-making abilities, it’s definitely worth noting them down. For example, you might lead a sports team or volunteer in a role which requires you to deal with the public.
However, avoid listing generic or unrelated hobbies, such as going out with your friends – these types of interests won’t add value to your CV.
Essential skills for your team leader CV
The range of skills required for a team leader role will vary depending on the sector, so always make sure to tailor your CV to the job description.
Leadership & managerial – As a team leader, it goes without saying that you’ll need to prove your strong managerial and leadership qualities. Make sure your CV is littered with examples of leading a team, managing projects, delegating, making decisions and influencing/motivating others.
Interpersonal & communication – Your role will ultimately revolve around people, so your CV should demonstrate your strong interpersonal and communication skills, along with empathy and patience.
Complaint handling – You’ll deal with complaints and discrepancies from all angles – the team you manage, senior managers, customers and clients – so make sure to demonstrate your ability to effectively and promptly create resolutions and resolve problems.
Training – Team leaders are often responsible for pinpointing training needs and/or coaching/training new staff. If you’ve ever trained or mentored others, whether in a previous role or outside of work, it’s worth highlighting in your CV.
Product/sector knowledge – Junior staff, as well as customers or clients, will come to you for advice and knowledge – so you need a thorough knowledge of the product with or the sector you’re working in.
Customer service – Customer queries, problems and complaints will often fall on your hands – and ideally, you’ll be able to solve them without resorting to a manager. Provide plenty of examples of times that you’ve given quality customer service, interacted with customers and answered customer enquiries.
Team work – As you’ll be leading a team, you should be able to effectively work within one! Provide plenty of examples of your experience working with others throughout your CV.
Writing your team leader CV
If you’ve followed my team leader CV guide from start to finish, you’ll be left with a professional, easy-to-read and impactful document.
By showcasing your leadership potential and packing in plenty of relevant skills, recruiters will be eager to interview you!
Remember to tweak this CV for each role you apply for, to ensure you’re reflecting the unique requirements.
Good luck with your job search!