You'll learn:
Store managers (or retail store managers) are held accountable for the store’s overall performance. They oversee the store’s day-to-day operations including recruiting, staff training and mentoring, budgeting, stock planning, marketing, and sales.
To successfully secure a store manager position, you should prepare a well-designed store manager resume and cover letter to showcase your managerial experience, sales and marketing expertise, leadership, and problem-solving skills to impress the recruiters.
Take 5 minutes to read through the store manager resume and cover letter guidelines to nail down your dream job!
Follow 5 tips to write a winning retail store manager resume to win your recruiters’ hearts!
ATS (Applicant Tracking System) is a system used by 98% of Fortune 500 companies to improve the efficiency of the recruitment process. It scans and parses every resume’s content to identify and weed out unqualified ones for open positions. Therefore, it’s vital to create an ATS-friendly store manager resume to pass through the system.
You could insert keywords like skills and duties from the job description in your store manager resume to make it compatible with the system.
📌 Don’t choose complex resume designs or insert images and charts in the resume to confuse the system.
Research is the key to success. Before writing your resume, you could refer to online store manager resume templates and examples to gain a deeper understanding of resume writing.
Websites like Cake, ResumeGenius, and Zety provide free retail store manager resume examples for job seekers to write compelling resumes.
A tailored resume is undoubtedly more attractive to recruiters compared to a generic one. To tailor your store manager resume, you should analyze the industry, company, and job description of the job you’re applying for, and showcase your strengths and experience that are relevant to the job requirement in the resume.
Be aware that a retail store manager resume is different from a CV. A retail store manager CV is a 2- or 3- page document demonstrating your thorough and comprehensive background, including work history, educational experience, and publications. A retail store manager resume is a 1-page document outlining your work experience and achievements that are relevant to the job requirements.
✅ Don’t forget to select and write keywords like hard and soft skills from job descriptions in your resume to increase its visibility.
Utilize numbers, rankings, and percentages to quantify your achievements to make them more compelling and convincing.
For example, instead of saying “I led a team to exceed the store’s yearly sales goals,” you could write “I led a team of 10 members to exceed the store’s yearly sales goals by 20% ($220K growth).”
Store managers are responsible for hiring, training, and mentoring staff members to maximize your store performance. Hence, you should showcase your leadership experience and skills in the store manager resume to attract recruiters.
If you don’t have solid leadership experience, you could highlight leadership skills like communication, problem-solving, conflict-resolution in the store manager resume.
A store manager resume objective refers to 2-3 sentences showing your career goals and ambitions. Remember to make your job objective highly related to the job posting to arouse the recruiters’ interests.
You could place it on the top of your store manager resume to maximize its visibility.
You could write down 2-3 positive personality traits like “detail-oriented” or “data-driven” to introduce yourself. Besides, you could elaborate on your work or academic experience if they are relevant to the job requirements of the opening job.
💡 Tips: Make sure to align your career goals to the opening job. You could mention the company name and the position you’re applying for to arouse the recruiters’ interests.
When writing your past work experience, focus on your achievements, instead of job duties, to attract the recruiters. Remember to keep the retail store manager resume objective concise, and proofread it to prevent grammatical errors and typos.
Retail Store Manager Resume Objective Examples:
A store manager resume summary is 2 to 3 sentences outlining your entire resume. You could emphasize your most competitive skills and achievements to get your resume noticed by recruiters.
It’s recommended to place the resume summary at the beginning of your store manager resume right after your personal information (name and contact information) to boost its visibility to recruiters.
To write an eye-catching resume summary for a store manager resume, you should first read through the job description of the opening position and take note of the specifics. Then, you could pick out and write down your most important experience, awards, skills, or projects that are relevant to the opening job.
Your resume summary should be customized to the specific opening position, so don’t make your resume summary too lengthy. Also, avoid generic statements that can’t directly demonstrate your achievements and skills.
Remember to keep your store manager resume summary concise and take some time to check for typos and errors.
The skills section occupies an important position in your store manager resume. It demonstrates your hard and soft skills to prove your qualifications for the position. It also makes candidate selection easier and faster for the recruiters.
You could structure your store manager resume skills section with a simple or extended bullet list.
👌 If you have solid work experience, you could also integrate the skills with your work experience section by putting short skill lists under each employment experience in your store manager resume.
1. Where to place the skills section on a resume?
▪️ If you are a fresh graduate or entry-level applicant with limited work experience, you could place the skills section on the top of your work experience section.
▪️ In contrast, if you have extensive and meaningful work experience that is relevant to the job requirements, you should place the skills section under the work experience section to highlight your work history in the store manager resume.
2. Things to include in the resume skills section.
You could categorize your skills into soft and hard skills. Make sure that all the skills in the store manager resume are relevant to the job requirements, and don’t stuff your resume with irrelevant and unprofessional skills. You could search for store manager resume examples online for more inspiration.
3. Things to avoid in the resume skills section.
Avoid buzzwords and generic skills like “hardworking” and “experienced.” They can’t fully demonstrate your professional strengths.
Besides, don’t use progress or percent bars to present your level of skills. Recruiters can’t calculate your proficiency of skills based on these bars. It’s way better to elaborate on your accomplishments and how you implemented your skills to achieve the goals in the resume.
Hard Skills:
Soft Skills:
Even if you are a fresh graduate or applicant with limited work experience, you could still write a winning store manager resume after reading 5 pieces of advice below!
There are 2 popular assistant store manager resume formats to choose from:
It shows your skills section at the top of your assistant store manager resume to highlight your skills and experience instead of work history. It’s a good choice for entry-level store managers or applicants with no work experience.
It’s a well-designed and time-consuming format tailoring for the job you’re applying for. You have to research the industry, company, and job requirements of the opening position to design a targeted store manager resume format. Despite the extra time it takes, it undoubtedly boosts your chances of landing your desired job.
A career objective, or a resume objective shows your passion and preparation for the future career. Don’t forget to make your store manager resume objectives connected to the job requirements. You could add the company name and position of the job you’re applying for in the career objective.
Education background is an important part to introduce your strengths and advantages. Remember to list down your degree, the full name of your school, your majors, GPA (optional), and the year of graduation in the store manager resume.
💡 Tips: If you don’t have a degree, it’s fine to show relevant online courses or training camps you’ve taken in your store manager resume.
Don’t miss out on every opportunity to show your strengths. Attach digital portfolio, side projects, or links to your websites in your application letter if they are relevant to the job you’re applying for. Remember to tell the recruiters if you have attached any documents in your application letter.
A well-designed and sincere store manager cover letter distinguishes you from other competitors. Remember to write down your personal information (name, email address, and phone number), intention to apply for the job, competitive advantages (work history, professional skills, and education background) in the store manager cover letter.
❌ Don’t forget to proofread your retail store manager resume and cover letter before submitting them. It’s also important to send your documents in PDF format instead of Microsoft Word format to preserve the formatting.
Data-Driven and Motivated Store Manager
[email protected]
(954)-520-769
New York City, NY, 00926
Accomplished store manager with 3+ years of leadership experience. Well-versed in operations management of a store and aim to join ABC Company as a Store Manager to build a strong team and exceed sales goals.
ARRCC Inc.| Store Manager, Florida City, Florida
Nov. 2022 - Feb. 2023
DDCCF Inc.| Assistant Store Manager , New York City, NY
Apr. 2019 - Nov. 2022
Hard Skills
Soft Skills
Business College, New York City, NY
Bachelor of Science: Business Administration
May 2014 - Apr. 2019
--- Originally written by Naomi Lin ---
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