What a warehouse recruiter checks in ten seconds

Before anyone reads about your experience, they check the practical facts. Put them in a short personal statement at the top: years in warehousing, the trucks you hold licences for and when they expire, your pick rate or the systems you know, shift availability, whether you have your own transport, and your right to work in the UK.

Everything else in the CV is there to back those lines up. If the statement says "counterbalance and reach, RTITB, valid to 2028, 4-on-4-off days and nights", the reader already knows you are worth a call.

List forklift licences precisely

"Forklift licence" on its own is not enough. Truck types are different qualifications and different jobs: a reach truck site will not be interested in counterbalance alone, and a VNA licence is a step up again.

Put the licences in the skills section without a self-rating and repeat them with dates under qualifications. A licence is something you have or do not have; a four-out-of-five bar next to it looks odd and tells the recruiter nothing.

• Truck type: counterbalance, reach, VNA, order picker, PPT or LLOP, telehandler, bendi or flexi.
• Accrediting body: RTITB, ITSSAR, AITT or in-house. An accredited certificate transfers between employers; in-house training generally does not, so say which it is.
• Date of the certificate and its expiry. Refresher training is expected every three to five years, and an out-of-date licence means a training slot before you can start.
• Maximum lift height you have worked at, if you have used a reach truck or VNA.

Use numbers: pick rates, accuracy, volumes

Warehouses measure everything, which makes this one of the easiest jobs to describe with figures. Pick rate in lines or units per hour, accuracy percentage, pallets put away or trailers unloaded per shift, order volumes at peak. If you do not know your rate, your team leader does, and it is on the WMS reports.

Compare "picking and packing orders" with "picked 140 lines per hour at 99.7% accuracy using RF scanners, top 10% on site for six months". The second is what gets you onto the shortlist for the better-paid sites.

Name the systems: the WMS (Manhattan, SAP EWM, Blue Yonder or an in-house one), RF scanners, voice picking, put-to-light. Site recruiters search CVs for these words because someone who knows the system needs less training.

Shifts, location and the practical details

Most warehouse roles are shift-based and many sites are outside town with poor public transport. State the patterns you have worked and will work: days, nights, rotating, 4-on-4-off, weekends. Say whether you have your own transport or a full driving licence, and how far you can travel.

If you have done peak-season work, say so, with dates. Employers hiring for Black Friday and Christmas want people who have done it before and stayed to the end of the contract.

Agency work is normal in this sector. List it honestly: the agency, the client site, the dates and what you did there. A run of short contracts at named sites reads better than an unexplained gap.

Health and safety, and what employers must check

Every site has to verify some things before you start. Having them on the CV removes a step.

• Right to work in the UK. One line is enough: "Full right to work in the UK" or your visa type. Employers must check documents or a share code before your first shift.
• Manual handling training with the date. Nearly every site requires it and most will retrain you, but a current certificate helps.
• Any health and safety qualification, such as a Level 2 award, and a clean incident record if you can honestly claim one.
• Own safety boots and hi-vis, if you have them. A small thing, but agencies ask.
• A DBS check is not normally needed for warehousing, so only list one if you already have it.

No warehouse experience yet

Sites hire people without warehouse experience all the time, especially for picking and packing. What they want to see is that you have done physical, shift-based or target-driven work: retail stockroom, delivery, production line, hospitality, farm work. Describe it with the same kind of numbers: parcels handled, deliveries per day, targets met.

Say that you are willing to train on forklifts. Many employers put new operatives through in-house counterbalance training within months, and saying so shows you plan to stay.

Common mistakes in warehouse operative CVs

These are the reasons a CV goes to the bottom of the pile.

• "Forklift licence" without the truck type, accrediting body or expiry date.
• No mention of shift availability or transport.
• Duties copied from an advert instead of your own rates and volumes.
• Leaving out agency contracts, so the CV shows gaps that were actually work.
• A photo, date of birth or National Insurance number. UK employers do not need any of these on a CV.
• Two or three pages. One page covers almost every warehouse career; two at most.
• Sending the CV as a photo or screenshot. Agencies load CVs into systems that need to read the text.