Five Tips for Writing a Supply Chain Resume
The demand for supply chain management skills has increased greatly over the past decade. If you’re looking for a supply chain job, building a strong resume is essential to your success. Here are five tips for writing your next supply chain resume.
Clear Explanations
As you write about your job experiences, it’s important to paint a clear picture of each job and its importance to the job you are seeking next. Simply regurgitating the job description for your role will make you look like everyone else. Your resume has to resonate and differentiate you to be effective. Some questions you may want to ask yourself could include:
What did you make, move, or sell?
Who was involved in your supply chain?
Where did you fit in within the supply chain?
What was the scope of your supply chain responsibilities?
Supply chains are complex webs. Distill that complexity in the simplest terms for everyone reading your resume, from the HR clerk to the VP of Supply Chain.
Back It With Facts
Besides resonating and differentiating, your resume also has to substantiate your claims. Now that you’ve told your next employer the context around what you’ve done, you need to back it up with evidence so they believe you are great at the job. Think numbers, percentages, quantities, and savings. Some items you could brainstorm include:
Reducing dropped calls
Improving carrier capacity
Invoicing accuracy
Minimizing losses
Reducing obsolete inventory
Reducing freight charges
Remember, you’re not looking for random numbers, but the right numbers that will shape your unique narrative as the most qualified candidate.
Accuracy and Efficiency
Accuracy and efficiency are kings in the supply chain space. These are two transferable skills you should not overlook. Everyone will include these words as buzzwords in their resume, but not you. You’re going to show employers your skills through stories and evidence. Tell them about your accuracy and efficiency with raw materials, billing, and logistics.
Connect to the Big Picture
Your resume cannot be a documentary of where you’ve been. You have to tell people why you matter. Show that you understand how each of your roles impacts the company. Some ideas you may choose to incorporate into your resume could be:
Did you help sales bring in key accounts because you increased global reach or improved the ability to fulfill orders?
Did you implement an ERP that drove savings and efficiencies?
Did you save the company millions in risk exposure and liabilities by having no safety incidents?
Did you implement a lean initiative that improved profit margins?
Control the Narrative
The human brain is only capable of remembering three to four things at a time. Creating a controlling message for your resume supported by three or four key ideas will ensure employers metabolize your message, remember you, and ultimately call you first for an interview. Make a list of all the problems you solve for an employer in the role you are seeking and rank them by order of importance and then again by your skill strength. Take the top three or four and you’ll have a wireframe for your resume to keep it concise and on point.
In Summary:
Be specific and clear in your work experiences. Details matter.
Support your claims with evidence to show you were really good at the relevant parts of each job.
Show transferable skills like accuracy and efficiency, don’t tell.
Keep it relevant and show your future employer you understand the greater picture.
Define your narrative and don’t be afraid to repeat your core three to four talking points.
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