Retail sales assistant CV example, with expert notes
In retail, recruiters look for three things: customer service, sales results, and reliability on the till and the shop floor. Here is a CV that shows all three, followed by what to take from it for your own.
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The example
Emma Clarke
Fashion Retail Sales Assistant
Bristol · emma.clarke@example.com · +44 7700 900123
Profile
Retail sales assistant with six years' experience in fashion, comfortable with demanding customers and busy sale periods. I enjoy advising customers, building loyalty and keeping the shop floor looking its best. As till lead and trainer for new starters, I am looking for a senior sales assistant or assistant manager role with a fashion retailer.
Experience
Sales Assistant2021 – present
Linen & Co, Bristol
- Advised around sixty customers a day; average transaction value up 9% over the year.
- Till lead: opening, cashing up and till discrepancies kept under £5 a month.
- Trained 4 seasonal staff on products and till procedures.
- Set up window displays and new collections at every seasonal change.
Sales Assistant2019 – 2021
South Studio, Bristol
- Served, advised and processed payments in a 1,300 sq ft boutique.
- Received deliveries and restocked the shop floor daily.
Education
BTEC Level 3 Extended Diploma in Business · City of Bristol College · 2019
Skills
Customer service · Building customer loyalty · Cash handling and cashing up · Visual merchandising · Stock management · EPOS systems
Languages
English: native · French: B1
Profile, employers and figures are fictional: borrow the structure, not the content.
Why this CV works
- The job title says what she's aiming for, right under the name: “Fashion Retail Sales Assistant” is more precise than “Sales Assistant”.
- The profile fits in four sentences: the job and experience, what she does well, a piece of proof (till lead, trainer), what she is looking for.
- Each role has one or two quantified results, no more: the scale of the job is clear without weighing the CV down.
- The older role is summarised in two bullets: still useful, without crowding out the recent one.
What you can quantify in retail
- The number of customers served per day, or the shop's footfall.
- Average transaction value, conversion rate, a sales target met or beaten.
- Till discrepancies, transactions per shift, the size of the area you looked after.
- The number of people you trained, the number of product lines you managed.
No exact figure? An honest order of magnitude (“around sixty”, “over 200 product lines”) beats invented precision.
Keywords you'll often see in job ads
Customer service, customer loyalty, cash handling, till operation, visual merchandising, replenishment, stock management, sales targets, upselling, EPOS. Use the ones from the ad that match your experience, in the ad's own words.
Common mistakes
- Listing tasks every sales assistant does (“serving customers”) with nothing that shows your level.
- Leaving out the till and stock: these are responsibilities recruiters look for, especially for a senior role.
- Adding a photo: UK and US CVs usually don't include one. On a CV written in English, OpusCV suggests leaving it out.