Caretaker CV Examples & Writing Guide

This is a made-up person, but the shape is what a school, academy trust or housing association expects to see. Notice how every job says what the building was, how big it was, and what the caretaker fixed personally. Managers hire caretakers to stop problems reaching their desk, so the CV has to prove you close things out yourself.

This trips people up, and it costs interviews. In the UK, "caretaker" means someone who looks after a building, its grounds or a block of flats: the school caretaker, the estate caretaker, the church caretaker. "Carer" or "care assistant" means someone who looks after a person. Two different hiring managers, two different CVs. In the US the same building job is usually called janitor or custodian.

• Buildings and grounds: use caretaker, site manager, site supervisor, premises officer, estate caretaker, facilities assistant or groundsperson. This page is for you.
• Looking after a person (an older or disabled adult, a child): use carer, care assistant, support worker, healthcare assistant or nanny. A different CV entirely, with different checks and qualifications.
• Live-in or residential caretaker: still a real UK job (some schools, churches, country estates, holiday parks) where accommodation comes with the role. Say so on the CV, because those employers screen for people who can live on site.
• Animal care: kennel, cattery, rescue centre or lab animal work. That CV needs animal handling, feeding routines and hygiene, not boilers.

Facilities hiring is about risk. The person reading your CV is picturing a burst pipe at 2 a.m., a fire risk assessment next Tuesday and a parent complaining about a cold classroom. They scan for four things, usually in this order.

• Scope you have carried alone. One school, one 200-flat estate, or six buildings with a team? Size and headcount decide whether you are a fit before anything else.
• What you fix yourself. Every trade you can do in-house saves them a contractor invoice. Spell out plumbing, basic electrics, door hardware, plastering, appliance swaps and filter and fan belt changes.
• Safety and inspection record. Fire alarm tests, fire risk assessments, legionella logs, asbestos awareness, IOSH training, an enhanced DBS check for schools, no accidents. Write the outcome, not just the task.
• Availability. Call-out rotas, gritting call-outs, early opens, weekend lettings and event set-ups. Say which ones you have actually done and for how long. Reliability is the whole job.

“The CVs that get called are the ones where I can tell what the person fixed with their own hands. Everyone writes 'general maintenance'. Tell me you rebuilt flush valves, swapped a water heater, re-keyed a building. That is the difference between a caretaker I can leave alone on a Saturday.”

Use a personal statement if you have done the work before. Use a career objective only if you are switching in from another job or starting out. Either way, name the building type and the trades you cover in the first line. Three sentences is plenty.

Most caretaker CVs list duties copied from the job advert. The fix is small: add what, how big, how often, and what happened as a result. Here are the lines that show up most often, rewritten.

Keep the skills box to 10 to 14 items and make them things you would be happy to be tested on in the interview walk-round. Split them the way a manager thinks: repairs, cleaning and grounds, and the paperwork side.

• Repairs: plumbing (taps, flush valves, traps, point-of-use water heaters), basic electrics within your competence (like-for-like swaps of sockets, switches and light fittings, LED lamps), door hardware and closers, lock changes, plastering and decorating, ceiling tiles, appliance swaps, minor carpentry.

• Building systems: boiler room checks, heating start-up and shutdown with the heating contractor, filter and fan belt changes, condensate lines, BMS panel basics, sump pumps, water temperature checks and flushing for legionella control, generator test runs, fire alarm and emergency lighting tests, visual checks on portable appliances between PAT tests.

• Cleaning and grounds: floor care (strip, seal, burnish, scrubber dryer), carpet extraction, toilet cleaning, waste and recycling, mowing and strimming, gritting and snow clearing, pressure washing.

• The soft skills that actually count here: turning up early every day, working alone without supervision, staying calm with an upset tenant or parent, and knowing when a job is beyond you and needs a qualified contractor such as a Gas Safe engineer or an electrician.

There is no licence for caretakers in the UK. What employers look for is a short stack of safety training, a DBS check for schools, and anything the equipment on site demands. List each with the provider and the year.

• IOSH Working Safely (or IOSH Managing Safely if you supervise a team). One of the most common asks on caretaker and facilities adverts.
• First aid: Emergency First Aid at Work or First Aid at Work. Schools and housing providers often want at least one caretaker trained.
• Enhanced DBS check, with a children's barred list check for school jobs. The school or trust usually arranges it; say if you are on the DBS Update Service, because it can speed up your start.
• Legionella awareness or water hygiene training if you do temperature checks and flushing. Under the HSE's approved code of practice for legionella (L8) the site needs a named responsible person, and caretakers often keep the logs.
• Asbestos awareness: required for anyone whose work could disturb asbestos, which includes most caretakers in older schools and blocks of flats. It is usually refreshed every year.
• Gas and lifting: you must not work on gas appliances unless you are Gas Safe registered, so describe boiler work as checks, resets and reporting faults. Add IPAF or ladder training if you have it, and a full UK driving licence when the job includes a van.

Plenty of caretakers start with no job title in the field. Schools, churches, housing associations and self-storage companies hire on attitude and practical skills. Build the page in this order.

1. 1Open with a three-line career objective that names the building type you want and the tools you already use. Say you are looking for a caretaker role at a school, housing estate or church.
2. 2Do a short safety course before you apply. IOSH Working Safely or asbestos awareness takes a day or two, and it moves you ahead of half the pile. Add first aid if you can.
3. 3List every hands-on job you have had, even unrelated ones, and pull out the maintenance parts: warehouse cleaning, landscaping in summer, working on cars, helping a relative do up a house.
4. 4Say plainly that you can start early, work alone and be on call. Write it as a line, not a hint: "Available for 6 a.m. starts, weekend lettings and gritting call-outs."

A caretaker on a country estate, farm, outdoor centre or set of holiday cottages is a different sell from a school caretaker. The owner is usually not there. They are hiring someone they can leave in charge of an expensive, empty place, so the CV has to answer "can I trust this person alone for six months?"

• Lead with the property: acreage, number of buildings, whether it is seasonal or year-round, and whether it sits empty part of the year.
• Name the rural systems, because these jobs are full of them: borehole or private water supply, septic tank or treatment plant, oil or LPG heating, generators, wood burners, water shut-off and winter draining, track repairs and snow clearing.
• Show self-management. Contractor scheduling, budgets you were given, receipts and monthly reports back to the owner. Say how you reported and how often.
• State the living arrangement clearly. "Live-in position, on-site cottage" or "Open to live-in or on-call arrangement." These roles usually come with accommodation and employers screen for it up front.

• One or two pages. Two is normal in the UK once you have several sites behind you. Nobody in facilities reads a third page.
• Reverse chronological order, plain headings (Personal statement, Experience, Skills, Training and checks, Education). No columns, no icons, no graphics, no photo and no date of birth: UK CVs leave them off.
• Put your town, mobile number and email at the top. Distance from the site matters for call-out jobs, so do not hide where you live.
• Mirror the advert's exact words: caretaker, site manager, premises officer, planned maintenance, helpdesk, floor care, fire safety, voids, gritting, legionella. If the advert says "CAFM", name the system you have used.
• Include tool and system names in plain text, not only in a graphic skills bar: Planon, the trust helpdesk, scrubber dryer, alarm panel, hand auger, multimeter.
• Keep months on your dates. Facilities employers look at gaps and at how long you stayed. Long stays are a selling point in this field, so make them obvious.

One last check before you send it. Read your CV as if you are the manager on a Friday afternoon with a leaking roof. Does it say what you can fix, how big a place you can hold together, and whether you will answer the phone at 2 a.m.?