Carpenter and Joiner CV Examples & Writing Guide

This sample is for a qualified carpenter and joiner with about ten years in the trade who came up through an apprenticeship, erected timber frame houses for a housebuilder and now works for a commercial main contractor on concrete formwork and interior partitions. The name, companies and college are made up. Keep the structure and swap in your own specialism, project sizes and cards.

Most carpenter hiring is done by a site manager, a carpentry foreman or the owner of a small contractor, not by HR. Labour agencies often screen first. They read for four things and usually decide in under a minute.

• Which carpentry. First fix, second fix, formwork, timber frame, refurbishment, commercial fit-out, bench joinery. These are different jobs with different rates. A formwork foreman does not want to guess whether your "carpentry experience" means skirting boards.
• Scale and speed. Houses a year, m² per project, metres a day, days from slab to weathertight. This tells them whether you have worked at volume housebuilder pace or bespoke pace.
• Cards and safety record. A CSCS card is the minimum on most major sites, and chargehands and supervisors are expected to hold SSSTS. Years without a reportable injury are worth a line; main contractors track every accident.
• Whether you can read drawings, set out and lead. A carpenter who can set out from control points and run a small gang is paid as a chargehand; one who only cuts to marks is paid an improver's rate. Say which you are, and be honest.

“I want to know if you can set out a wall from the drawings without me standing next to you, and if you have your own tools and show up at 6:30. The CV that says 'erected 40 houses a year, ran a gang of five, CSCS and SSSTS' gets a call the same day.”

Three or four lines under your name: years, the kind of carpentry, one or two scale numbers, your cards and whether you lead. Below are versions for the specialisms people search for most. Use a career objective only if you are entering the trade.

Most carpenter CVs list tasks copied from a job advert. A site manager already knows what carpenters do. What they want is the type of work, the scale and the quality. Eight rewrites below use real carpentry duties.

List 10–14 skills, grouped by what a site manager asks: what can you build, what can you read, what can you run. Put the advert's own words first.

Trade skills (list the ones you actually do):

• First fix: stud walls, floor joists, roofs, stairs, trussed rafters, cut roofs, door linings
• Second fix: skirting, architrave, doors, kitchens, stairs and balustrades, built-in furniture
• Concrete formwork: walls, columns, slabs, bases, falsework, gang forms
• Metal-stud partitions, plasterboard, suspended ceilings and bulkheads
• Commercial doorsets, frames and ironmongery (including FD30 and FD60 fire doors)
• External: cladding, sheathing, breather membrane, window and external door installation
• Decking, fencing and garden buildings
• Refurbishment: strip-out, structural alterations, matching existing joinery

Drawings, tools and site skills:

• Reading architectural and structural drawings; details, sections and door schedules
• Setting out with tape, string line, laser level or total station
• Cutting lists, material take-offs and timber ordering
• Power tools: mitre, table, circular and track saws, routers, first-fix and second-fix nailers
• Access and plant: MEWPs (IPAF), mobile towers (PASMA), telehandler (list your CPCS or NPORS card)
• Working at height: edge protection, harnesses, ladders and stepladders
• Software: Procore or Autodesk Build for drawings and daily logs, Bluebeam for take-offs (commercial)
• Gang leadership: allocating work, keeping timesheets, coordinating with other trades

Leave out "hard worker" and "team player". Say instead that you have your own tools, a reliable van and a clean safety record, and prove the rest in your bullets.

There is no licence to work as a carpenter in the UK (building control and warranty inspectors check the work, not the person). What employers look for instead is your training route, your NVQ level and your CSCS card. List them in their own section with the awarding body and year.

• CSCS card (Construction Skills Certification Scheme): most major contractors will not let you on site without one. Broadly, green is for labourers, blue for skilled workers with an NVQ Level 2, and gold for advanced craft (NVQ Level 3) or supervisors. Card rules change, so check the CSCS website, and give the card type and expiry year.
• Apprenticeship and NVQ: Level 2 and Level 3 apprenticeships in carpentry and joinery, usually with college day release, lead to an NVQ in Wood Occupations (Site Carpentry or Bench Joinery). Experienced carpenters without papers can get the NVQ through an on-site assessment route. If you are mid-apprenticeship, write "2nd-year apprentice, Level 3 Site Carpentry".
• College qualifications: full-time Level 1–3 Diplomas in Site Carpentry or Bench Joinery (for example City & Guilds or CITB-approved courses) count as training. List the level and year.
• Asbestos awareness: expected on refurbishment work in older buildings, because anyone liable to disturb asbestos at work must have awareness training. UKATA courses are the usual ones on refurbishment CVs.
• Access, plant and safety training: IPAF for MEWPs, PASMA for mobile towers, CPCS or NPORS cards for plant such as telehandlers, slinger/signaller, working at height, confined spaces. SSSTS is the CITB course for chargehands and supervisors, SMSTS for site managers. Name the provider.
• First aid: Emergency First Aid at Work (1 day) or First Aid at Work (3 days), often wanted for chargehands and small gangs.
• Union or trade body membership: rarely asked for. If you belong to a union or the Institute of Carpenters, list it under memberships, never in place of your card and NVQ.

Housebuilders and formwork gangs take on labourers and apprentices constantly, and colleges and training providers start new carpentry apprentices every year. Nobody expects a first-year to read a structural drawing. They expect you to be on time, work in the rain, carry all day and want to learn. Show that with evidence.

1. 1Header title: "Apprentice Carpenter" or "Carpentry Labourer", matching the advert or the apprenticeship application.
2. 2Two-line career objective naming any hands-on work (family building work, decking, sheds, theatre sets, volunteer builds, Design and Technology at school) and that you have a CSCS Green card and basic tools.
3. 3Get your CSCS Green Labourer card before you apply. It usually needs the CITB Health, Safety and Environment test plus a Level 1 health and safety award, costs little and is asked for on almost every labouring job.
4. 4List physical, outdoor or early-start jobs with attendance numbers: landscaping, warehouse, removals, roofing labourer, farm work. Reliability is what they are hiring.
5. 5Add measuring and maths: your GCSE Maths grade or Functional Skills, reading a tape to the millimetre. Apprenticeship applications usually ask for English and maths at a set level.
6. 6State that you have a driving licence and your own transport. Sites move and start early. One page, no photo.

• One page, two at most. A 20-year carpenter fits by giving older contractors one line each and skipping jobs before the last 10–12 years.
• Order: header with title, personal statement, cards and qualifications, skills, experience, training. Cards go high; a site manager checks them first.
• Carpentry work is often agency, subcontract (CIS) or project-based, so group short stints under one heading ("Carpenter, various contractors, 2019–2021") rather than listing eight two-month jobs.
• Name project types rather than contractor names if the contractor is small: "timber frame subcontractor to a regional housebuilder" says more than an unfamiliar company name.
• Include "own tools and transport" somewhere on the page. Nearly every advert asks.
• No photo, no date of birth, no full home address (town is enough). PDF for email; Word if the advert or agency asks. Bring printed copies to an agency or site interview.
• "Chippy" is everyday site slang in the UK, but keep it off the CV; use "carpenter", "joiner" or "carpenter and joiner" as the advert does. In Scotland the SVQ takes the place of the NVQ.

The cvplex carpenter template used in the sample puts certifications and skills in a side column so cards and trade skills are visible at a glance, with a plain experience column that applicant tracking systems read cleanly.

Large main contractors and labour agencies screen carpenter CVs with software; small contractors read by eye. Both look for the advert's exact words, so mirror them.

• Titles: carpenter, joiner, carpenter and joiner, site carpenter, bench joiner, first-fix carpenter, second-fix carpenter, formwork carpenter, shuttering carpenter, chargehand carpenter, carpentry foreman, apprentice carpenter
• Work words: first fix, second fix, formwork, shuttering, metal stud, partitions, doorsets and ironmongery, fire doors, setting out, drawing reading, take-off, snagging
• Safety words: CSCS, SSSTS, working at height, IPAF, PASMA, asbestos awareness, RAMS, zero reportable injuries
• Training words: apprenticeship, NVQ Level 2, NVQ Level 3, Site Carpentry, Bench Joinery, City & Guilds, CITB
• Software: Procore, Autodesk Build, Bluebeam (commercial roles)