Concreter CV Examples & Writing Guide

This CV is for a concreter who started as a groundworker on housing foundations and now finishes commercial floor slabs. The name and contractors are made up. The numbers are the kind a site manager or foreman knows off the top of their head: cubic metres poured per day, square metres finished, gang size, floor tolerances, rework and safety record.

Concreter CVs are read by a site manager, a foreman or the owner of the company, usually on a phone between pours. They have a pour on Thursday and need to know if you can be on the gang. They are checking four things.

• What have you poured and finished? Ground-bearing slabs, foundations, suspended slabs, kerbs, footpaths, decorative. Commercial floors and housing foundations are different gangs. Name the type of work, the size of a typical pour (m³ and m²) and the gang size.
• Labourer or finisher? Labourers form, strike, fix reinforcement, place and run the poker. Finishers screed, float, trowel, edge, joint and know when the slab is ready. Foremen set levels, order concrete and run the pour. Say which you are and what you are moving towards. Finishing skill is what gets the better rate, so show it with specs (floor tolerances, finish quality, zero call-backs).
• Can you run the kit? Ride-on power float, laser screed, early-entry saw, skid steer, dumper, plate compactor. Each one you can run is one less person the foreman has to find, and plant needs a CPCS or NPORS card on most sites.
• Will you be there at 5 a.m. and can you get there? Pours start early, run long and do not wait. A driving licence, your own transport and a line like "available for early pours, weekends and working away" answers the question before the phone call. Safety record and CSCS card come right after.

“I want to know what you have finished and how big. If you tell me you finished 2,800 square metres a day on a warehouse slab and you can run a ride-on, I already know what to pay you. 'Hard worker' tells me nothing; every lad on my gang is a hard worker.”

Most concreter CVs say "poured concrete, finished concrete, set up formwork". Every applicant did that. Add the type of pour, the size, the tool, and one number the foreman can check, and the same duty proves what you can do. Seven rewrites from real concrete work:

Group your skills the way a foreman thinks: what you can place and finish, what kit you run, formwork and reinforcement, reading drawings and specs, plant, safety. Ten to fifteen items is enough. Leave off "Microsoft Office" and "communication".

• List each piece of kit you can run without supervision, and the CPCS or NPORS card for any plant. A ride-on power float or laser screed operator is hard to find.
• Physical requirements are real for this job: say you can handle 25 kg bags all day and work 10- to 12-hour pour days in heat and cold. It answers a question the foreman is already asking.
• A second language (Polish, Romanian, Portuguese and others) is useful on many UK concrete gangs; list it if you have it.

There is no licence to work as a concreter or concrete finisher in the UK. Contractors hire on what you have poured and who vouches for you. But a few cards and qualifications are recognised across the industry, and most major sites require a CSCS card. List the ones you hold with the year.

• CSCS card (Construction Skills Certification Scheme): the standard site card. Broadly, green is for labourers (usually the CITB Health, Safety and Environment test plus a Level 1 health and safety award), blue for skilled workers with an NVQ Level 2, and gold for supervisors. Card rules change, so check the CSCS website.
• NVQ Level 2 in a concreting or groundworks pathway: the qualification behind a blue skilled worker card. Experienced concreters can achieve it through an on-site assessment route instead of college. Use the exact title printed on your certificate.
• Apprenticeship: a completed groundworker or civil engineering operative apprenticeship is the strongest training on a concreter CV. List it under Education with the training provider and completion year.
• Plant and driving: CPCS or NPORS cards for the plant you use (dumper, skid steer loader, telehandler, excavator), plus a category C1 or C licence and Driver CPC if you drive a mixer or tipper. Say which scheme and category.
• Safety training: Emergency First Aid at Work, silica dust awareness (cutting and grinding concrete creates respirable crystalline silica, which HSE treats as a serious health risk), confined spaces, excavation awareness, working at height for suspended slab work, and SSSTS for gangers and foremen.

Two or three lines at the top: your role (labourer, finisher, foreman) and years; the type of work and typical pour size; the kit you run; one number and your availability. Use a career objective (one line) only if you have never worked on a concrete gang.

Concrete gangs take on labourers with no concrete experience all the time; the work is taught on the job. What they cannot teach is turning up at 5 a.m., handling heat, cold and heavy lifting, and following the foreman's direction on a pour that cannot stop. Your CV has to prove those with whatever you have done.

1. 1Get a CSCS Green Labourer card before you apply. It usually takes a one-day health and safety course plus a short computer test, and most major sites will not let you on without a card.
2. 2Open with a one-line career objective that names the job and your availability (early starts, weekends, working away), plus your driving licence and transport.
3. 3List any physical or outdoor work: landscaping, roofing, labouring, farm work, removals, warehouse, the armed forces. Pull out the parts that look like concrete: shovelling and levelling, running a barrow, lifting 25 kg bags, using a skid steer, reading a tape and a level. Add one number each.
4. 4Add a short skills list of what you already know: tape measure and level, mixing bagged concrete, using a shovel and rake, basic tools, skid steer or forklift if you have run one.
5. 5Mention your attendance record from your last job. Foremen care about it more than anything else on the page.

Most concrete contractors are small and read CVs on a phone or a printout. Large main contractors and labour agencies run them through an applicant tracking system. A plain one-page layout works for both, and it is also what you hand over when you walk onto a site.

• One page, always. Fifteen years of concrete work fits on one page when older jobs get one line each.
• Order: contact line with driving licence, transport and availability; two-line personal statement; skills; work history newest first with pour types and numbers; cards and qualifications; education.
• Standard headings, one column, normal font, no photo, no date of birth, no coloured boxes. A PDF for online applications; bring printed copies to the yard.
• Mirror the advert's words once each: "concreter", "concrete finisher" or "concrete labourer", "floors", "foundations", "formwork", "steel fixing", "screed", "power float", "CSCS", "NVQ", and the plant they name.
• Include seasonal gaps honestly. Concrete work slows in hard frosts and over Christmas; "seasonal lay-off, back with the same contractor March 2025" is normal and expected.
• US contractors call this trade "concrete finisher" or "cement mason" and the document a resume. If you apply in Ireland, the same CV rules apply, but the site safety card there is Safe Pass rather than CSCS.

Run your CV and the advert through the cvplex ATS checker before you apply online. It shows which trade words from the advert you are missing and whether your skills list was read as one.