Electrical Technician CV Examples & Writing Guide

An electrical technician is not the same job as an electrician, even though the adverts overlap. Technicians fault-find and maintain electrical and control systems in plants, utilities and buildings: motor controls, drives, PLCs, instrumentation, switchgear. Electricians install to BS 7671. If you do both, say so. This sample is a plant electrical maintenance technician who also covers HV substation work. The name and employers are made up.

A maintenance manager is buying two things: fewer breakdowns and nobody getting hurt. Four items on your CV decide whether they call.

• Voltage and equipment. 24 V DC control work and 11 kV switchgear are different jobs. Give the voltages, the drives, the switchgear and the control platform by name.
• Fault-finding evidence. Anyone can say "diagnose electrical faults". Show a fault you found, how you found it and what it saved: the loose termination on the thermal survey, the rising DC bus ripple, the intermittent proximity sensor that stopped a line twice a shift.
• Safety training and habits. Safe isolation, lock-off, arc flash awareness, permits to work, HV authorisation, confined space. Write the incident record if it is clean.
• Shift and call-out availability. Rotating shifts, nights, weekends and call-out are where plants struggle. If you will do them, say it in the header.

“The CVs that get interviews name the drive, the PLC and the voltage. I need to know if you can walk up to a PowerFlex with a fault code and a line down at 2am and actually fix it, or whether you have only ever changed sensors. And I check safety training before I check anything else.”

Three or four lines: years, setting, voltages and equipment, one result, safety training. Career objectives are for graduates and for people crossing over from another trade.

The weak version is what most electrical technician CVs say, and it is why so many of them look identical. The strong version names the equipment and the outcome.

Numbers that land: downtime hours, mean time to repair, work orders closed a week, PPM completion percentage, panels surveyed, loops commissioned, call-outs answered, years without an incident.

Write equipment and instruments, not adjectives. A maintenance manager scans this block for the exact hardware in their plant.

Power and distribution:

• Motor control centres, starters, contactors, overload relays
• Switchgear, circuit breakers, protection relays, auto-reclosers
• Transformers, batteries and substation auxiliary supplies
• Generators, automatic transfer switches, UPS systems
• Earthing, bonding and power quality checks

Controls and instrumentation:

• PLC fault finding and logic edits: Allen-Bradley Studio 5000 and RSLogix 500, Siemens TIA Portal and S7
• HMI and SCADA screens, alarm configuration
• Inverters (VSDs) and servo drives: parameter set-up, fault codes, tuning
• Sensors: proximity, photocell, encoder, load cell, thermocouple and RTD
• Transmitter calibration and 4-20 mA loop checks
• Industrial networks: EtherNet/IP, Modbus, Profibus, DeviceNet

Test equipment and documents:

• Digital multimeter, clamp meter, insulation resistance tester, low-resistance ohmmeter
• Oscilloscope, power quality analyser, loop calibrator
• Infrared thermal imaging camera
• Electrical schematics, ladder diagrams, single-line diagrams, P&IDs
• CMMS work orders and PPM routes (Maximo, SAP PM, Fiix)

Give this its own block above education. Name the awarding body and the date, and never write a qualification you do not hold.

• Safe isolation and Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 training. Not a licence, but the training UK employers expect for work on or near electrical equipment. Put the most recent refresher date.
• IOSH Working Safely or Managing Safely, plus a CSCS or ECS card if you work on construction sites. Add confined space, working at height and arc flash awareness training if you have them.
• Electrician qualifications. There is no state-style electrician licence in the UK; employers look for an NVQ Level 3, the AM2 and the 18th Edition (BS 7671). Many technician jobs do not require them, but they are a differentiator.
• An NVQ Level 3 or engineering maintenance apprenticeship, if you trained through one.
• CompEx certification for work in hazardous (Ex) areas, and manufacturer training on specific drives, PLCs or analysers for electronics-heavy and instrumentation roles.
• HV authorisation for substation and switching work, such as Competent Person or Authorised Person under your employer's safety rules. It is issued by the employer, so say whose rules and at what voltage.
• Education: an HNC or HND in electrical and electronic engineering, or a Level 3 engineering apprenticeship, is the common path, and a forces electrical trade counts for a lot. List both plainly.
• Full UK driving licence if the job includes a service van.

Plants hire technicians straight out of college courses, apprenticeships and the forces every year. With no plant experience, your CV has to make the workshop and the coursework concrete.

1. 1List workshop hours and what you built or wired: a motor reversing circuit, a PLC-controlled conveyor, a calibrated 4-20 mA loop, a panel you built to a drawing.
2. 2Put an industrial placement, work experience or apprenticeship in the experience section, not under education, with real duties and any numbers you have.
3. 3Get safe isolation training and IOSH Working Safely before you apply. Both are short and both remove a reason to skip you.
4. 4Say clearly that you will work rotating shifts, nights and call-out. That alone moves an entry-level CV up the pile.
5. 5Add any hands-on background that is not electrical: vehicle work, refrigeration and air conditioning, farm machinery, home wiring under supervision. Mechanical instinct is half the job.

• One page up to about ten years, two pages if you have a long equipment and site list.
• Header: title, safe isolation or HV authorisation status, electrician qualifications if you hold them, shift availability, travel radius.
• Qualifications above education. It is what gets checked.
• Reverse-chronological with month and year. Contract and shutdown work is normal in this trade, so group short contracts under one heading with the sites listed underneath.
• No photo, no date of birth and no marital status. UK employers do not expect them on a CV.
• Plain formatting, no tables or columns, PDF unless the employer asks for Word.

Mirror these advert words when they are true of you: electrical fault finding, motor control centre, inverter, VSD, PLC, ladder logic, HMI, SCADA, switchgear, transformer, protection relay testing, instrumentation, calibration, 4-20 mA, safe isolation, Electricity at Work Regulations, HV authorisation, planned preventive maintenance, CMMS, root cause analysis, single-line diagram, schematics.