Farrier CV Examples & Writing Guide

This sample is for a registered farrier with his own client list who is applying for a staff position at an equine hospital. The name, practices and yards are invented. If you are applying for an apprenticeship, keep the layout and lead with horse handling and any forge experience.

The reader wants to know whether you can be turned loose on their horses without supervision, and whether you will still be there in a year. They look for four things.

• Registration, qualifications and who trained you. Your FRC registration, your qualification level, and the Approved Training Farrier you served your apprenticeship with. The name of the farrier who trained you carries real weight in this trade.
• Volume and cycle. Horses a week, cycle length, and whether you keep to it. A farrier who runs on time is worth more to a yard than one who is technically brilliant and always late.
• Therapeutic ability and vet relationships. Whether you can shoe from radiographs, build a bar shoe package, and take direction from a vet without friction.
• Horse handling and safety. Difficult horses, young stock, stallions, and your record on injuries to yourself, the horse and the handler.

“Two things decide it for me: which vets will vouch for you, and whether you turn up on the day you said. Certification tells me you can shape a shoe. References from a vet tell me you can be trusted with a laminitic horse at two in the morning.”

In Great Britain farriery is regulated by law: only farriers registered with the Farriers Registration Council (FRC), and apprentices training under an approved farrier, may shoe horses. Put your registration first, then the exact qualification, the awarding body and the year.

• The usual route is an apprenticeship of just over four years with an Approved Training Farrier, ending in the Diploma of the Worshipful Company of Farriers (DipWCF) and FRC registration. The higher Associateship (AWCF) and Fellowship (FWCF) are optional. Give the level and the year you earned it, and note if you are preparing for the next one.
• If you qualified outside Great Britain, name the body and level (for example an American Farrier's Association certification) and say whether you are registered with the FRC. A foreign certificate on its own does not allow you to shoe horses here.
• College training: name the college, the training blocks you completed during your apprenticeship, and what they covered, such as anatomy, forge work and hot and cold shoeing.
• Apprenticeship: give the length, the year you qualified and the Approved Training Farrier you worked under. This is often the most persuasive item on an early-career page.
• Continuing professional development: clinic hours, competition placings, and any anatomy or therapeutic courses taken with a vet.
• Practical items that belong here: your driving licence, your own van and mobile forge, and whether you carry public liability insurance. Employers and yards ask about all three.

• Hoof balance assessment, static and dynamic evaluation, watching the horse move before and after
• Trimming, hot and cold shoeing, forge work, handmade shoes and modifications
• Therapeutic and corrective shoeing: bar shoes, wedges, pads and packing, hospital plates, glue-on and composite shoes
• Discipline-specific work: racing plates, studs and stud holes for jumping and eventing, native ponies, heavy horses and donkeys
• Foal and young stock corrective trimming
• Reading radiographs for shoeing purposes, and communication with treating vets
• Lameness recognition and knowing when to stop and call the vet
• Horse handling, restraint and safety, including young, sore and difficult horses
• Forge, anvil, van set-up and tool maintenance
• Scheduling, invoicing, record keeping, stock and tools

Two plain-language qualities are worth stating with evidence rather than as adjectives: you turn up when you said you would, and you tell an owner the truth about a foot even when they do not want to hear it. Both are the reason farriers keep clients for a decade.

For an apprenticeship the Approved Training Farrier is deciding two things: can you be around horses safely, and will you last. The work is hard on the back and most people quit in the first two years. Answer both questions on the page.

• Count everything you have done: forge hours, introductory courses, anatomy or equine study, competition entries.
• Put your horse background up front, whatever form it took: grooming, yard work, riding, showing, farm work, transporting horses.
• Say you have held horses for a farrier or a vet and how many times. It tells a head farrier you know how to stand and where not to.
• List physical work history honestly, since bending under 550 kg animals all day is the part that ends most careers early.
• Mention your own tools, your driving licence and whether you can travel or relocate.
• Ask a vet, yard manager or college tutor for a reference and name them with permission. In this trade, personal references do more than anything on the page.

• One page, or two at most. Your reader is a vet or a yard manager, not a corporate recruiter.
• Put your qualification letters (DipWCF, AWCF or FWCF) after your name, as farriers do in this trade.
• Include references with contact details, with permission. This is one of the few trades where naming references on the CV, rather than writing "available on request", is normal and expected.
• Say whether you have your own van, tools and insurance, since a staff or contract position may or may not supply them.
• No photo and no date of birth on a UK CV. A few photographs of finished feet and forge work can go in a separate portfolio if the employer asks.