Food Packer CV Examples & Writing Guide

One page for a packer who has moved up to line leader over six years in fresh produce and chilled ready meals. The person and the companies are invented. Notice the pack rates, the attendance figure and the fact that shift availability sits right in the contact line, where a supervisor will see it.

Food packing is high-volume hiring with high turnover, so a supervisor spends about ten seconds on each CV. They are answering four questions.

• Will you show up? Attendance is the number one reason packers get let go. A line with two people missing runs slow all shift. Put your attendance percentage or your missed-shift count on the page.
• Can you take our shift? Nights, weekends, 12-hour shifts, 4 on 4 off, seasonal peaks. Say exactly what you can work.
• Do you already know food safety rules? GMP, handwashing, hairnets and beard snoods, no jewellery, allergen changeovers, date coding. Someone who knows these needs a day of training instead of a week.
• How fast and how accurate are you? Packs per hour, weight tolerance, giveaway percentage, rejects caught. Numbers here separate you from every other applicant, because almost nobody gives them.
• Can you lift and stand? Weight handled, hours on your feet, and whether you can work in a cold room.

“Ninety percent of the packer CVs I see say the same three things: hard worker, team player, fast learner. The one that says 620 packs an hour, 98% attendance and knows what an allergen changeover is goes on the interview list before I finish the stack.”

Most people search for food packer duties and responsibilities and copy the list straight from a job advert. That makes every CV identical. Take the same duty and add the number, the product and the standard.

Ten to twelve, and make them things a supervisor could check on your first shift. Skip "hard working" and "team player": every applicant writes them, so they carry no information.

• Hand packing, weighing to target weight and tolerance, case packing, palletising and wrapping
• Packaging machines: tray sealer, form-fill-seal bagger, labeller, date coder, checkweigher, shrink tunnel
• Metal detector and X-ray checks, test piece verification, handling rejects
• Date and lot coding, label reconciliation, line clearance between runs
• Allergen changeover, clean-down, hygiene and chemical handling to site procedure (COSHH)
• GMP and personal hygiene rules: handwashing, hairnets and beard snoods, PPE, no jewellery
• Quality inspection: foreign bodies, damage, seal integrity, fill level
• Production paperwork: hourly checks, temperature logs, waste and downtime records, FIFO stock rotation
• Physical: standing 10 to 12 hours, lifting 11 to 23 kg, working in 1°C to 4°C chilled rooms
• Forklift or powered pallet truck if you are trained, and a second language if you have one

Two or three lines. Years, product type, your rate, your attendance and your shift availability.

Factories hire people with no factory background all the time. What they cannot fix is someone who leaves after two weeks. Build the whole page around showing you will stay and you will turn up.

1. 1Header with your phone, town, transport and the shifts you can work. Write "available for nights and weekends" if it is true, because that is often the gap they are filling.
2. 2A two-line career objective naming the packing job and the shift, not a general "any position".
3. 3Any food safety certificate you hold: a Level 2 Food Hygiene or Food Safety in Manufacturing certificate, or the date you plan to get one.
4. 4Work history from anywhere with speed, standing or repetition: kitchens, shelf-stacking, warehouse, cleaning, farm work, care work. Give hours, weights, counts and attendance.
5. 5A short skills block with what transfers: following procedure exactly, working to a target time, hygiene rules, counting and weighing, working in a team on a line.
6. 6One honest line if you are new to factories, plus the fact you know what the conditions are (cold, noise, repetition, PPE). Supervisors trust an applicant who has thought about it.

None of these are hard requirements for a packer job, but each one saves the factory training time, which is the whole reason they call you first. There is no food handler card in the UK: food businesses must make sure staff are supervised and trained in food hygiene to suit their work, so most factories train you in your first weeks.

• A Level 2 Food Safety in Manufacturing or Level 2 Food Hygiene certificate. It is cheap and quick to get online, and it is the standard entry certificate in UK food factories.
• HACCP training. Many factories deliver a Level 2 HACCP course in-house, so if you have had it, name the level and the year. It shows you know what a critical control point is.
• Allergen control and GMP refresher training, usually delivered on site and worth listing by year.
• Forklift or powered pallet truck training from an accredited provider (RTITB, ITSSAR or AITT). This is the fastest way for a packer to become more useful, and it often comes with a pay rise.
• Any exposure to a retailer or BRCGS audit. Write "packing area passed two retailer audits with no findings" rather than naming a standard you only heard about.
• Emergency First Aid at Work, IOSH Working Safely or manual handling training if you have one from another job.

• One page, plain black type, no photo, no graphics. Many factories and agencies still take paper applications at the gate, so print a few copies.
• Availability and transport go in the contact block, not buried at the bottom.
• Use simple words and short bullets. The person reading may be a line supervisor, not an HR writer.
• Mirror the advert's language: GMP, allergen, date coding, checkweigher, metal detection, pallet, chilled, hygiene, line clearance, FIFO, BRCGS.
• If you speak another language, say so. Bilingual line leaders are valuable on mixed crews.
• UK conventions: no photo, no date of birth, no marital status. Many packing jobs are advertised as food packing operative, production operative or picker-packer, often through agencies, so use the advert's title in your CV.