Health and Safety Officer CV Examples & Writing Guide

A fictional person, written the way health and safety hiring actually reads. The industry is stated in the job line, the accident rates are in the first bullets, and the qualifications list uses the exact names the awarding bodies use.

Safety hiring is risk hiring. The person reading your CV is deciding whether you will keep their people whole and their company clear of an enforcement notice. Four things carry that decision.

• Industry match. Construction, manufacturing, oil and gas, healthcare and warehousing have different hazards and different regulations. A CV that does not say which one you come from gets skipped, because the reader cannot tell if you know their hazards.
• The numbers. Accident frequency rate, lost-time injury frequency rate, RIDDOR-reportable count, near-miss reporting rate, days without a lost-time injury, inspection close-out rate. Give a before and after, not a single figure floating on its own.
• Qualifications in the right order. IOSH Working Safely is a course you attended. The NEBOSH General Certificate and the NEBOSH Diploma are qualifications with exams behind them, and Tech IOSH, Grad IOSH and CMIOSH are membership grades. Managers know the difference, so do not blur them into one list called "qualifications and training".
• Regulator experience. Whether you have walked an HSE inspector round a site, dealt with an improvement or prohibition notice, or run the corrective action after one. Say so plainly if you have.

“The first thing I look for is the industry and the second is a rate with a before and after. Anyone can write "promoted a safety culture". Tell me your TRIR was 3.1 and you got it under 1.0, tell me how, and I will read the whole page.”

Three or four lines. Industry, scope (headcount or hours), one rate you moved, and your top qualification. Skip anything about being passionate about safety; every applicant writes that.

Most safety CVs copy the duty list from the job advert. The reader wrote that advert. Turn each duty into something that happened on your watch.

Separate qualifications and membership grades from training courses. Qualifications come from an awarding body and need an exam; membership grades are awarded by IOSH and need ongoing CPD. Courses are attendance. Listing IOSH Working Safely as a qualification is the single most common mistake on these CVs.

• IOSH membership grades, in rough order of weight: Tech IOSH at technician level, Grad IOSH once you hold an accredited degree or diploma-level qualification, and Chartered membership (CMIOSH), the grade most senior postings ask for by name.
• IOSH courses: Working Safely for all staff and Managing Safely for supervisors and managers. Say which. Being able to deliver them in house through an approved training provider is a genuine hiring advantage because the employer can train without buying places.
• Confined space training at the right risk level (low, medium or high, with breathing apparatus where needed) for process plant, water and utilities work. List the refresher date.
• Occupational hygiene qualifications from the British Occupational Hygiene Society (BOHS) if you do exposure monitoring such as dust, noise or LEV testing; this is a different profession, not an add-on, so only list it if you hold it.
• ISO 45001 internal or lead auditor training if your employer runs a certified management system.
• First Aid at Work, and a trainer qualification if you hold one. Being able to train first aiders in house saves an employer real money.
• The NEBOSH General Certificate is the standard first qualification in the UK and much international work, and the NEBOSH National Diploma is the usual route towards Chartered membership. US credentials such as OSHA 30 or a BCSP certification are respected by international employers but do not replace them, so list both if you have both.

Put membership numbers only where the body publishes a register an employer may check. Otherwise the qualification name, the awarding body and the year are enough. There is no licence to practise as a health and safety officer in the UK, but some sectors and clients add their own requirements (CSCS cards on construction sites, client inductions, pre-qualification schemes), so check what your sector and your clients expect before you claim you meet them.

Two very different starting points end up applying for the same job. Write them differently.

1. 1If you have a safety degree and a placement: lead with the placement as real experience, with counts. Number of risk assessments written, inspections shadowed, training sessions delivered, records kept.
2. 2If you are coming off the tools: lead with the safety duties you already carried. Competent person or supervisor appointments, toolbox talks, permits, team size, and any time you stopped a job. Stopping work is the single most convincing thing a site candidate can describe.
3. 3Get the NEBOSH General Certificate before you apply. It costs several hundred pounds and it is the first filter on almost every posting.
4. 4Add the trade knowledge as an asset, not a past life. "Nine years as a foreman, so teams take corrections from someone who has done the work" answers a real objection about young safety officers.
5. 5Name the exam you are sitting and when. "NEBOSH exam booked for March 2027" reads as a plan; "working towards a qualification" reads as nothing.

Two pages is the UK norm once you have a few years behind you; one page is fine at entry level. Reverse chronological, personal statement at the top. No photo, date of birth or marital status. In the US the same document is called a resume and follows slightly different conventions, so if you apply to a US employer, follow theirs.

• Keywords worth mirroring when the advert uses them: RIDDOR, COSHH, CDM 2015, PUWER, LOLER, risk assessment, RAMS, accident frequency rate, lost-time injury, permit to work, confined space, working at height, safe isolation, face-fit testing, LEV, incident investigation, root cause, corrective action, ISO 45001, Constructionline, CHAS, behavioural safety.
• Spell out an acronym once on first use, then use the acronym. Applicant tracking systems match on the exact string in the advert, and human readers outside health and safety do not know what LTIFR means.
• Give each job a scope line: headcount covered, sites, shifts, hours worked per year. It takes one clause and answers the question every reader has.
• Keep a single column with standard headings. Contractor safety departments run CVs through tracking systems, and two-column layouts still lose text on the way in.
• Add a short line on software: Intelex, Origami Risk, Cority, VelocityEHS, Procore, SafetyCulture (iAuditor). Adverts increasingly list one of these by name.

If your industry changes, add a one-line bridge in the personal statement saying what carries over. Falls, confined spaces, isolation and permit systems exist everywhere; the specific regulations and equipment do not. Naming what transfers stops the reader from assuming nothing does.