Injection Moulding Operator CV Examples & Writing Guide

A fictional operator with a realistic path: assembly, then single-press operator, then running a cell of eight presses with tool change and setting duties. Every job names tonnage, polymers and one production number.

Moulding shops hire fast and want people who can be useful on a press in the first week. Four things get read before anything else.

• Machines and tonnage. Brands (Engel, Arburg, Husky, Milacron, Nissei, Haitian, Sumitomo) and the range you have run. An 80-tonne closure press and a 650-tonne automotive press are different jobs.
• How far up the ladder you go. Pulling and packing parts is operator work. Start-ups, tool changes, purging, parameter adjustments and troubleshooting are setter and process technician work, and they pay differently. Say exactly where you sit.
• Materials and parts. PP, ABS, PC, nylon, POM, TPE, glass-filled grades, medical-grade polymers. Naming materials proves you were near the process, not just the conveyor.
• Quality numbers. Scrap rate, cycle time, downtime, first-off results and customer rejects. Moulding is a numbers floor and almost no operator CV includes any.

“I get CVs that say 'operated injection moulding machines' and nothing else. Tell me tonnage, materials, whether you change moulds, and what your scrap rate was. Three lines like that and I know what shift and what pay grade to offer you.”

Three lines: years, presses and tonnage, polymers, one quality number, shift availability. Use a career objective only for a first factory job.

The whole trick is naming the machine, the material and the number. Here are the real duties on a moulding floor.

Keep every line specific enough that a supervisor could ask a follow-up question about it on the phone.

• Machines: press brands and tonnage range, hydraulic and all-electric machines, hot runner and cold runner tools, multi-cavity and family tools, insert moulding or overmoulding if you have run it.
• Process: start-up and shutdown, purging and colour changes, barrel and tool temperature, injection and hold pressure, cooling and cycle time, shot size and cushion, basic troubleshooting of short shots, flash, splay, sink and burn.
• Materials: PP, PE, ABS, PC and PC/ABS, nylon (PA6, PA66), POM, TPE and TPU, glass-filled grades, drying requirements, colourant and masterbatch ratios, regrind rules.
• Auxiliary equipment: dryers, chillers, mould temperature controllers, hopper loaders, granulators, conveyors, take-out robots and sprue pickers.
• Quality: drawing reading, callipers, micrometers, pin and thread gauges, go/no-go checks, SPC charts, first-off inspection, control plans, in-process documentation.
• Safety and standards: isolation and lock-off, machine guarding (PUWER), overhead crane and forklift operation, 5S, lean and kaizen participation, ISO 9001, IATF 16949 for automotive or ISO 13485 for medical.

There is no licence for moulding operators in the UK, so what you list is training and equipment certificates. Name the provider and the year.

Industry training bodies and several private training companies run recognised moulding courses, and some issue their own certificates for setters and process technicians. If you have completed one, list it by the provider's name and the level you reached, and keep the certificate. If your training was in-house, say so honestly; supervisors respect in-house training and can read between the lines. Forklift and crane training follows HSE guidance, but each employer authorises its own operators, so a new employer will usually reassess you regardless of your certificate.

Moulding shops take on entry-level operators constantly, and most training happens on the floor. The CV needs to answer whether you will turn up and whether you will follow a procedure exactly.

1. 1Put shift availability at the top: nights, weekends, 12-hour rotating shifts, overtime. It is the single strongest thing an entry-level applicant can offer.
2. 2Use any repetitive, quality-checked work as your experience: assembly, packing, warehouse, food production, kitchen, landscaping crews. Give units per shift and an accuracy or error rate.
3. 3Add any machine you have run: forklift, pallet truck, sewing machine, CNC, printing press, farm machinery. It shows you are comfortable around moving equipment.
4. 4Do IOSH Working Safely before applying. It is short, often available online, and shows a supervisor you are serious.
5. 5Mention measuring if you have done it. Tape measures, callipers, scales, reading a drawing. Moulding is inspection work as much as machine work.
6. 6Say you are willing to work towards setter and process technician. Shops promote from within and want people who intend to stay.

The presses are similar; the paperwork and tolerances are not. Reorder the top of your CV for the shop you are applying to.

• Automotive (IATF 16949): lead with control plans, SPC discipline, traceability, PPAP and first-off work, and containment or sorting experience. Customer rejects and scrap rate matter most here.
• Medical (ISO 13485): lead with cleanroom class, gowning, documentation, batch control and validation support. Any experience with device components or cleanroom moulding is worth naming first.
• Packaging and closures: lead with cycle time, high cavitation tools, uptime and parts per shift. Speed and consistency are the currency.
• Trade moulders and jobbing shops: lead with tool change frequency, the range of tonnage you have run and how many different jobs you handle a week. Flexibility is the hire.
• Anywhere with 12-hour rotating shifts, put your availability on the page. Shift cover decides a large share of these hires.
• 'Injection moulding' is the British and Australian spelling; US firms and job adverts write 'injection molding'. Use the UK spelling on a UK CV so keyword matching works.

• One page, reverse-chronological, plain headings. No photo and no date of birth on a UK CV.
• Put press tonnage, polymers and shift availability in the top third. That is the screen.
• Recruitment agency and applicant tracking systems match plain words: 'injection moulding', 'tool change', 'setter', 'scrap rate', 'SPC', 'forklift', 'IATF 16949', 'cleanroom'. Use the ones that are true.
• List the press brands you have run. Shops buy from a small number of manufacturers and hire people who already know their machines.
• Include temp-to-perm assignments with the agency and the client site. Skipping them creates gaps that look worse than the assignments do.
• Save as a PDF named Marchetti-Luis-Moulding-Operator.pdf, and check that the years in your personal statement match the dates below.