Leather Worker CV Examples & Writing Guide

This sample is for a leathergoods maker with roughly nine years across a small-batch workshop, a saddlery and a leather furniture factory. The person and the businesses are invented. Replace the products, machines and numbers with yours.

Leather employers fall into two camps, and they want different things. A workshop or saddlery wants craft. A furniture, footwear or car interiors factory wants output and consistency. Read the advert and lead with whichever they are.

• Craft evidence: photos of your edges, stitch spacing and hardware setting. Sloppy edge finish is the fastest tell in this trade.
• Range of work: which leathers (veg-tan, chrome-tan, bridle, suede, exotics) and which products (bags, belts, dog leads, tack, upholstery, footwear).
• Machines: clicker press, splitter, bell skiver, walking foot machine, cylinder arm, post bed, CNC cutter. Say the type even if you cannot recall the exact model.
• Numbers: units a week, hides a shift, cutting yield, rework rate, repair turnaround. Production employers screen on these alone.
• Whether you can work to a pattern and spec, not just to your own taste. Say it plainly if you have.

“I can teach someone our patterns in a month. I cannot teach patience in an afternoon. So I look for a clean burnished edge in the photos, and I look for a number, hides per shift or bags per week, that tells me they have worked to a real schedule and not just at their own pace.”

Three or four lines. Say what you make, what you make it from, and one number that shows scale or quality.

The trap in leather CVs is writing like a hobby description. Each bullet should carry a material, a process and a number.

Hand skills and machine skills are read as two different things. List both, and add the materials, because a business that works only in chrome-tan upholstery hide screens for that word.

Hand skills:

• Cutting with head knife, round knife and strap cutter
• Saddle stitching with pricking irons or stitching chisels
• Skiving by hand and with a bell skiver
• Edge bevelling, sanding, burnishing, edge paint
• Hardware setting: rivets, press studs, buckles, screws, magnets
• Wet forming, moulding and casing
• Dyeing, antiquing, resist and finish coats
• Tooling, stamping and carving (if you do it, show a photo)

Machines and production:

• Clicker press and steel rule dies
• CNC cutting table and pattern nesting software
• Band knife splitter and skiving machine
• Walking foot, cylinder arm and post bed stitching machines
• Thread sizing (69 to 277 bonded nylon) and needle selection
• Hide grading, defect mapping and dye lot matching
• Pattern making, grading and sample making
• Quality checks and written job cards

Materials worth naming:

• Vegetable-tanned leather (bridle, harness, tooling)
• Chrome-tanned upholstery and garment hide
• Suede, nubuck and split leather
• Shell cordovan and exotic skins, if you have handled them
• Linings: pigskin, goatskin, canvas, Alcantara-type synthetics

In this trade the portfolio decides the interview more often than the CV text. Keep it small and honest.

1. 1Pick 8 to 12 pieces, not 40. Show your best two, then range: a bag, a belt, a repair, a production panel.
2. 2Photograph the details, not the hero shot: burnished edge close-up, stitch line, hardware seat, the inside of a lined pocket.
3. 3Include one before-and-after repair. It proves you can work on someone else's construction, which is harder than making your own.
4. 4Say what each piece is: leather type and thickness, thread, stitch method, how long it took you. Time matters to a production employer.
5. 5Put the link in your contact line and repeat it once in the experience section. Do not attach a 20 MB PDF to an application.

There is no licence to work leather in the UK and no single qualification that every employer asks for. That means your evidence is your work, your training hours and any employer who will vouch for you.

• College and craft guild courses: list them by hours, not just the title. '120 hours, hand stitching and pattern making' reads better than 'leathercraft course'.
• Employer or machine training on a clicker press, splitter or industrial stitcher: write it as machine training with the year.
• Apprenticeships are mostly arranged through individual saddleries, shoe repairers and workshops. If you did one, name the business and the length.
• Saddlery has formal trade qualifications and courses, including through the Society of Master Saddlers, and saddlery employers may ask for them. For leathergoods and furniture work they are a plus, not a requirement.
• IOSH Working Safely helps for factory roles. First aid helps everywhere. Both are cheap and quick.

• One page. A leather CV is short because the portfolio carries the weight.
• Reverse chronological, with your most product-relevant job first if two overlap in time.
• No photo of yourself, no date of birth, no marital status: that is the UK convention. Photos of your work go in the portfolio, not the CV.
• Keep it to a single column with no text boxes if the employer is a larger manufacturer, since their system may strip the layout.
• Small workshops often read the CV as a PDF by email. Name the file with your name and 'leather', not 'cv-final-2.pdf'.
• Mirror the advert's words in your bullets: leathergoods maker, cutter, clicker press, skiving, edge finishing, saddle stitch, upholstery panel, hide yield, rework.

One more thing worth adding at the bottom: your own tools and machines. A workshop hiring a part-time maker, or a repairer working from a bench, sees 'owns walking foot machine, bell skiver, full hand tool set' as a reason to shortlist you.