Logistics Manager CV Examples & Writing Guide

A compact CV for a logistics manager who runs a mid-size distribution centre and its outbound transport. The names are invented. Notice that every job starts by sizing the operation (people, shifts, square footage, volume) and then gives service, cost and safety numbers.

The person hiring you already runs sites. They are comparing your operation to theirs, and they decide in about half a minute.

• Scope. Headcount, shifts, square footage, volume per day or week, and budget. A manager who ran 20 people in a cross-dock is a different hire from one who ran 200 in a fulfilment centre, and both are fine if the size matches the job.
• Service and cost. On-time in-full, fill rate, cost per unit or per case, freight cost per consignment, dock-to-stock hours. Give a before and after, not just a level.
• Systems. Which WMS and TMS you actually used day to day, and whether you have been through an implementation or a site go-live. That is a specific, valuable skill.
• Safety and turnover. Accident frequency rate, lost-time injuries, and how much of your hourly team stayed. Sites are lost and won on those two numbers.
• Peak. Whether you have run a real peak season or a product launch and what happened to service when volume doubled.

“Half the logistics manager CVs I read could be about any building in America. Tell me your square footage, your headcount, your OTIF and what it was when you got there. If you took a site from 91 to 98 on-time, that is the whole interview and it should be in line two, not on page two.”

Three or four lines, starting with the size of what you run and the number you moved the most. Save the career objective format for a first move into management.

Every logistics job description says the same things. What separates two candidates is the number attached to the duty.

Name the systems by product name, not by category. "WMS experience" gets filtered out; "Manhattan Associates WMS" gets matched.

• Warehouse: goods-in, put-away, slotting and reslotting, wave and batch planning, pick/pack/despatch, cycle counting, returns and reverse logistics, cross-docking.
• Transport: full load, pallet network and parcel procurement, haulier tenders and scorecards, routing guides, booking-in slots, waiting time and demurrage control, drivers' hours and operator licence basics.
• Systems: Manhattan Associates, Blue Yonder, SAP EWM or Oracle WMS; MercuryGate, Descartes or project44 on the transport side; the ERP you post transactions in (SAP, NetSuite, Dynamics).
• Metrics you own: on-time in-full, fill rate, cost per unit or case, lines per hour, dock-to-stock, stock accuracy, damage rate, freight cost per consignment.
• Improvement tools: 5S, standard work, kaizen events, root cause analysis, time studies, Six Sigma if you are certified.
• Compliance and safety: lift truck training and authorisation (HSE L117), risk assessments, incident investigation, dangerous goods (ADR) rules, customs declarations, AEO and Incoterms if you handle imports.
• People: labour planning against a volume forecast, recruiting and onboarding hourly staff, coaching supervisors, running a peak ramp-up with agency labour, managing turnover.
• Financial: operating budget ownership, freight accruals, capital requests for equipment, cost per unit modelling in Excel.

Nothing here is legally required to manage a warehouse. Qualifications matter because they get you past a screener and show you learned the vocabulary in a structured way. Spell out the awarding body, because the acronyms overlap.

• CILT (the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport): the Level 3 Certificate and Level 5 Diploma in Logistics and Transport are the closest thing to a UK logistics manager credential, and CILT membership is widely recognised. ASCM (formerly APICS) CLTD, CPIM and CSCP are also recognised, mainly by international firms.
• Lean Six Sigma Green Belt or Lean certification: useful when the advert talks about continuous improvement. Name the provider and year.
• IOSH Managing Safely or the NEBOSH General Certificate, and lift truck instructor status (RTITB, ITSSAR or AITT accredited) if you train your own operators. Both are checkable and both come up in interviews.
• ADR or IATA dangerous goods training, if you ship regulated goods. Say which one and when you last refreshed it, since the refresher cycles are strict.
• A degree in supply chain, business or industrial engineering is common, but many strong managers came up from the floor. If you did, say so plainly: "promoted from picker to manager in 6 years across 3 roles".
• Skip the long list of one-hour internal courses. Two or three real qualifications read better than twelve LinkedIn certificates.

If you have not held the manager title yet, the hiring manager is checking whether you have done manager work. Make that visible instead of hoping it is implied.

1. 1Count everything you led: operatives, shifts, square footage, loads, SKUs. A supervisor who ran 34 people on outbound is closer to a manager than the title suggests.
2. 2Show the times you covered the manager's job. Weeks of cover during a period of leave, a peak you ran alone, a site you opened. Put a number of weeks on it.
3. 3Show one project you owned end to end, with a result: a slotting change, a WMS module rollout, a haulier tender, a safety programme.
4. 4Show money. Even if you did not own the budget, name a cost you moved and by how much.
5. 5Add the qualification. A CILT certificate or a Green Belt is the cheapest way to signal that you are serious about the step up.
6. 6Apply for the site size you actually ran. Managers hire for the closest match, and a small-site manager job is a far better bet than a 1M sq ft national DC.

• Two pages is the UK norm at manager level; one page works if you are early in management. Never three.
• Reverse chronological, with the operation size on the same line as the employer so the reader gets it without hunting.
• No photo, no date of birth, which is standard UK practice. Put a short personal statement at the top and send a cover letter if the advert asks for one.
• Mirror the advert's exact terms: if it says "distribution manager" or "logistics operations manager", use that phrase once in your personal statement. Systems get matched literally, so write "Blue Yonder (formerly JDA)" if you used the older version.
• Worth including when true: OTIF, fill rate, cost per unit, dock-to-stock, cycle counting, slotting, wave planning, pallet network, full loads, haulier tender, WMS, TMS, 3PL, kaizen, IOSH, peak season.

One habit that pays off: keep a running file of your own numbers each quarter. Most people writing a logistics manager CV lose a week trying to remember what their on-time rate was two years ago, and end up writing something vague that costs them the interview.