Print Finisher CV Examples & Writing Guide

One page, written for a finishing supervisor who is trying to cover a shift. The name and companies are invented. The run speeds, make-ready times and spoilage figures are the kind of numbers on your own job tickets.

A finishing supervisor is doing one thing when they read your page: matching your machines to the floor. Write makes and models, not categories, and say whether you set up or only run.

• Setup ability. Running a machine somebody else set up is an assistant's job. Make-ready time is the number that separates the two, so put yours on the page.
• Spoilage and rework. Finishing is where a whole press run gets destroyed in ten seconds. A spoilage percentage tells a supervisor how careful you are.
• Safety habits on a guillotine. Two-hand controls, guard checks, knife changes, isolation and lockout under PUWER. Six years with no lost-time injury is a hiring argument, not a throwaway line.
• Shift and overtime willingness. Finishing is the end of the line, so it absorbs every delay upstream. Late shift and night shift openings are the most common ones.
• Job ticket literacy: reading imposition, grain direction, fold dummies, trim marks and finished size, and catching a problem before 60,000 sheets go through the folder.

“Makes and models, then make-ready time, then spoilage. That is all I need. Someone who tells me they took a folder make-ready from 45 minutes to 28 has thought about the job, and I can put them on a machine the first week instead of the second month.”

• Forklift certificate. There is no national forklift licence in the UK: you hold a certificate from an accredited trainer (RTITB, ITSSAR, AITT or NPORS) and each employer authorises you for its own site, so a certificate from a previous employer still counts. Give the year and the truck type.
• IOSH Working Safely. Short, common in manufacturing and easy to verify.
• Isolation and lockout and machine guarding training (PUWER), which matters more in a finishing department than almost anywhere else in a print works, because of the guillotine.
• Any manufacturer training you received on a specific machine, such as a folder or stitcher course run by the supplier during an install.
• Emergency First Aid at Work or First Aid at Work, and any fire marshal or emergency response role.
• Your injury record, if it is clean. 'No lost-time injury in 8 years on guarded equipment' is a legitimate line on a finishing CV.

Most print finishers started as finishing assistants, jogging and banding, and learned machines from the person beside them. Write your CV for that opening rather than for an operator seat.

1. 1Ask for the finishing assistant role by name in your career objective, and say which shift you want. Late shift and night shift openings come up most often.
2. 2Put attendance on the page with a number. In a print works that runs to a despatch cut-off, turning up is the whole first test.
3. 3List physical work you have already done: warehouse, packing, kitchen, removals, assembly line. Say the shift length and the weight you handled.
4. 4List any machine or vehicle you can already run, including a forklift, pallet truck or floor scrubber.
5. 5Mention hand skills: assembly work, hand collating, folding, packing to count. Finishing still does plenty by hand on short runs.
6. 6Keep it to one page, and bring a printed copy. Smaller printers hire from people who call in more than from job boards.

• One page. Two only if you have supervised a department.
• Single column, PDF, plain headings. No photo, no date of birth and no marital status on a UK CV.
• Put a machine list block near the top, before your job history. It is the fastest way for a supervisor to decide about you.
• Mirror the job advert's words for the applicant tracking system: print finishing, finisher, saddle stitch, perfect bind, guillotine, laminate, die cut, make-ready.
• Name the shift you want and whether you can work overtime. Finishing runs long when the press runs late.
• If your experience is from the US, where the job is usually called bindery operator, keep that title in your history and add 'print finisher' in brackets once, so a UK reader recognises the work.