Goods-In Clerk (Receiving Clerk) CV Examples & Writing Guide

The person below is invented, but the numbers are the kind a real goods-in supervisor recognises. Notice that every job says what came through the loading bay, how accurately it was booked in, and in which system.

A bad goods-in clerk does not just slow the loading bay down, they poison the stock records. Everything downstream, from picking to the stocktake at year end, depends on what you typed in when the pallet came off the lorry. That is what the supervisor is screening for.

• Accuracy, stated as a number. Booking-in accuracy percentage, count variance or discrepancy rate. If you have never seen a figure, ask your team leader before you leave a job.
• Volume, so they can size you against their loading bay. Trailers per shift, lines or cases per day, pallets received.
• The system you post in. SAP, Oracle, Manhattan, NetSuite, WMS, Infor. This is the single fastest way to shorten your training.
• What you do when the count is wrong. Shorts, overs and damages are where clerks are made. Say you raise a discrepancy report, hold the driver, take photos and notify purchasing.
• Equipment and safety. Lift truck types and your last refresher training, pallet truck, loading bay safety, and any stretch of time with no incidents.

“Anyone can scan a box. What I want to see is what happened when a pallet came in short. If the CV says the clerk held the driver, photographed it and had the discrepancy report raised before the end of shift, that tells me more than any of the soft skills at the bottom.”

Three or four lines at the top, with a number in at least two of them. If you have a year or more on a loading bay, write a personal statement. Use a career objective only if you are switching in from another job.

Most goods-in CVs copy the job advert back at the employer. "Received incoming deliveries and verified contents" describes the whole trade. Add the count, the system and the standard you held.

Keep it to things that appear on a goods-in job advert. Group them so the reader can find the systems fast.

• Delivery note, purchase order and seal verification
• Purchase order matching, GRNs and three-way match
• Discrepancy reporting (shorts, overs and damages) and carrier claims
• Cycle counting and stock reconciliation
• Put-away, slotting, FIFO and FEFO rotation
• Batch codes, date codes and quarantine procedures
• Supplier returns, returns authorisations and supplier credits
• Driver check-in and delivery booking schedules

Systems and equipment. Name them exactly as the advert does, because this is the part a keyword filter reads.

• WMS and ERP: SAP, Oracle, Manhattan Associates, Infor, NetSuite, Sage
• RF handheld scanners and barcode label printers (Zebra)
• Counterbalance forklift, reach truck, order picker, powered pallet truck
• Dock levellers, wheel chocks and trailer restraints
• Excel goods-in logs, pivot tables and basic reporting
• Carrier portals for parcel carriers and pallet network tracking

Add two or three habits that matter on a loading bay, written concretely rather than as adjectives.

• Holding a driver politely while a short count is verified
• Getting paperwork right at 5am with three lorries waiting
• Handing over an accurate open-receipt list at shift change
• Working in a cold loading bay in winter or a 1°C chiller for a full shift

There is no forklift licence in the UK. Under PUWER and the HSE's Approved Code of Practice L117, you need training from a competent instructor on each type of truck you operate, usually on a course accredited by RTITB, ITSSAR or AITT, and each employer then gives you site familiarisation training and written authorisation. Many employers expect refresher training every 3 to 5 years. Write it accurately and it reads as experience rather than a card you bought online.

• Often asked for: GCSEs in English and maths or equivalent, and the ability to lift 25 kg repeatedly. Many adverts say this outright, so mirror the wording.
• Usually required at a DC: current lift truck training on the truck types they run. If your refresher is overdue, say when you last trained rather than leaving it out.
• Nice to have: IOSH Working Safely, dangerous goods awareness if the site handles regulated goods, and a warehousing or supply chain qualification from a further education college.
• Dangerous goods paperwork (ADR, IATA, IMDG) has its own training requirements. Do not claim it unless your employer trained and recorded you; check the requirements before writing it down.

Goods in is one of the easier warehouse roles to enter, because the skills that matter are counting carefully, reading paperwork and typing without errors. Show those and the lack of a warehouse job stops mattering.

1. 1Lead with any job where you counted money, stock or orders: retail stockroom, supermarket, kitchen stock, post room.
2. 2Add numbers even from unrelated work. "Cashed up a till of around £5,000 nightly with no shortages over 11 months" is a goods-in argument.
3. 3Say plainly whether you hold lift truck training, and if not, that you are willing to train on site. Many employers train.
4. 4List any software you can already use: Excel, an EPOS system with stock, a school or club stock sheet you kept.
5. 5Put physical requirements in your own words: lifting 25 kg, standing a full shift, working in a chiller, 5am starts.
6. 6Apply for "goods-in operative" and "warehouse operative" adverts too. They are often the same loading bay with a different title.

• One page. There is no goods-in job in the country that needs two.
• Reverse chronological, with dates by month and year. Gaps on a warehouse CV are normal; unexplained ones are not, so add a one-line note if you took time out.
• No photo, no date of birth, no marital status on a UK CV.
• Put the facility type next to the employer: 450,000 sq ft food DC, 40,000 sq ft branch, third-party logistics site. That tells the reader your pace immediately.
• Shift availability and forklift training belong in the header, not the last line of page one.
• Plain PDF, no columns or tables. Warehouse employers run some of the strictest applicant tracking system setups you will meet.
• If a recruitment agency placed you, list the agency as the employer and name the client site in the description.

Titles vary and the filter is literal. Adverts use "goods-in clerk", "goods inwards clerk", "goods-in administrator", "receiving clerk", "goods in and despatch operative" and "warehouse administrator" for near-identical work, so use the advert's exact title as your headline and keep your real title in the experience section. Mirror their nouns too: delivery note, purchase order, GRN, WMS, RF scanner, cycle count, discrepancy, put-away, pallet truck. In the US the same job is advertised as a receiving clerk; if you apply there, use the US title and send a one-page resume.