Seasonal Harvest Worker CV Examples & Writing Guide

This example is for a worker with four harvest seasons behind them who is applying for a team leader or year-round farm position. The name, farms and numbers are invented but sized to real orchard and packhouse work. If this is your first season, use the version further down the page.

Most harvest hiring is done by the farm's field supervisor or HR team, a labour provider licensed by the GLAA (Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority), or a packhouse HR office. Many jobs are filled by word of mouth or a short online form, but a one-page CV helps when you apply to larger farms, packhouses, agricultural recruitment agencies or Seasonal Worker visa scheme operators, and it is essential when you want to move up to team leader, machinery operator or a year-round job. What they check:

• Crops and tasks you have done. Picking top fruit on ladders, soft fruit in polytunnels (strawberries, raspberries, blueberries), field vegetables (lettuce, brassicas, asparagus), hand-cutting, packing and grading, pruning, thinning, planting, tunnel work. Each crop has its own pace and quality rules.
• Output and quality. Bins, trays, punnets, kilos or rows per day, and your quality record: reject rate, damage, missed fruit. Piece-rate teams know their numbers; write them down.
• Reliability. Full seasons finished, seasons rehired, no missed shifts, willingness to start at 5 or 6 am and work six days a week. Growers lose money when pickers leave mid-season.
• Safety and food safety training. The farm's health and safety induction (including spray re-entry rules), hygiene rules for Red Tractor, GLOBALG.A.P. or supermarket audits, ladder and heat safety in polytunnels, and any machinery certificate (forklift, tractor, ATV).
• Transport, accommodation needs and availability dates. Say whether you have your own vehicle and which months you can work. If you will travel or need on-farm accommodation, say so.

“The question I ask every applicant is how many bins a day and did you finish the season. If someone writes that they picked eight bins of apples a day and came back three years in a row, I can put them on a team tomorrow and probably make them a row leader by October.”

Seasonal work confuses standard CV advice because the dates start and stop. The fix is simple: treat each farm as one entry, put the season months in the title, and list the years you returned. Gaps between seasons are expected in farming, but say what you did in the off-season if it was paid work.

Two or three lines: crops and seasons, your output, your training, and when you are available. A personal statement is more useful than a career objective because it gives the grower the facts they hire on.

List 8 to 12 skills a farm supervisor can use directly. Crops, tasks, machinery and training are skills; "hard worker" is not.

• Crops harvested, by name: apples, pears, cherries, plums, wine grapes, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, lettuce, broccoli, asparagus, potatoes, hops
• Harvest methods: ladder picking with picking bags, table-top and polytunnel picking into punnets, ground picking into trays, hand-cutting with knives or secateurs, machine-assisted harvest (working on a harvest rig or sorting on a platform)
• Quality skills: colour and size selection, bruise and reject prevention, stalk clipping, sorting out rot, MOG and leaf removal
• Post-harvest: packhouse sorting and grading, box, tray and punnet packing, palletising, labelling, cold store handling
• Field tasks: pruning, thinning, planting, trellising and tying, hoeing and weeding, polytunnel covering, drip line repair
• Machinery: tractor driving, forklift (certificated), ATV or utility vehicle, harvest platforms, bin trailers
• Safety and compliance: farm safety induction and spray re-entry rules, working in heat, ladder safety, food hygiene for Red Tractor, GLOBALG.A.P. or supermarket audits, PPE
• Physical: lifting up to 25 kg repeatedly, 10-hour days, working in heat, cold and rain
• Languages spoken; ability to relay instructions to a team
• Full driving licence, own transport, ability to travel or relocate for the season

• Farm health and safety induction: employers must give workers health and safety information and training, including which areas have been sprayed and when it is safe to go back in. Most farms repeat it each season. Write "Farm safety induction, including spray re-entry rules, 2025".
• Food safety: farms audited under Red Tractor, GLOBALG.A.P. or a supermarket's own standard train harvest workers in hygiene. List it as "Harvest hygiene training (GLOBALG.A.P.-audited farm), 2025". Do not claim a certificate the farm did not issue.
• Forklift: employers must make sure lift truck operators are properly trained, and certificates from RTITB, AITT or ITSSAR-accredited providers are the norm. Write "Counterbalance forklift certificate (RTITB-accredited), 2024".
• Tractor and machinery: usually learned on the job, and a full car licence normally covers driving a tractor on the road (category F). Lantra runs tractor and ATV courses; list one if you have it, otherwise say which machines you have driven.
• First aid: Emergency First Aid at Work (one day) or First Aid at Work (three days) from a recognised provider; a plus for team leader roles.
• Working in heat: there is no UK heat certificate, but polytunnel work in summer is hot; mention any employer briefing on heat, water and breaks.
• Spraying certificates (PA1 plus PA2 or PA6, from City & Guilds NPTC or Lantra) are a different, higher level; list one only if you actually hold it. Do not confuse them with the farm's safety induction.
• Outside the UK: in the US the job is called seasonal farm worker or harvest worker, the document is a resume, and the H-2A visa plays a similar role to the UK Seasonal Worker visa. Same content, no photo.

• One page, always. Field supervisors and labour providers read it on a phone or a clipboard.
• Order: header (name, mobile, town, "own transport", driving licence), personal statement with availability dates, skills, experience by season, training and certificates, education.
• Plain text layout such as cvplex ats-classic; no photo, no graphics. Packhouses and large growers use online application systems that read text only.
• Put numbers in: bins, kilos, boxes per hour, seasons completed, seasons rehired, missed shifts.
• State availability clearly: months, days a week, early starts, willingness to travel or live in on-farm accommodation.
• If you are applying for a team leader, machinery operator, irrigation or year-round job, retitle the header for that role and move the leadership, machinery and training lines to the top.
• Keywords to mirror from the advert when true: harvest, picking, packing, sorting, grading, pruning, forklift, tractor, food hygiene, polytunnel, Red Tractor, bilingual, seasonal, Seasonal Worker visa.
• A CV is often optional in this field, but bring it anyway: a printed page with your seasons, output and training gets you the better team and the rehire call next year.