Shipping Clerk Resume Examples & Writing Guide

A fictional resume for a mid-level clerk in a third-party logistics warehouse. It works for outbound-only shipping roles, combined shipping and receiving desks, and dispatch clerk jobs. Swap the volumes and the software for your own.

A shipping clerk is trusted with paperwork that costs money when it is wrong: a mislabeled pallet, a missing bill of lading, a HAZMAT parcel with the wrong placard. So the reader is testing whether you are accurate under pressure, not whether you are enthusiastic.

• Volume. Parcels a day, pallets a day, trailers a shift, SKUs handled. This tells the manager whether you have worked at their speed.
• Accuracy, stated as a number over a period. "99.8% shipping accuracy over 14 months" or "zero chargebacks in 2025" beats "detail-oriented".
• Systems. Name the WMS and the carrier software. A clerk who already knows SAP or Manhattan saves four weeks of training.
• Paperwork you are cleared for: HAZMAT under 49 CFR, IATA dangerous goods, international commercial invoices, customs documents. These are hard to hire for.
• Equipment and safety: forklift class you are certified on, OSHA 10 or 30, and a clean incident record.

“The clerk resumes that stand out give me three numbers: units out per day, accuracy, and what system they ran it in. If someone tells me they shipped 1,200 parcels a day in Manhattan WMS with no chargebacks, I call them that afternoon. "Responsible for shipping duties" goes in the maybe pile.”

Three to four lines, and put a number in the first one. Use a summary if you have shipping experience; use an objective only if you are new to warehousing or coming from a different field.

Most people copy the duty list from the posting. That produces a resume identical to everyone else's. Keep the duty and attach the volume, the system and the result.

If you do not know your exact numbers, reconstruct them. Cases per pallet times pallets per shift gets you close, and "about 1,100 parcels a day" is honest and useful.

Split the block so a manager can scan it. Systems first, because that is what gets filtered on, then the physical and paperwork skills.

• WMS and ERP: SAP (WM or EWM), Manhattan, Oracle WMS, NetSuite, Fishbowl
• Carrier and parcel software: ShipStation, FedEx Ship Manager, UPS WorldShip, carrier web portals
• RF scanners, handheld terminals, Zebra thermal label printers
• Excel for shipping logs, pivot tables and daily volume reports

• Bill of lading, packing slip, commercial invoice and certificate of origin preparation
• Freight class and NMFC coding, dimensional weight, service level selection
• ASN verification, discrepancy claims and carrier damage claims
• HAZMAT documentation under 49 CFR and IATA dangerous goods paperwork
• Cycle counting, inventory adjustments and RMA processing
• Pallet building, banding, stretch wrapping and load securement
• Forklift, reach truck, pallet jack and order picker operation
• Dock scheduling, cross-docking and trailer loading sequence

The soft skills that matter here are narrow and worth naming: counting twice under time pressure, reading a paper document carefully at the end of a ten-hour shift, and telling a supervisor about a short count instead of hoping nobody notices.

This is an entry point job, and managers hire people with no distribution history every week. What they will not hire is a resume with nothing measurable on it. Use what you have.

1. 1Get a forklift certification first if you can. Some staffing agencies and community colleges run a one-day course, and it moves you ahead of most applicants.
2. 2Turn any stock, retail, kitchen or moving work into volume and accuracy: cases stocked per hour, orders bagged per shift, deliveries loaded per day.
3. 3Name the tools you have touched, even lightly: handheld scanners, point of sale, Excel, a label printer, a pallet jack.
4. 4Say which shift you can work. Second and third shift openings are the easiest to get hired into and most applicants only ask for days.
5. 5Add a short "Availability and equipment" line: shift flexibility, weekend availability, whether you can lift 50 pounds repeatedly, and any certification date.

None of these are legally required to be called a shipping clerk, but each one narrows the field. List the year for each so the reader knows it is current.

• Powered industrial truck (forklift) certification. Employer-specific under OSHA 29 CFR 1910.178, so name the truck classes and the recertification year.
• OSHA 10-Hour or 30-Hour General Industry training.
• DOT HAZMAT training under 49 CFR Part 172, Subpart H. Required if you sign hazardous shipping papers, and it must be refreshed at least every three years.
• IATA Dangerous Goods Regulations training for air freight, refreshed on the schedule your carrier requires.
• MSSC Certified Logistics Associate (CLA) or Certified Logistics Technician (CLT), a recognized entry and mid-level credential.
• ASCM Certified in Logistics, Transportation and Distribution (CLTD) if you are aiming at a lead or supervisor track.
• First Aid and CPR, and any employer-specific lockout or dock safety training.

• One page. There is no shipping clerk resume that needs two.
• Order: name and contact with certifications, summary, experience, skills, certifications, education. Experience goes high because volume is the story.
• Reverse chronological, with month and year. Warehouse hiring managers look hard at gaps and short stays, so account for them in a line rather than hiding the dates.
• PDF unless the posting asks for Word. No photo, no date of birth on a US resume.
• Plain layout, single column, no icons or graphics. Large distributors run every application through an applicant tracking system that reads text, not design.

Mirror the words the posting uses, inside your bullets. Common ones worth matching if they are true for you:

• Job title variants: shipping clerk, shipping and receiving clerk, dispatch clerk, outbound clerk, warehouse clerk.
• Systems named in the posting: SAP, Manhattan, Oracle WMS, WorldShip, ShipStation.
• Document words: bill of lading, BOL, packing slip, ASN, commercial invoice, RMA.
• Equipment words: reach truck, sit-down, order picker, pallet jack, RF scanner.
• Metric words: shipping accuracy, cycle count, chargeback, dock turn, units per hour.