Despatch Clerk (Shipping Clerk) CV Examples & Writing Guide
A despatch clerk CV gets an interview when the first half page shows volume, accuracy and systems: parcels or pallets despatched per day, your despatch accuracy or penalty charge rate, the WMS and carrier software you used (SAP, Manhattan, ShipStation, Royal Mail Click & Drop), and your forklift and dangerous goods training.
Goods-in and despatch clerk CV example
A fictional CV for a mid-level clerk in a third-party logistics warehouse. It works for despatch-only roles, combined goods-in and despatch desks, and shipping clerk jobs. Swap the volumes and the software for your own.
Marcus T. Ellery (fictional example)
Goods-In and Despatch Clerk
Daventry, Northamptonshire · 07700 900132 · m.ellery@example.com · RTITB forklift certificates, IOSH Working Safely
Summary
Goods-in and despatch clerk with 9 years in high-volume distribution, currently running a despatch desk that sends out 1,100 parcels and 38 pallet network pallets a day at 99.8% accuracy. Strong on SAP EWM, ShipStation and carrier portals, with current ADR and IATA dangerous goods training and RTITB counterbalance and reach truck certificates.
Experience
Despatch Clerk · Third-party logistics provider (multi-client e-commerce site)
Jan 2022 - Present
- Process 1,100 parcels and 38 pallet network pallets a day across 6 client accounts, holding 99.8% despatch accuracy over 14 straight months and zero customer penalty charges in 2025.
- Prepare delivery notes, packing lists and commercial invoices in SAP EWM, and route freight by weight, pallet size and service level, cutting outbound freight spend 6% on the two largest accounts.
- Cut average dock turn time from 21 to 12 minutes by booking carrier collections in staggered 30-minute slots instead of one 4 p.m. block.
- Despatch 40 to 60 dangerous goods parcels a month with ADR-compliant marking, labelling and paperwork, with no carrier rejections in three years.
Goods-In and Despatch Clerk · Industrial MRO supplies distributor
Aug 2019 - Dec 2021
- Received and put away 55 to 70 inbound trailers a month, checking each against the ASN and filing 90+ discrepancy claims worth about £59,000 in recovered value.
- Ran weekly cycle counts on 2,400 SKUs and brought stock accuracy from 96.1% to 99.4% over 11 months.
- Trained 5 new starters on RF scanning, label printing and pallet build standards; all 5 hit rate on their own inside three weeks.
Warehouse Operative · Chilled and frozen 3PL (temperature-controlled warehouse)
Jun 2017 - Jul 2019
- Picked and staged 220 to 300 cases per hour in a 1°C chilled pick area with a 99.5% pick accuracy score.
- Loaded 8 to 10 temperature-controlled trailers a shift and logged probe temperatures on every pallet, with no temperature rejections in two years.
Education
Level 2 warehousing and storage course (part time)
Further education college, Northampton, 2019
A-levels
Sixth form, Kettering, 2017
Certifications
- RTITB-accredited lift truck certificates (counterbalance and reach truck), refresher training 2025
- IOSH Working Safely
- ADR training for consignors of dangerous goods (packages), employer-provided, renewed 2025
- IATA Dangerous Goods Regulations, shipper category, renewed 2025
- Export and customs documentation short course (training provider), 2023
- Emergency First Aid at Work, renewed 2025
Skills
What a warehouse manager checks first
A despatch clerk is trusted with paperwork that costs money when it is wrong: a mislabelled pallet, a missing delivery note, a dangerous goods parcel with the wrong marks. 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% despatch accuracy over 14 months" or "zero penalty charges 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 trained for: ADR dangerous goods by road, IATA dangerous goods by air, commercial invoices and export paperwork for customs. These are hard to hire for.
- Equipment and safety: the lift truck types you hold certificates for, IOSH Working Safely or Managing Safely, and a clean incident record.
“The clerk CVs 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 penalty charges, I call them that afternoon. "Responsible for shipping duties" goes in the maybe pile.”
Despatch clerk personal statement and career objective examples
Three to four lines, and put a number in the first one. Use a personal statement if you have despatch experience; use a career objective only if you are new to warehousing or coming from a different field.
Despatch clerk with 9 years in distribution, currently despatching 1,100 parcels and 38 pallet network pallets a day at 99.8% accuracy. Fluent in SAP EWM, ShipStation and carrier portals, with current ADR dangerous goods training and an RTITB reach truck certificate.
Goods-in and despatch clerk who handles both docks in a 180,000 sq ft warehouse: 60 inbound trailers a month checked against ASN, 700 outbound parcels a day, and stock accuracy held above 99.4% through weekly cycle counts.
Despatch clerk who books 45 carrier collections a week across parcel, pallet network and full load, sizes pallets for the network tariff, and cut outbound freight cost 6% by moving two customer accounts to a regional pallet network member.
Recent school leaver with a new counterbalance forklift certificate and two summers of stockroom work moving 40 to 60 cases an hour. Looking for a despatch clerk role where accurate labelling, scanning and paperwork matter, and willing to start on the late shift.
Despatch clerk job description for a CV: weak vs strong bullets
Most people copy the duty list from the advert. That produces a CV identical to everyone else's. Keep the duty and attach the volume, the system and the result.
| Weak (copied duty) | Strong (your version) |
|---|---|
| Responsible for goods-in and despatch duties. | Despatch 1,100 parcels and 38 pallet network pallets a day across 6 client accounts at 99.8% accuracy, with zero customer penalty charges in 2025. |
| Prepared despatch documents. | Prepare delivery notes, packing lists and commercial invoices in SAP EWM for 45 carrier collections a week, including 12 export consignments a month with customs paperwork for the freight forwarder. |
| Received incoming deliveries. | Receive 55 to 70 inbound trailers a month against the ASN and file discrepancy claims; recovered about £59,000 in short and damaged product over two years. |
| Maintained accurate stock records. | Ran weekly cycle counts on 2,400 SKUs and raised stock accuracy from 96.1% to 99.4% in 11 months. |
| Drove a forklift as needed. | Operated counterbalance and reach trucks at heights up to 7 metres on 8-hour shifts with no reportable incidents in 6 years; refresher training 2025. |
| Worked with carriers. | Cut dock turn time from 21 to 12 minutes by moving carrier collections into staggered 30-minute slots instead of one late-afternoon block. |
| Handled dangerous goods consignments. | Despatched 40 to 60 dangerous goods parcels a month under ADR marking, labelling and documentation rules with no carrier rejections in three years. |
| Trained new starters. | Trained 5 new starters on RF scanning, label printing and pallet build standards; all 5 were working at rate within three weeks. |
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.
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Skills to put on a despatch clerk CV
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, Sage 200
- Carrier and parcel software: ShipStation, Royal Mail Click & Drop, DPD and UPS carrier systems, carrier web portals
- RF scanners, handheld terminals, Zebra thermal label printers
- Excel for despatch logs, pivot tables and daily volume reports
- Delivery note, packing list, commercial invoice and certificate of origin preparation
- Pallet sizing for pallet networks, volumetric weight, service level selection
- ASN verification, discrepancy claims and carrier damage claims
- Dangerous goods marking and paperwork under ADR and IATA rules
- Cycle counting, stock adjustments and RMA processing
- Pallet building, strapping, stretch wrapping and load restraint
- Counterbalance forklift, reach truck, pallet truck and order picker operation
- Collection booking, 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.
Despatch clerk CV with no warehouse experience
This is an entry-level job, and managers hire people with no distribution history every week. What they will not hire is a CV with nothing measurable on it. Use what you have.
- 1Get accredited forklift training first if you can. Some employment agencies and training providers run short novice courses, and a certificate moves you ahead of most applicants.
- 2Turn any stock, retail, kitchen or removals work into volume and accuracy: cases filled per hour, orders bagged per shift, deliveries loaded per day.
- 3Name the tools you have touched, even lightly: handheld scanners, till systems, Excel, a label printer, a pallet truck.
- 4Say which shift you can work. Late and night shift vacancies are the easiest to get hired into and most applicants only ask for days.
- 5Add a short "Availability and equipment" line: shift flexibility, weekend availability, whether you can lift 25 kg repeatedly, and any certificate date.
Filled 45 to 60 cases an hour on an overnight supermarket replenishment team, scanned and priced 900 items a shift on a handheld, and covered the stockroom goods-in desk two nights a week.
Loaded and secured 12 to 18 house removals a month, built inventory sheets for every job, and logged zero damage claims across 14 months.
Completed an accredited novice counterbalance forklift course in June 2026 and a 3-week warehouse operations course covering RF scanning, pallet build standards and manual handling. Available for late or night shifts.
Qualifications and training that get you paid more
None of these are legally required to be called a despatch clerk, but each one narrows the field. List the year for each so the reader knows it is current.
- Forklift training. There is no forklift licence in the UK: you hold accredited certificates (RTITB, ITSSAR or AITT) for specific truck types, and each employer authorises you in writing, so name the truck types and the year of your last refresher.
- IOSH Working Safely, or IOSH Managing Safely if you supervise.
- ADR dangerous goods training. Anyone involved in consigning dangerous goods by road, such as packing, marking or signing the paperwork, must be trained for that task, and the training has to be refreshed periodically.
- IATA Dangerous Goods Regulations training for air freight, refreshed on the schedule your carrier requires.
- A Level 2 or Level 3 warehousing qualification or apprenticeship, a recognised entry and mid-level route.
- CILT Level 3 Certificate in Logistics and Transport if you are aiming at a team leader or supervisor track.
- Emergency First Aid at Work, and any employer-specific isolation or dock safety training.
Format, length and the keywords to mirror
- One page. There is no despatch clerk CV that needs two.
- Order: name and contact with certificates, personal statement, experience, skills, qualifications and training, 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 advert asks for Word. No photo and no date of birth on a UK CV.
- 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 advert uses, inside your bullets. Common ones worth matching if they are true for you:
- Job title variants: despatch clerk, dispatch clerk, goods in and despatch clerk, shipping clerk, warehouse administrator.
- Systems named in the advert: SAP, Manhattan, Oracle WMS, Click & Drop, ShipStation.
- Document words: delivery note, despatch note, packing list, ASN, commercial invoice, CMR, RMA.
- Equipment words: reach truck, counterbalance, order picker, pallet truck, RF scanner.
- Metric words: despatch accuracy, cycle count, penalty charges, dock turn, units per hour.
Frequently asked questions
How do I write a despatch clerk CV?
Lead with a personal statement that names your daily volume, your accuracy figure and the WMS you use. Then list each job with three or four bullets that include numbers: parcels or pallets a day, trailers received, stock accuracy, freight savings. Put your forklift certificates and dangerous goods training where they are easy to find, and keep the whole thing to one page.
What are despatch clerk duties on a CV?
Preparing delivery notes and packing lists, weighing and labelling parcels, selecting carriers and service levels, loading and staging pallets, receiving inbound deliveries against the ASN, filing damage and shortage claims, cycle counting, and keeping despatch logs. Write each one with a number attached rather than as a duty list.
What skills should a despatch clerk put on a CV?
WMS and carrier software by name, delivery note and commercial invoice preparation, pallet sizing for pallet networks, RF scanning, cycle counting, forklift and reach truck operation, dangerous goods paperwork, and Excel for despatch reports. Keep it technical. A manager reads the skills block as a checklist against the job.
Can I get a despatch clerk job with no experience?
Yes, it is a common entry point. Get accredited forklift training if you can, then convert retail, kitchen, removals or stockroom work into volume and accuracy numbers. Say which shifts you can work and confirm you can lift 25 kg repeatedly. Late and night shift vacancies are the easiest to get hired into.
Should a despatch clerk CV have a career objective or a personal statement?
A personal statement if you have despatch or warehouse experience, because it lets you open with your volume and accuracy. A career objective only if you are new to the field or changing careers, and then use it to say which shift you want and what certificate you hold. Never use an objective to say you want growth.
How long should a despatch clerk CV be?
One page. Cut older jobs to a single line each and keep the space for your current volume, accuracy and systems. If you are running long, the fix is almost always shorter duty descriptions, not smaller type.
Ready to write yours?
The builder suggests a summary from your own experience, then checks it against the job posting.
How this page was made: a first draft was written with AI assistance from cvplex's example library, then edited and fact-checked by the cvplex Careers Team. Examples are fictional composites; numbers are illustrative. Report an error via the editorial policy page.