Spa Therapist CV Examples & Writing Guide

A fictional CV for a therapist qualified in both massage and beauty therapy, working in a hotel spa. If you only hold one, keep the shape and drop the other set of treatments. In the UK the job is advertised as spa therapist or beauty therapist and you send a CV with no photo and no personal details; in the US the same job needs state massage and esthetics licences and the document is a resume.

A spa is a room-hours business. The manager is working out how many hours you can fill, how often guests come back for you, and whether you will keep the treatment rooms up to the hotel's hygiene audits. Four things answer it.

• Qualifications and insurance. Level, subject and awarding body. Massage and beauty therapy are separate qualifications, and a therapist trained in both is worth more because they cover more of the menu.
• Treatment volume and menu range. Treatments a week, treatment lengths, and which treatments you can actually deliver from day one without extra training.
• Rebooking, request rate and guest scores. These are the numbers a spa lives on, and most therapist CVs never mention them.
• Retail per treatment or retail-to-treatment ratio. Product sales are a large share of spa profit, and therapists who sell without pressure are rare.

“Two therapists apply with the same qualifications and the same colleges. One tells me she rebooks 68% of guests and averages £19 in retail. The other says she is passionate about wellness. I only have to read one of those CVs twice.”

Three lines. Qualifications first, treatment volume second, one guest or retail number third. A career objective is for new graduates and career changers only.

The duties are the same at every spa. What differs is your volume, your guests coming back, and what you sold without making anyone uncomfortable.

If your spa never showed you these numbers, ask reception for your rebooking percentage and your retail total before you leave. Most booking systems report both on a single screen.

Be specific about treatments. "Massage" tells a spa manager nothing about which treatments on their menu you can take tomorrow.

• Massage: Swedish, deep tissue, sports, hot stone, pregnancy, reflexology, manual lymphatic drainage, Thai or table Thai
• Skincare: signature and results facials, extractions, chemical exfoliation, microdermabrasion, LED, HydraFacial or similar devices
• Body treatments: wraps, scrubs, hydrotherapy, dry brushing, contouring treatments
• Hair removal: hot and strip wax, brow shaping, sugaring
• Product lines you are trained and certified on, by brand

• Consultation, contraindication screening and treatment adaptation
• Consultation forms and client record keeping, stored in line with UK GDPR
• Hygiene, disinfection, COSHH and safe handling of tools
• Room turnaround speed and stock level checks
• Home care and retail recommendation
• Booking and till systems: Mindbody, Zenoti, Book4Time, Fresha, Phorest
• Working split shifts, weekends and bank holiday peaks in a hotel setting

Body mechanics deserve one line of their own. Spa managers have seen therapists wear out their wrists and shoulders inside two years. A sentence about how you protect your hands and back, plus the weekly treatment count you sustain, tells them you will still be on the rota next year.

New graduates and career changers get hired into spas constantly, because the qualification does most of the screening. Your job is to look reliable and safe rather than experienced.

1. 1Put your qualification, level and completion date at the very top, even if you finished last month. That is the thing being checked.
2. 2Turn college clinic work into experience: assessed treatments completed and treatments covered. "120 college clinic treatments" is real work.
3. 3List every treatment and product line your course covered, and mark honestly which ones you can perform unsupervised today.
4. 4Add customer-facing work from any past job with numbers: guests served, retail sold, bookings managed, complaints resolved.
5. 5State your availability plainly. Evenings, weekends and bank holidays are when spas are busiest and hardest to staff, and flexibility gets new therapists hired.
6. 6Add first aid (Emergency First Aid at Work), which many hotel spas value and few new graduates think to list.

This is the section most spa therapist CVs get wrong, usually by being vague. Everything here can be checked against a certificate, so write it exactly.

• Massage qualification. UK spas usually want a Level 3 in massage, such as a Level 3 Diploma in Massage Therapies or in Body Massage, from an awarding body such as ITEC, VTCT, CIBTAC or City & Guilds. There is no national licence for massage in the UK, so your qualification and insurance do the screening.
• Beauty or spa therapy qualification. Level 2 covers facials, waxing and tinting; a Level 3 in beauty therapy or spa therapy adds body treatments, electrical facials, hydrotherapy and spa treatments. Copy the exact title from your certificate.
• Council licensing. Many London boroughs license massage and special treatment premises, sometimes including the therapists who work there, and some councils elsewhere have their own rules. In a hotel spa the employer usually holds any licence; mention it if you have held one personally.
• CIDESCO Diploma or an international ITEC or CIBTAC diploma, respected above Level 3, especially in five-star hotel and cruise ship spas, and some employers pay more for it. Only list one you hold.
• CPD certificates in specific treatments: pregnancy massage, massage for people living with cancer, manual lymphatic drainage, myofascial release. Give the hours and the year.
• Device and product certifications from the manufacturer, such as HydraFacial or a professional skincare line. These are worth listing because they cut a spa's training time.
• Trained abroad: a CIDESCO, ITEC or VTCT diploma is recognised internationally and worth listing. For other qualifications, say what the course covered and how many practical hours; UK insurers may ask whether it matches a UK Level 3.
• First aid: Emergency First Aid at Work or First Aid at Work, valued by many hotel spas, especially those with pools and thermal suites.

• One page is enough for most therapists, two at most. Spa managers read a stack of these between appointments.
• Order: name and qualification line, personal statement, experience, treatments and skills, qualifications and certifications, education.
• Give the level and awarding body next to each qualification. Levels are the currency of this trade in the UK, and spa managers and insurers both check them.
• PDF unless asked otherwise. No photo, no date of birth and no marital status: UK employers do not expect them, whatever older beauty CV templates suggest.
• Availability line at the bottom: evenings, weekends, bank holidays, split shifts. It genuinely affects who gets called first.

Larger hotel and spa groups screen applications automatically, so mirror the advert's words inside your bullets:

• Title variants: spa therapist, beauty therapist, massage therapist, senior therapist, wellness therapist, spa attendant.
• Treatment words the advert lists: deep tissue, hot stone, pregnancy massage, lymphatic drainage, dermaplaning, chemical peel.
• Business words: rebooking, request rate, retail, treatment utilisation, treatment menu.
• Compliance words: contraindications, consultation, client records, hygiene, COSHH.
• System names: Book4Time, Zenoti, Mindbody, Fresha, Phorest.