Toolmaker CV Examples & Writing Guide

One page for a time-served toolmaker in an in-house toolroom at a pressings and moulding plant. The name and employers are invented. Notice that the tolerances, the machines and the tool types are all specific, and that the results are written the way a plant measures them: try-out iterations, tool downtime and parts between failures.

Toolmakers are expensive to hire wrong and hard to find, so the screen is specific.

• What you build. Progressive press tools, compound tools, injection moulds, die-casting dies, jigs and fixtures, gauges, prototype tooling. These are different trades that share a title, and a press shop and a mould shop want different people.
• Tolerances and machines together. Saying you hold ±0.005 mm means little without the operation. Jig grinding, surface grinding, wire EDM and boring all imply different capability.
• Whether you completed an apprenticeship, and where. A completed toolmaking apprenticeship with NVQ Level 3 is the standard credential in this trade and it travels. Say the length, the employer and the year.
• Whether you can take a job from drawing to production alone. Build, try-out, debug and first-article approval is the whole loop. Someone who only makes details to a job card is a different hire from someone who owns a tool.
• Tool and mould maintenance experience. Most plants need repair and rebuild work more urgently than new builds. Downtime and parts-between-failure numbers are what get read here.

“Tell me what tools you built, what you hold on a grinder, and whether you finished an apprenticeship. Then tell me a die you fixed that nobody else could. That story is the interview. Most CVs I get list machines and never once say what came out of them.”

This trade has real qualifications, and they are worth writing precisely. Apprenticeship content differs by employer and college, so describe your own rather than a general standard.

Three or four lines: what you build, your tolerance and machines, your apprenticeship, then one number that shows you improved something.

The numbers come from job cards, tool history records, downtime reports and scrap reports. Every shop keeps all four.

Be specific about equipment and materials. A toolroom manager reads this section to work out which bench you would stand at.

• Tool types: progressive, compound, blank and pierce, form, draw and transfer press tools; injection moulds including hot runner, slides and lifters; die-casting dies; jigs, fixtures, gauges and prototype tooling.
• Machines: manual mills and lathes, CNC mills and the control you run, surface grinders, jig grinders, cylindrical and internal grinders, wire EDM, spark erosion (sinker EDM), boring mills, saws, spotting presses.
• Programming and modelling: Mastercam, Esprit, NX, SolidWorks, Autodesk products. Say what you program versus what you only open to view.
• Measurement and inspection: micrometers, slip gauges, height gauge, bore gauges, sine plates, dial indicators, optical comparator, CMM, surface finish measurement, hardness testing.
• Drawing and standards work: GD&T to BS 8888 and ISO GPS (ASME Y14.5 on US customer drawings), datum structures, first-article inspection, marking out, and reading a customer model as the master rather than the drawing.
• Materials and treatments: tool steels such as A2, D2, S7, H13 and P20, carbide details, coatings, heat treatment coordination and hardness verification, and knowing what to pick for a wear problem.
• Try-out and debug: strip layout checks, pilot and stripper fit, springback and burr control, short-shot and flash troubleshooting on moulds, and documenting what you changed.
• Shop practice: tool history records, planned maintenance schedules, slinging and overhead crane use, safe tool handling, and working a job to a promise date.

Toolrooms are short of people and most shops will train, but they want evidence that you will still be there in year three. Apprenticeships usually run about four years and shops know exactly how many people quit in year two.

1. 1Put your hours logged on the page if you are already in an apprenticeship. "Second-year apprentice, 3,400 hours logged" is precise and it tells a shop where you would slot in.
2. 2Say what you can hold and on what. Even at entry level, "holds ±0.02 mm on assigned details on a surface grinder" is a real capability statement.
3. 3List your NVQ units and college qualifications individually if you have them, and any college coursework in machining, technical drawing or metallurgy.
4. 4Use shop-floor experience of any kind: CNC operating, deburring, machine minding, welding, maintenance, farm machinery repair, vehicle work. Give the tolerance, the volume or the machine.
5. 5Mention hand skills and patience explicitly. This trade rewards people who will spend an afternoon stoning a form to fit, and shops screen for temperament as much as knowledge.
6. 6Do a short health and safety course and forklift or overhead crane training if you can. They are quick and they remove a barrier to your first day on the floor.

• Two pages at most. One is enough up to about 15 years; use two if you have run a toolroom or led builds.
• Order: name with tool types, contact details with apprenticeship status, personal statement with tolerance and one result, experience, skills grouped by tool type and machine, certificates, education.
• Single column, no graphics, plain headings. Manufacturing applicant systems are basic and shop managers print.
• Mirror the advert: "progressive tool", "press tools", "injection mould", "jigs and fixtures", "wire EDM", "spark erosion", "jig grinding", "surface grinding", "GD&T", "try-out", "tool repair", "time-served", "apprenticeship", "Mastercam", "CMM".
• Include your tolerance capability and your tool steel experience. Both get searched for.
• PDF, and bring a printed copy plus any sample drawings or photos you are allowed to share. Toolroom interviews often move to the shop floor.

One note on wording. "Toolmaker" is the common title in the UK, and adverts also use press toolmaker, mould toolmaker or toolroom machinist; US employers usually advertise the same job as tool and die maker. Use the advert's own title in your headline and keep UK CV conventions: two pages at most, no photo, no date of birth.