Vegetable Picker Resume Example & Writing Guide

This sample is for a field harvester with about ten seasons of experience who now leads a small crew. The name and farms are invented. Keep the structure and swap in your own crops, rates, equipment and seasons.

Hiring for field work is usually done by a crew foreman or a farm labor contractor, often on the spot. They want four answers and they want them fast.

• Which crops have you cut? Lettuce, broccoli, celery, berries, asparagus and greenhouse work are all different skills with different tools and quality rules. Name them.
• How fast, at what quality? Cartons per hour, bins or flats per day, pounds cut. Pair it with a quality figure such as a pack pass rate or cull percentage, because speed with rework is worth nothing.
• Can you work legally and stay the season? Say the months you are available, whether you travel between growing regions, and that your documents are in order. Attendance through peak is what foremen most complain about.
• Are you safe and trained? Current Worker Protection Standard pesticide safety training, produce safety and food handling awareness, heat illness prevention, and knife safety. Growers get audited on this and trained workers save them time.

“Tell me the crop, the rate and whether you finish the season. If you have led a crew or trained new pickers, put that first, because I always need somebody who can set the standard in the field on day one.”

Two or three lines. Crops first, rate second, availability third. Use a summary if you have picked before, an objective if this is your first season.

One bullet per task you actually do, each with a count. Use the ones matching your crops and change the numbers.

Eight to twelve lines. Crops and hands-on skills first, then safety training, then the physical and practical facts a foreman needs.

• Crops you have harvested, named individually. This is the single most useful line on the page.
• Harvest method: hand cut, snap, pick, dig, or machine-assisted on a rig or conveyor.
• Tools: harvest knife, clippers, machete, digging fork, and how you maintain them.
• Field pack skills: carton count, size grading, box weight, labeling and stacking on the pallet.
• Quality judgment: what a buyer rejects, and spotting disease, insect damage and sunburn in the field.
• Food safety practice: hand washing, gloves, no jewelry, equipment cleaning, reporting contamination.
• Pesticide safety: EPA Worker Protection Standard awareness, restricted entry intervals, reading warning signs.
• Heat illness prevention: water, shade, rest cycles, and recognizing symptoms in yourself and others.
• Equipment: forklift, tractor, ATV, irrigation pipe moving, harvest rig platform.
• Crew skills: leading, training, tallying piece rates, translating between English and Spanish crews.
• Physical facts, stated plainly: lifting 50 lb crates, bending and kneeling all shift, 5 a.m. starts, 10 to 12 hour days.
• Practical facts: own transportation to the field, ability to travel between growing regions, full-season availability.

No license is needed to pick vegetables in the US, but growers are audited on worker training, and a picker who is already trained saves them paperwork. Only list what you have actually completed.

• EPA Worker Protection Standard pesticide safety training. Farms must provide this to agricultural workers before they enter treated areas and repeat it every year. Write the year it was last refreshed.
• Produce safety and Good Agricultural Practices training provided by your employer, often tied to the FDA Produce Safety Rule or a buyer audit scheme. Name it as your certificate names it.
• Field sanitation and heat illness prevention training. Some states, including California, have specific heat standards; write "employer-provided heat illness prevention training" with the year.
• First aid and CPR from the American Red Cross or American Heart Association. Useful in remote fields and a plus for crew lead roles.
• Forklift operator evaluation from your employer under OSHA 29 CFR 1910.178. This is employer-issued and tied to the truck type, so give the type and year.
• A state pesticide handler or applicator credential if you mix or apply, which is a different job from picking and needs a real state credential. If you do not hold one, do not imply that you do.
• A driver's license and clean record if you drive crew vehicles or equipment on public roads.

Farms hire first-season workers every year, and the resume only needs to prove three things: you can do the physical work, you will show up for the whole season, and you can get to the field.

1. 1Put "Vegetable Harvester" or the posting's title under your name, not your old job title.
2. 2Write a two-line objective covering the physical reality: heat, bending, lifting, early starts, and how many months you can work.
3. 3Pull the physical work out of any job you have had: construction, landscaping, moving, warehouse, restaurant, cleaning. Give each a number.
4. 4Add anything you have grown or harvested, including a home garden, a family plot or a community garden. It is legitimate and foremen read it as real interest.
5. 5State your transportation. "Own vehicle, able to reach fields by 5 a.m." removes the first objection a crew foreman has.
6. 6Say that you are ready to complete pesticide safety and food safety training on hire. It shows you know the rules exist.
7. 7One page, plain layout, no photo. If the farm labor contractor takes applications in person, bring two printed copies and be ready to start the next morning.

• One page. This resume is often read standing up, next to a bus or a field office.
• Order: header with target title, objective or summary, crops and skills, experience, training, education. Crops go high, because that is the screening question.
• Seasonal gaps are normal in this job and need no apology. Label each role with its months, for example "Apr 2018 – Feb 2022 (seasonal)," so a run of short jobs reads as one continuous work history.
• If you have worked through a farm labor contractor, name the contractor and the growers, because foremen recognize both.
• If you work more than one growing region, say so. "Salinas March to November, Yuma December to February" tells a grower you are a full-year worker.
• US resume conventions: no photo, no date of birth, no marital status. If your documents or work authorization are in order, one line saying you are authorized to work is enough.
• A bilingual resume is worth it if the operation is bilingual. Keep the English version single column and plain, and offer a Spanish copy on request.
• PDF or a clean printed page. Keep the file name simple: Firstname-Lastname-Harvest-Resume.pdf.
• UK and Irish readers: the job is usually advertised as agricultural labourer or crop picker and you send a CV. The rates and crops still matter the same way.

Words worth mirroring from the posting when they apply: hand harvest, field pack, carton, bin, flat, piece rate, cut quality, size grading, cull, food safety, Good Agricultural Practices, Worker Protection Standard, restricted entry interval, heat illness prevention, crew lead, seasonal, peak harvest, forklift, tractor, irrigation.