Vegetable Picker CV Examples & Writing Guide

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

Hiring for field work is usually done by the farm's harvest supervisor or a labour provider licensed by the GLAA (Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority), often on the spot. They want four answers and they want them fast.

• Which crops have you cut? Lettuce, broccoli, celery, leeks, soft fruit, asparagus and glasshouse work are all different skills with different tools and quality rules. Name them.
• How fast, at what quality? Boxes per hour, bins per day, kilos per hour or day. Pair it with a quality figure such as a pack pass rate or reject percentage, because speed with rework is worth nothing.
• Can you work legally and stay the season? Say the months you are available, whether you move between farms, and that your right to work in the UK is in order (or your Seasonal Worker visa dates if you came through that route). Attendance through peak is what supervisors most complain about.
• Are you safe and trained? The farm's safety induction including spray re-entry rules, field hygiene and food safety, working in heat and cold, and knife safety. Growers are audited on this under Red Tractor, GLOBALG.A.P. and supermarket standards, and trained workers save them time.

“Tell me the crop, the rate and whether you finish the season. If you have led a team 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 personal statement if you have picked before, a career 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 supervisor 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, secateurs, leek knife, digging fork, and how you maintain them.
• Field pack skills: box count, size grading, box weight, labelling and stacking on the pallet.
• Quality judgement: what a buyer rejects, and spotting disease, pest damage and sun scorch in the field.
• Food safety practice: hand washing, gloves, no jewellery, equipment cleaning, reporting contamination.
• Pesticide safety: the farm's spray re-entry rules, reading warning signs, and not entering sprayed areas until cleared.
• Working in heat and cold: water, shade, rest breaks, sun protection, and recognising heat exhaustion in yourself and others.
• Machinery: forklift, tractor, ATV, moving irrigation pipe, harvest rig platform.
• Team skills: leading, training, tallying piece rates, translating between English and your team's languages.
• Physical facts, stated plainly: lifting 20 kg crates, bending and kneeling all shift, 5 am starts, 10 to 12 hour days.
• Practical facts: own transport to the fields or need for on-farm accommodation, ability to move between farms, full-season availability.

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

• Farm health and safety induction. Employers must give you health and safety information and training before you start, including the rules for entering crops after spraying. Write the year it was last refreshed.
• Field hygiene and food safety training provided by your employer, usually tied to Red Tractor Fresh Produce, GLOBALG.A.P. or a supermarket's own standard. Name it as your certificate names it, or list a Level 2 Food Safety and Hygiene certificate if you hold one.
• Manual handling and working-in-heat training. Write "employer-provided manual handling training" with the year; there is no separate licence for this.
• Emergency First Aid at Work (one day). Useful in remote fields and a plus for team leader roles.
• Forklift certificate from an accredited trainer (RTITB, ITSSAR or AITT). It is tied to the truck type, so give the type and year.
• PA1 plus an application module if you mix or apply pesticides, which is a different job from picking and needs a real certificate. If you do not hold one, do not imply that you do.
• A driving licence and clean record if you drive workers' minibuses or tractors on public roads, with the right category for the vehicle.

Farms take on first-season workers every year, and the CV only needs to prove three things: you can do the physical work, you will stay for the whole season, and you can get to the field.

1. 1Put "Vegetable Picker" or the advert's title under your name, not your old job title.
2. 2Write a two-line career objective covering the physical reality: heat, rain, 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, removals, warehouse, restaurant, cleaning. Give each a number.
4. 4Add anything you have grown or harvested, including a home garden, an allotment or a community garden. It is legitimate and supervisors read it as real interest.
5. 5State your transport. "Own car, able to reach fields by 5 am" removes the first objection a supervisor has; if you need on-farm accommodation, say so.
6. 6Say that you are ready to complete the farm's safety induction and food hygiene training on starting. It shows you know the rules exist.
7. 7One page, plain layout, no photo. If a labour provider takes applications in person, bring two printed copies and be ready to start the next morning.

• One page. This CV is often read standing up, next to a minibus or a farm office.
• Order: header with target title, personal statement or career objective, 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 GLAA-licensed labour provider, name the provider and the farms, because supervisors recognise both.
• If you work more than one growing area, say so. "Lincolnshire salads March to November, Cornwall winter cauliflower December to February" tells a grower you are a full-year worker.
• UK CV conventions: no photo, no date of birth, no marital status. One line saying you have the right to work in the UK (or your visa dates) is enough.
• A CV in two languages is worth it if the farm's teams are mixed. Keep the English version single column and plain, and offer a copy in your first language on request.
• PDF or a clean printed page. Keep the file name simple: Firstname-Lastname-Harvest-CV.pdf.
• US readers: the job is usually advertised as vegetable harvester or field worker and you send a resume, with Worker Protection Standard training instead of UK farm inductions. The rates and crops still matter the same way.

Words worth mirroring from the advert when they apply: hand harvest, field pack, box, crate, bin, tray, piece rate, cut quality, size grading, rejects, food safety, field hygiene, Red Tractor, GLOBALG.A.P., spray re-entry, working in heat, team leader, seasonal, peak harvest, polytunnel, forklift, tractor, irrigation.