You have a deep knowledge of your chosen products and a keen understanding of retail environments. You’re ready to take on the role of category manager.
But first, you need to impress the recruiter with your expertise, research skills, and sales statistics. You need a strong resume!
To help you sell yourself effectively, we’ve put together this comprehensive writing guide full of top tips and complete with a category manager resume example.
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Category Manager Resume Example
This example Category Manager resume is well-structured to provide a pleasant reading experience for recruiters, and contains all of the crucial information they want to see.
The rest of the guide will show you exactly how you can achieve this in your own resume.
Category Manager resume layout and formatting
The format and layout of your resume can make or break its success.
Sure, it’s great to pack your resume with lots of impressive skills and knowledge, but if the page is not structured clearly, hiring managers will struggle to find the important stuff!
Above all, your resume should be easy-to-read and professional looking.
Follow these formatting tips to get noticed.
Formatting your resume
- Length: Recruiters often see hundreds of resumes per day – so keep yours under 2 pages in length, if you want to ensure it gets read in full.
- Font & readability: Readability is the name of the game when it comes to your resume. Ensure yours is a dream to read by using a simple clear font, and breaking the text up with plenty of bullet points and short paragraphs.
- Layout & Structure: A visually appealing resume is important, but don’t forget about functionality. To ensure a functional design, use bold headings and borders to organize the page into clear sections.
- Photos: It’s not mandatory to add a photo to your resume in the USA but it if you’re applying to organizations within the creative fields, it can be beneficial.
Quick tip: Achieving a professional look for your resume can be difficult and time-consuming. If you want to create an attractive resume quickly, try our quick-and-easy Resume Builder and use one of their eye-catching resume templates.
Resume layout
Organize the document into these sections when you write your resume.
- Name and contact details – Employers need to know how to get in touch with you – so list your email and cell phone number here.
- Resume summary – An intro paragraph at the top of the resume which summarizes your suitability for target jobs.
- Skills section – A bullet-pointed list of your most relevant skills and knowledge.
- Work experience – A list of your previous jobs (or at least the most relevant and recent ones)
- Education – Add academic and professional qualifications that prove you can carry out the job
- Additional info – If they are relevant to the jobs you are applying for, you can add an extra section for things like hobbies and interests.
Here’s what to include in each part of your resume.
Contact Details
Make it easy for hiring managers to contact you by adding your contact details to the top of your resume.
Keep this section small to save space and include the following.
- Name and profession title
- Telephone number – Ideally your cell phone so you can answer quickly.
- Location – Add your general location such as LA or New York
- Email address – Use a professional looking one with no nicknames.
You can add a link to your LinkedIn profile if you have one – you do not need to include personal details like date of birth or marital status.
Category Manager Resume Summary
Make a strong first impression on recruiters by beginning your resume with a powerful summary that highlights your most valuable skills and experience.
This brief summary provides an opportunity to showcase why you’re the ideal candidate for the job and persuade recruiters to read further into your resume.
How to create a resume summary that will excite recruiters:
- Keep it short: To effectively capture a recruiter’s attention, it’s crucial to keep your resume summary brief and to the point, limiting it to 4-7 lines as this provides enough detail without overwhelming them at this early stage.
- Tailor to target jobs: Ensure your profile makes an impact by matching it closely to the requirements of the job description, copying as many key terms as possible.
- Avoid using cliches: To capture the attention of recruiters you must provide factual information, such as hard skills and qualifications, and avoid using empty phrases like “Go-getter who thinks outside the box.”
Category Manager resume summary example
What to include in your Category Manager resume summary?
- Summary of your experience: Provide an overview of the type of work you have done in the past and the impact you have made at previous employers.
- Relevant skills: Skills that are highly relevant to Category Manager work should be made prominent throughout your summary.
- Qualifications: Any qualifications that are important to the Category Manager jobs you are applying for, should be mentioned in the summary.
Quick tip: Choose from hundreds of pre-written summaries across all industries, and add one to your resume with one-click in our quick-and-easy Resume Builder. All written by recruitment experts and easily tailored to suit your unique skillset and style.
Core skills section
Sitting just underneath your resume summary, your core skills section gives recruiters 4-10 of your most in-demand skills in just a glance.
As Category Manager jobs may get hundreds of applications, this is a great way to stand out and quickly grab hiring managers’ attention.
It should be made up of 2-3 columns of bullet points and highlight attributes that are hyper-relevant to the jobs you are aiming for.
Best skills for your Category Manager resume
Category analysis – Conducting category analysis, including identifying trends, assessing competition, and analyzing consumer behavior, to inform category strategy.
Product development – Utilizing product development processes, including ideation, prototyping, and testing, to bring new products to market.
Supplier management – Managing supplier relationships, including negotiating contracts, managing quality control, and ensuring on-time delivery, to ensure that the right products are available for sale.
Pricing strategy – Maintaining knowledge of pricing strategies, including cost analysis, market research, and competitor analysis, to optimize pricing and profitability.
Inventory management – Managing inventory levels, including forecasting demand, monitoring stock levels, and implementing inventory control procedures, to ensure that products are always available when customers want them.
Sales forecasting – Forecasting sales for different products and categories, using historical data, market trends, and other factors, to inform purchasing and inventory management decisions.
Marketing strategy – Utilizing marketing principles and strategies, including branding, advertising, and promotions, to drive sales and increase customer loyalty.
Data analysis – Gathering, analyzing and interpreting data, including sales data, customer feedback, and market research, to inform business decisions.
Financial analysis – Utilizing financial analysis tools and methodologies, including budgeting, forecasting, and financial modeling, to assess category performance and optimize financial outcomes.
Project management – Managing multiple projects simultaneously, including timelines, budgets, and resources, to ensure successful implementation of category initiatives.
Quick tip: Our quick-and-easy Resume Builder contains thousands of in-demand skills for every profession that can be added to your resume in seconds – saving you time and greatly improving your chances of landing job interviews and getting hired.
Work experience
Now that you’ve reeled recruiters in with your awesome summary, it’s time to delve into your work experience.
Here you’ll list your previous jobs (starting with your most recent and working backward) and showcase how you apply your skills in the workplace.
Provide lots of detail in recent jobs, and less in older roles.
If you have no relevant paid experience, you can include voluntary work and placements – but if you have lots of experience, you can leave out some of the really old jobs.
Structuring your jobs
Without a good structure, your job description can look messy and overwhelming to anyone reading them.
Make it easy for recruiters to read your work experience by structuring your roles like this.
Job outline
Starting each job with a brief summary of the organization, your position within it, and the primary goal of your role can help recruiters quickly understand the context of your work.
Key responsibilities
Then delve into the detail of your job by listing out easy-to-read bullet points which show how you apply your skills in the workplace.
Tailor these bullet points to focus on the skills and knowledge that are required in the jobs you are applying for.
Key achievements
Show employers the value you can bring to them by adding a few achievements to your jobs.
Whether you’ve saved the company money or improved an internal process, let recruiters know
Add some numbers to give readers a real scale of the impact, e.g. “reduced call wait time by 10%”
Example job for Category Manager resume
Outline
Develop and implement merchandising strategies for product categories at a leading lighting company based in Chicago, coordinating the launch of up to 12 new products a year and updates on the existing 120.
Key Responsibilities
- Manage and develop product categories with over $50 million in annual sales
- Conduct competitive and market analysis to identify new product opportunities and market trends
- Create and execute category strategies and product roadmaps to achieve sales and profit targets
- Collaborate with and lead cross-functional teams, including product development, sourcing, and marketing, to successfully launch new products
Quick tip: Create impressive job descriptions easily in our quick-and-easy Resume Builder by adding pre-written job phrases for every industry and career stage.
Education section
After your work experience, add your education section.
If you are an experienced professional, you can keep this part short – adding basic details of each qualification.
If you have little or no experience, bulk this section up by adding more detail and highlight important skills and knowledge for your target jobs.
Additional information
If you have anything else to add which is relevant to the jobs you are applying for, the additional info section is the place to add it.
Perhaps you have a hobby which involves relevant skills, or maybe you have some awards or publications worth mentioning.
Writing your own winning Category Manager resume
A winning Category Manager resume should look great, read well, and sell your skillset to hiring managers.
If you follow the steps above, you should be able to bag yourself a top job in no time.
Good luck with your job search!