You’re like a duck to water, and now you’re ready to embrace your passion for sailing and make a career out of it.
First, you must create a resume summarising your skills and experience.
But writing a strong resume isn’t always plain sailing, so let us help. In the guide below, we share our top tips and advice, complete with a sailing resume example.
Guide contents
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Sailing Resume Example
This Sailing resume example shows you the most effective layout for a resume in today’s job market, along with the type of content you need to include.
Stick closely to these guidelines as you write your own resume, to boost your chances of getting lots of responses, interviews and job offers.
Now lets dive into the details of how you write your own eye-catching resume…
Sailing resume layout and formatting
Your resume layout and format will play a big role in helping hiring managers to take notice of your resume and stay glued to it.
Shoot for a simple yet professional look to ensure you make a strong first impression, and organize the page in a way that is easy for readers to digest the information.
The following formatting tips should help.
How to format your resume
- Length: Attention spans in recruitment are notoriously short, so keep your resume short and sweet. There’s no exact rule for resume length, but aim for 2 pages or less if you want to ensure yours gets read in full.
- Font & text: 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.
- Design & layout: Allow recruiters to skim through your resume with ease, by dividing the page into clear sections with headings and borders. The design of your resume should be eye-catching but not overly complex – keep the style and color scheme simple and clean.
- Photos: In the USA adding a photo to your resume is optional – you don’t have to do it, but it can be a nice way to get your personality across.
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
Here’s an overview of the sections you should add when writing your resume.
- Name and contact details – Stick these details at the top, so they are easy to find.
- Resume summary – A punchy paragraph summarizing your skills and knowledge, enticing recruiters to read more of your resume.
- Skills section – Short list of your most valuable skills, enabling recruiters to quickly spot your suitability.
- Work experience – Showcase your previous employment, starting with your most recent roe and working backwards – voluntary work and college placements can be included if you have no paid experience.
- Education – A summary of your most relevant qualifications and academic achievements
- Additional info – An optional section for that other attributes that may boost your application, such as hobbies or clubs
Here’s what you should include in each section of your resume.
Resume Contact Details
Add your name and contact details to the very top of your resume, making it easy for recruiters to get in touch
- Name and profession title
- Cell phone number – or another number you can answer quickly
- Location – Add your local area such as San Diego or New York – not your full address as that will take up too much space.
- Email address – Use your name or close variation – no nicknames from high school.
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.
Sailing Resume Summary
Now it’s time to get into the real content of your resume, starting with the summary.
Your resume summary is a short paragraph at the top of the document, and its jobs is to catch the eye of hiring managers by summarizing all your skills and knowledge that are most important to the roles you are applying for.
3 tips for creating a resume summary that will get noticed:
- Keep it concise: You only have a few seconds to grab a recruiters’ attention and make them commit to your resume, so keep your summary between 4 – 7 lines.
- Tailor to target jobs: Recruiters will be scanning for the skills and knowledge they mentioned in the job description, so add as many as you can to your summary.
- Don’t use cliches: Recruiters look for facts in resumes, such as hard skills and qualifications – so, leave out the meaningless cliches like “hard worker who works well in a team and individually“
Example resume summary for a Sailor
What info to include in your Sailing resume summary?
- Summary of experience: What type of organizations have you worked at? What types of roles have you done and what have you contributed to previous employers?
- Relevant skills: Scatter your most in-demand Sailing skills through your summary to ensure they are noticed quickly by hiring managers.
- Vital qualifications: Mention any Sailing qualifications that are important to your profession in the summary briefly, to show you are qualified to carry out the role.
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 Sailing 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.
Top skills for your Sailing resume
Marine Navigation – planning, managing and directing the vessel’s voyage.
Deck Operations – planning the vessel’s passage, ensuring safe navigation of the vessel, cargo loading and discharge, ship stability, communications and maintenance of the hull and deck equipment.
Line Handling – handling the vessels mooring lines to either dock (tie-up) or undock (let go) of the vessel.
Seamanship Law – ensuring all seamanship laws and regulations are adhered to.
Vessel Maintenance – completing regular maintenance including completing full rig checks and ensuring any outstanding maintenance work is completed to keep the vessel seaworthy.
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.
Resume work experience section
So, you’ve got the recruiter interested with your catchy summary… Great work.
Now it’s time to show them the impact you make in the workplace by listing out your previous jobs and what you achieved in each one.
If you have tons of experience, you can condense this part down to the last few years – if you are junior, then you should include as much possible (even volunteering and school work placements)
Structuring your job descriptions
You probably do a lot in your job, so its vital to break all of that information down into a good structure.
Structure your jobs as follows to make it easy for recruiters to skim through and pinpoint the essential info.
Job outline
Kick off each role with a high-level overview to summarize the focus of the job, what the organization/department does, and how you fit into the bigger picture.
Key responsibilities
Next, write up a punchy list of your daily duties and responsibilities, using short bullet points.
Describe how you apply your skills and contribute to the running of the employer’s business – highlighting skills which are applicable to your target jobs.
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 Sailing resume
Outline
Prepare deck equipment, handle mooring lines, steer the ship, follow the officers’ instructions, implement fire safety regulations, and do maintenance work for a one of the world’s last ocean liners that carries 3K passengers.
Key Responsibilities
- Stand watch on the bridge of the vessel to ensure no hazards/dangers impede its path.
- Steer the ship using appropriate equipment, as well as manage other functions as directed by the captain or commander.
- Observe environmental conditions for signs of weather changes or natural events that could affect navigation safety.
- Record the vessel’s progress by means of visual checks and use of radar screens.
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
Towards the bottom of your resume, add your education section.
Here you should list your professional qualifications and academic record, such as high school diplomas or college degrees.
If you have lots of work experience, you can keep this section brief (because recruiters will be more interested in your career. If you have little/no experience then you should bulk this section up with plenty of detail.
Additional information
The additional info section is optional but can be useful if you have anything else to add that could benefit your application.
For example ,you may have some hobbies and interests that are relevant to your job – or you might have awards or publications to shout about.
Writing your Sailing resume
Writing a Sailing resume can be challenging but following the steps above will ensure that you land plenty of interviews.
If you want to speed up the process and use an attractive professional template, try out our quick-and-easy Resume Builder.
Good luck with your job search!