Team Leader CV: Example & How to Write (+ UK Template)

Being a team leader, you’re often the first port of call for questions, morale boosts, and even gripes. Team members expect you to be in the know and available when they need you, management expects you to have your finger on the pulse of what’s happening in your team, so you can report back as needed.

Writing a team leader CV is made more difficult by this wall-eyed nature of the team leader position: having to balance the needs of both management and workers. Becoming a team leader will also for many people be their first serious promotion, making cobbling together a good team leader CV all the more critical.

This article is here to help you make sure your team leader CV is not only up to the task, but that it brings you more job interviews than any CV you’ve written before. Have a look at the team leader CV example below, it’s easily better than nine out of ten out there and yours can be even better.

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Team leader sample CV 

Now that’s a great CV model! Let’s now see how to write your own CV:

1. Start you team leader CV with a winning personal statement

First impressions are especially important when it comes to applying for a team leader job. You need to start off on the right foot if you want your team leader CV to end up in the right pile and ultimately get you that dream-job interview. Your personal statement (CV profile) is where that impression gets made.

Your team leader CV will make the right impression when your personal statement does just three things well. You need to briefly introduce yourself as a professional (just the who and the what), show exactly what it is that you have to offer, and demonstrate alignment between your goals and the company’s.

Introducing yourself is just a matter of stating how many years’ experience you have and in what industries or niches. You can show what you have to offer by describing what you achieved for your previous employers (see the next section on writing up CV job descriptions), and there’s a clever hack for showing goal-alignment.

Showing that your work-related goals line up with the company’s business goals is much easier than it may seem. All you have to do is give an example of one thing you hope to achieve for your potential new employer. Check the company’s mission, business goals, and recent news to learn what it’ll find attractive.

All that’s left to do is make sure that you’re using the same keywords as the job advert wherever possible. Mention the company and job title by name. You’re doing this to get past Applicant Tracking Systems (ATSs), which will use various algorithms to sort and rank your team leader CV by relevance and suitability.

There’s quite a lot happening in your team leader personal statement, but it absolutely has to be clear and concise if it’s going to be read at all. Aim for 50–150 words in total, spread across 3–4 sentences. It clearly comes first in your CV, but it’s best written after your work experience and skills sections (it’s basically a CV summary).

Team leader personal statement

A strong CV summary will convince the recruiter you’re the perfect candidate. Save time and choose a ready-made personal statement written by career experts and adjust it to your needs in the LiveCareer CV builder.

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2. Do your work experience justice in your team leader CV

Being a good team leader is all about being able to deliver results and helping your team reach its potential. Do your team leader work experience justice by choosing the right CV format for a team leader position and showing recruiters exactly what it is that you’ve delivered to previous employers.

The best team leader CV format is without a doubt the chronological CV format. Contrary to what the name suggests, this format will require you to put your job descriptions in reverse-chronological order, starting from the most recent and working your way back through your work history from there.

This is the CV format that recruiters and hiring managers are most used to seeing and it’s what they expect to see. It’s also the format most readily parsed by ATSs. A chronological format puts the emphasis on your experience, so make sure it’s clearly set out by using the following team leader CV template:

[Job Title]

[Company Name, Location]

[Dates of Employment]

This template will help you generate a clear subheading for each of your job descriptions. Populate each job description with up to six bullet points, each of which ideally being a separate, on-the-job achievement. This will allow you to remain concrete, relevant, and impressive in this section.

An achievement in this context can be defined as nothing more than a description of an action you took at work and the benefits that went to your employer as a result. You can use something like the PAR (Problem-Action-Result) formula to structure your achievements, but the basics are quite simple.

Start each bullet point with a strong verb, like ‘led’, ‘organised’, ‘created’ or ‘trained’. Quantify the benefits that your employer gleaned from your actions. This means putting numbers to your contributions to the company’s profits, whether by reducing staff turnover, saving labour hours, boosting productivity or so on.

If you’re writing a lead CV with no significant experience, use this section to show your transferable skills such as onboarding skills, multitasking, leadership.

Team leader CV job description

3. Get your team leader CV education section right

There aren’t always particular education requirements to becoming a team leader, but it’s always important to have a clear and concise education section in your team leader CV. This is one of those situations in which bucking trends and going against what recruiters are used to seeing is a bad idea.

So stick with a reverse-chronological order for your academic qualifications. This will automatically put your highest attained and often most relevant level of education first. You can safely leave your high school education off your team leader CV entirely once you have a degree and some work experience.

Use the following template for both university degrees and other tertiary qualifications such as diplomas and NVQs. Include only the information required by the template, leaving GPAs, subject lists and grade out unless they’re extremely relevant or truly impressive.

[Degree Type] [Degree Name](Degree Class), [Years Attended]

[Institution Name], [Institution Location]

Include an expected graduation date as your end date if you’re still studying. Use the following templates to detail your high school education if you don’t have a university degree and at least a year’s worth of work experience:

A-levels: [Subject Name 1], [Subject Name 2], [Subject Name 3]

[School Name], [School Location], [Years Attended]

[number of completed GCSEs] GCSEs (including Mathematics and English)

[School Name], [School Location], [Years Attended]

It’s often a good idea to mention Mathematics and English when stating how many GCSEs you’ve completed. Employers often need to see that you have passes in Maths and English as a bare minimum. You can leave these out if you completed A-levels in Maths and English or are studying at university level.

You can add 2–3 bullet points to your team leader education section in which you highlight some relevant areas of excellence from your studies. It’s best not to clutter this section with unnecessary details, though, so don’t add any such bullet points if you don’t have anything that’s both relevant and impressive.

Team leader CV example education section

4. Place your skills in the right light in your team leader CV

To be a good team leader, regardless of your industry, you need to demonstrate a core set of leadership and communication skills. Beyond that, there are many job-specific skills that a team leader needs to thrive in their role. You also need to be able to get those skills down on paper in your team leader CV.

Streamline your job application process by first creating a master list of your team leader skills (soft and technical, IT skills). You’ll then be able to add to it over time and simply copy and paste from it each time you need to prepare a new team leader CV. A small investment of time now will save you a lot of time and effort later.

So open a new document and list as many of your team leader skills as you can. Add a sentence onto each skill in which you describe how you’ve demonstrated that skill at work. The idea is to let recruiters know that you actually and demonstrably possess these skills by showing as much as telling.

Go back to the job advert to which you’re responding and check what team leader skills are mentioned there. Copy 5–10 skills from your master list across to your team leader CV, being sure to at least cover the explicitly required ones. Adjust your keywords to match those in the advert and you’re done.

Team leader CV skills

5. Use extra sections to give your team leader CV an edge

There’s a lot that goes into making a good team leader and there’s a lot that varies drastically from industry to industry. A good team leader CV will paint as full a picture of you as an employee as possible. There’s a lot of that picture that isn’t captured by sections like work experience, skills, and education, though.

Fill in the missing pieces and flesh out that which makes you the right team leader for the job. Add extra sections to your lead CV that’ll give you an edge over your competition. The one and only rule here is that anything you include has to be directly relevant to the job to which you’re applying.

You could add sections that list any additional qualifications you might have, training courses you’ve completed, awards you’ve won, even some particularly relevant hobbies or interests. Speaking languages other than English is virtually always going to be relevant, so be sure to spotlight your language skills.

Team leader CV sample additional sections

6. Team your team leader CV up with an effective cover letter

You’re no stranger to the importance of team work. Everybody has their task to do and if someone fails to show up, the job gets left undone. It’s similar with your job application: it’s made up of at least two parts—your team leader CV and a cover letter—and if either part is missing the whole falls flat. 

Your cover letter is there to introduce your lead CV while making a case for both why the recruiter should read your CV and why you’re the right person for the job. Follow a good cover letter writing guide to get the overall format right. Do so and the length of your cover letter should hit 250–400 words (it can be shorter if you'll be sending your cover letter by email).

This should nicely fill an A4 page. ‘Nicely filling’ a page means having plenty of white space left to clearly break the text down into parts and paragraphs. Never go over a single A4 page, no matter how experienced you are. Remember that your cover letter is not meant to be a summary of your team leader CV.

A data-driven and up-to-date guide to cover letter writing will show you how to start your cover letter with an attention-grabbing opening. You’ll learn how to showcase your achievements in the main body paragraphs. You’ll also find some great hacks for ending your cover letter, including a confident CTA.

Team leader CV format

A team leader who’s disorganised and an all-round bad communicator is not going to get far. Make sure your team leader CV sends all the right signals about you as a worker: come across as highly organised, a solid communicator, and a person with strong attention to detail by keeping the following things in mind.

Make your team leader CV layout easy to navigate by using as much white space as you can muster to clearly break it down into sections. Leave your name and contact details near the top where they’ll be easy to find. Use clear and logical subheadings to label each section of your team leader CV. View free CV templates to find the one that suits you best.

You can pick a creative CV template, but make sure it’s ATS-friendly. Choose an appropriate CV font that won’t draw undue attention to itself. Something like Noto, Garamond, Liberation, Arial or Calibri will be fine. Keep the font size at 11–12 points throughout your CV and cover letter unless you truly know what you’re doing. Leave the margins at the default 2.5 cm.

Spelling and grammar mistakes say an awful lot about you as team leader and employee in general, and none of it good. Anything other than absolutely word-perfect application documents will cast doubt on your English skills, professionalism, and attention to detail. Proofread your work, enlisting whatever help you need.

The length of your CV should come in at about an A4 page. Limit yourself to single A4 page for each decade of experience you have under your belt. Don’t go over two pages, though, even if you have more than two decades of experience. Always save or export your work in PDF unless you’re asked for something else.

Lastly, make a point of following up if you haven’t heard back after a week. All it takes is a quick phone call or brief email. It’s a simple gesture that could make all the 

difference.

No response? Try uploading your CV to LinkedIn for greater visibility. You already know how to write an effective CV, so you're halfway to landing your dream job.

You don’t have to be a CV writing expert. In the LiveCareer CV builder you’ll find ready-made content for every industry and position, which you can then add with a single click.

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I hope this article has helped you step up your team leader CV game. Is there anything I’ve covered here on which you’d like more information? Please drop us a line in the comments section below if you have any questions, comments, feedback or experiences you’d to share.

How we review the content at LiveCareer

Our editorial team has reviewed this article for compliance with Livecareer’s editorial guidelines. It’s to ensure that our expert advice and recommendations are consistent across all our career guides and align with current CV and cover letter writing standards and trends. We’re trusted by over 10 million job seekers, supporting them on their way to finding their dream job. Each article is preceded by research and scrutiny to ensure our content responds to current market trends and demand.