Resume Examples by Job

How to use these examples

Each example in this library is a complete resume for a fictional Australian worker, written the way a strong real application looks: a targeted summary, licences and clearances where they belong, experience bullets with measurable detail, and a skills section built from the words employers actually put in their ads. Underneath every example you'll find annotations explaining why each choice was made, plus a list of the ATS (applicant tracking system) keywords for that role.

Work through an example in this order. First, read the full resume top to bottom and notice the order of sections — in hands-on roles, proof of eligibility (registration, licence, screening check) almost always outranks a long career story. Second, read the annotations and mark which ones apply to your situation: agency work grouped under one employer, certificates listed with expiry years, roster patterns named explicitly. Third, build your keyword list from the example's keyword section and the specific ad you're answering, and check each one against your own experience — only claim what you can back up in an interview.

If your situation is more complicated than a straight application — you're changing industries, returning after a break, or your work history is mostly casual — start with the companion pillars: the Career Change Resume Guide and Resumes for Shift Workers. The examples below assume you're applying within your field; those guides handle the framing when you're not.

The examples library

What every strong example here has in common

1. Eligibility proof comes before the story

In regulated and ticketed work, the first question is never "are they good?" — it's "are they legal to roster?" A nurse's AHPRA registration, a support worker's NDIS screening, a driver's licence class and a guard's security licence all sit in the first third of these examples. Recruiters screening fifty applications will not dig to page two for the one fact that decides whether you can start Monday.

2. Bullets carry numbers

"Responsible for patient care" proves nothing. "Care load of 4–5 patients per day shift" proves a lot. Every example quantifies what can honestly be quantified: beds, covers, picks per hour, sites per night, residents supported, kilometres or routes. If you don't know your exact numbers, use honest ranges from your rosters and payslips rather than guessing high.

3. Keywords mirror the ad, truthfully

Applicant tracking systems and recruiter searches match the words on the page to the words in the ad. Each example includes a keyword section built from the phrases that recur in real ads for that role. The rule is strict: include a keyword only if the experience behind it is genuinely yours — keyword screening gets you the interview, but the interview checks the claim.

4. Shift reality is stated, not hidden

Every example names its roster pattern — rotating roster, permanent nights, 2/1 swing, weekend trade — because for these employers, availability and roster tolerance are selection criteria. Hiding shift work makes your timeline look jumpy; naming it makes the same timeline look experienced. For the full method, read showing night shift and roster work on a resume.

Before you send: a five-minute check

1. Is your current licence, registration or screening check on page one, with its expiry or year?
2. Does your summary name the exact job title from the ad?
3. Does every role in the last five years have at least two bullets with numbers?
4. Have you searched your resume for the ad's key phrases and added the ones that are true for you?
5. Is it saved as a PDF with a simple, single-column layout and a file name like Firstname-Lastname-Resume.pdf?

If you're missing experience the ad asks for, don't invent it — a short, honest line in a cover letter about adjacent experience beats a fabricated bullet every time. And if your history crosses industries, the worked examples in our teacher-to-corporate-training and retail-to-admin guides show how to reframe it.

Common mistakes in hands-on resumes

Working through hundreds of applications in these industries, the same avoidable mistakes recur. The first is the duty list with no scale: "cleaning duties", "driving duties", "care duties". Duties tell an employer what the job was; scale tells them whether you can do their version of it — how many rooms, residents, pallets, kilometres or covers. Every example in this library fixes this by attaching numbers to duties, and it's the single highest-value edit most applicants can make.

The second is burying the ticket. Forklift licences in the footer, security licences in the education section, food safety certificates missing entirely. Screening — human or software — works top-down and fast: if the deciding credential isn't visible in the first screen, the application often isn't read further. Third is the unexplained multi-employer year, where agency and labour-hire placements are listed as separate jobs. Grouped under the agency (as the nursing, cleaning and warehouse examples here show), the same year reads as continuous, varied work. Fourth is sending one generic resume to every ad. The examples here are deliberately role-specific because screening is role-specific: a resume that could be for any job usually ranks for none.

If your exact role isn't listed

Ten examples can't cover every hands-on job, but the patterns transfer. Pick the example closest to yours in screening shape, not job title. Process workers, packers and production hands should start from the warehouse worker example — same labour-hire channels, same keyword style. Hospitality all-rounders and bar staff sit closest to the chef and retail assistant examples. Home and community carers should adapt the disability support worker example, and traffic controllers the security guard example for its licensing-first layout. In each case keep the skeleton — eligibility proof, quantified experience, mirrored keywords, roster line — and rebuild the vocabulary from your target ad.

Two final habits separate strong applications in every one of these industries. Keep a running record of your numbers while you're employed — loads, sites, tickets, training dates — because reconstructing them a year later is where good bullets go to die. And keep your clearances current and their expiry dates on the page: in care, security and food work, an expired check listed without a date can screen you out as surely as not having one.

How long should each of these resumes be?

Length follows the screening shape of the industry, which is why the examples differ. The table below is the working rule used across this library; the full reasoning, including what to cut when you're over, is in one page or two pages for shift roles.

Whatever the length, page one must stand alone: eligibility proof, current role and strongest numbers all visible before the first page break, because a meaningful share of screeners never turn the page on a weak first impression.

Frequently asked questions

Sources (2)

1. SEEK Career Advice — Australian resume format and application guidance.
2. Workforce Australia — Australian Government employment services and job application resources.