
Do I Need a Cover Letter? Are Cover Letters Necessary in 2023
Do I need a cover letter? Is it important? What if the job offer doesn’t require a cover letter? Read this guide to find out all you need to know.
You can coordinate an outfit or create a home decor that makes products fly off the shelves. Prove it to store managers with your job-ready visual merchandising resume.
Your visual merchandising resume is the in-store display for your career. If it lacks balance, focus, and simplicity, your job search is an empty storefront. But—you work with clothes, beauty, and home decor, not word processors. Writing a good resume for visual merchandising jobs is a massive pain!
Fear not. This is no different than the right signage in the right spot. Once you know the rules, you’ll sell like weighted blankets. The product? Your skills. The customer? Hiring managers. Now let’s get the tips and examples you need to start the interview stampede.
Black Friday, here we come!
You’re about to see a visual merchandising resume example you can change to fit any visual merchandising position. You’ll also get simple steps to write a resume for visual merchander jobs that’ll land 10x more interviews than any other.
Want to save time and have your resume ready in 5 minutes? Try our resume builder. It’s fast and easy to use. Plus, you’ll get ready-made content to add with one click. See 20+ resume templates and create your resume here.
Sample resume made with our builder—See more resume samples here.
Don’t need visual merchandiser resumes? See these guides:
Alice Ramone
Visual Merchandiser
718-531-4240
alicezramone@gmail.com
linkedin.com/in/alicezramone
twitter.com/alicezramone
Innovative visual merchandiser with 3+ years of experience creating visual fashion designs. Seeking to increase sales by 10% per quarter at Trademark Fashion Designs. At Lacy’s Stores, built fashion displays leading to a 52% increase in sales within a year.
Experience
Visual Merchandiser
Lacy’s Stores
October 2017–Present
Key Qualifications & Responsibilities
Key Achievement:
Visual Merchandiser
The Black Market
May 2016 to Sept 2017
Key Qualifications & Responsibilities
Retail Employee
Fashionable Fashionista
June 2014 to June 2016
Education
Associates Degree in Fashion Design
New York School of Fashion Design
2010–2014
Skills
Fashion Writer, Trend Spot Weekly
Horticulturist, Community Farming Project
Here’s how to write a visual merchandising resume step-by-step:
Pick the wrong visual merchandising resume format and you’ll look like a grubby endcap. The store manager will decide at a glance you’re not worth her time. But—choose the right fonts, margins, and resume layout, and you’ll come off like a doorway display at a Publix.
So—
Here’s how to format a visual merchandising resume template:
Write these resume parts:
Just like you leave space between products, add white space between resume sections. Nothing kills a sales pitch like clutter.
Thinking about the skills-based format? See our guide: How to Pick the Best Resume Format
Showing experience in a visual merchandising resume is like making a good specialty display. If you don’t highlight things the manager wants, she’ll breeze right by thinking about hat racks. But if you pick the right career moments to accentuate, you’ll create an interview stampede.
See these visual merchandising resume samples:
Right |
---|
Experience
Visual Merchandiser Lacy’s Stores October 2017–Present Key Qualifications & Responsibilities
Key Achievement:
|
Wrong |
---|
|
Wow. That’s Gucci vs Walmart. The first applicant aided, analyzed, designed, worked, surpassed, and trained. The second was responsible for things. The first one achieved 20%, 80%, 52%, and 25. The second is a question mark. But they’re both the same applicant! One just faced her product better.
In an entry-level resume list achievements from non-visual-merchandising jobs. Were you in retail? Did you ever design a display or ask customers about their preferences? Conduct polls or even work in a team? Those all require visual merchandising skills.
See these entry-level visual merchandising resume examples:
Right |
---|
Retail Employee Fashionable Fashionista June 2016 to June 2019
|
Wrong |
---|
|
That first example will fly off the shelves. You’ve never been a visual merchandiser, but you’ve clearly got the chops. You used action words, percentages, and real in-store achievements. But work experience section #2 will get recalled. It sounds like what your manager told you to do, not how great you did.
Pro Tip: You’ll never write the perfect resume. But you can write a better one by making it an ATS-friendly resume. That comes down to tailoring your skills and education—and that’s next.
When making a resume in our builder, drag & drop bullet points, skills, and auto-fill the boring stuff. Spell check? Check. Start building a professional resume template here for free.
When you’re done, Zety’s resume builder will score your resume and tell you exactly how to make it better.
You’ll get a lot more job offers, if you use “try before you buy” in your visual merchandising resume. So—give employers every chance at glimpsing your ROI-getting skills. Add relevant coursework and in-school achievements to list your degree on a resume. Include school clubs, awards, or projects.
See this visual merchandising resume example:
Right |
---|
Education
Associates Degree in Fashion Design New York School of Fashion Design 2010–2014
|
That’s top-shelf. It’s short, but it shows you know your fashion front-to-back. Don’t have a degree in fashion? Even a degree in recreation can prove transferable skills. Those are skills like problem solving, interpersonal skills, and time management. They work in any career.
Haven’t graduated yet? See our guide: How to Put Your Education on a Resume
Argh! Nobody is calling you. Why not? Well—in merchandising, “Talk to your customers” is rule #1. It’s the same with job search. You can’t just say, “Here’s my generic visual merchandising resume” and get results. You have to know what skills they want, and then share when you’ve used them.
So—
Start with this list of skills for visual merchandising resumes:
But—
Here’s how to select the best visual merchandising skills:
See this visual merchandising resume example:
Say the store wants traffic analysis, seasonal theme development, and POP displays.
Right |
---|
|
Visual Merchandising skills on a resume like that can get you hired at Costco. You showed your use of analysis, seasonal theme development, and POP display creation. Better still? You added the 30%, 20%, and 25% benefit to the store.
More skills please? See our guide: +30 Best Examples of What Skills to Put on a Resume
“This job would be great if it weren’t for all the people.” Sounds funny, but the hiring manager wants to know you’re excellent to work with. That goes beyond your plain ol’ visual merchandising skills. So—show extracurricular accomplishments to prove you’re Best-Buy-ready.
Choose from:
Certifications won’t get you hired. But—they can make an entry-level visual merchandising resume stand out. The first of these will take a year. The rest are faster:
Have you taught children for free, walked dogs for your area shelter, or driven for Meals on Wheels? Giving your time shows great time management skills. It also proves collaboration and efficiency.
Do the store’s customers speak Spanish, French, or Tagalog? If you do too, you’re in luck. List it in a dedicated languages section near your skills.
If you’re a member of NASP, AMA, or a related association, add it to your resume for visual merchandising jobs. Association memberships can be the pig in the window that gets the job.
Have you attended cons like EuroShop or the IRDC? They’re shorthand for employers. They show you’re passionate about merchandising and you’re always learning.
See these visual merchandising resume samples:
Right |
---|
Fashion Writer, Trend Spot Weekly
Horticulturist, Community Farming Project
|
Wrong |
---|
|
Pro Tip: How long should a resume be for visual merchandising? A one-page resume works best for most applicants. Make it longer if you’ve got shelves of achievements.
Whoops! You ignored the hot spot in your resume. Now the store’s GM missed your best features. Avoid that—by giving a quick intro to your resume up top. Put yourself in the GM’s Bullboxers. What parts of your resume will sway her most? Spotlight those in your resume summary or resume objective.
How?
Here’s how to write a career summary:
See these career summary examples:
Right |
---|
Innovative visual merchandiser with 3+ years of experience creating visual fashion designs. Seeking to increase sales by 10% per quarter at Trademark Fashion Designs. At Lacy’s Stores, built fashion displays leading to a 52% increase in sales within a year. |
Wrong |
---|
Innovative and dynamic visual merchandiser, highly experienced in coordinating fashion designs. Demonstrated expertise in building and designing floor displays that attract the buying public and increase sales. Proven high-level sales ability to surpass company-wide quarterly sales goals. |
That bad resume example is an empty shelf. Everything in it is proven, demonstrated and experienced, but where are the props? The first example has them.
Write a career objective in an entry-level visual merchandising resume. The “experts” used to say to talk about your work goals in an objective. They don’t say that anymore. Make yours a summary of your resume, with merchandising wins from school or from your personal life.
See these examples:
right |
---|
Entry-level visual merchandiser skilled in sales and presentation. Seeking to increase sales at Lacy’s Stores. As retail employee at Fashionable Fashionista, assisted with redesigns of visual displays that increased sales by 12% in 3 months. |
Wrong |
---|
Entry-level visual merchandiser with skills in presentation, sales, design, and display creation. A solid communicator with creative flair and a knack for maintaining brand awareness. Finger on the pulse of current fashion trends. |
Pro Tip: A marketing or sales internship can seriously help an entry-level visual merchandising resume. An internship on a resume counts as a job.
“This job application looks like spam. I’m going to skip it.” You need a cover letter for your visual merchandising resume. Our HR statistics report found half the hiring managers require them. Why? Because resumes without them look like automatic applications sent by robots.
To write your cover letter:
Pro Tip: Add your best 2–3 visual merchandising achievements that fit the store’s needs to your cover letter. A cover letter should say you can handle the job.
Read more: How To Write A Cover Letter in 8 Simple Steps and How to Make a Resume: A Step-by-Step Guide
Plus, a great cover letter that matches your resume will give you an advantage over other candidates. You can write it in our cover letter builder here. Here's what it may look like:
See more cover letter templates and start writing.
Here’s a recap of how to write a visual merchandising resume:
That’s it! Now, we’d love to hear from you:
Let’s chat below in the comments, and thanks for reading!
Do I need a cover letter? Is it important? What if the job offer doesn’t require a cover letter? Read this guide to find out all you need to know.
Why are communication skills important? Need some communication skills examples to figure out what they are exactly and why all employers want you to have them? We got you covered!
Check out the best blank resume templates. Pick a resume form, fill in the blanks. Have your resume ready in 5 minutes. Download your resume as PDF.