You know the ins and outs of distribution centers. Products are received, stored, and shipped quickly and efficiently with you at the helm managing employees and creating strategies for success.
Are the skills on your resume strategically planned the same way?
We’re here to help. Many distribution operations managers have successfully landed their dream jobs using our resume examples, so they’ll be an excellent resource to help you stand out to potential employers.
What Matters Most: Your Distribution Operations Manager Skills & Work Experience
Every day you use a variety of skills on the job, from interpersonal skills managing employees to strategic planning of fast-paced warehouse operations. It’s essential that you effectively list the various skills needed on your distribution operations manager resume.
Your goal is to show job recruiters you possess both the technical and soft skills to manage employees and daily operations at a distribution center.
In addition, the company’s needs can vary, so be job-specific in the 6 to 10 skills you list here. For example, the processes needed to ship and receive large pieces of furniture can be a lot different than distributing clothing.
Here are some of the most sought-after skills for distribution operations managers.
9 most popular distribution operations manager skills
- MS Office
- OSHA standards
- Scheduling
- Inventory control
- Process improvement
- Communication
- Conflict resolution
- Supply chain
- Team leadership
Sample distribution operations manager work experience bullet points
The distribution operations manager is a multi-skilled leader making sure everything runs smoothly. Before you’re offered the job, companies will want to know about your experience and the positive impacts you made to ensure you’re the right fit to run their warehouse operations.
Fortunately, your strategic communication skills make you well-equipped to explain what makes you the perfect fit for a position. Use your skills to show how you’ll have everything covered, from shipping and receiving to getting the best performance from employees.
To do that effectively, showcase both examples of successful leadership and the technical aspects of making distribution processes more efficient.
Here are a few samples:
- Worked with warehouse employees to learn a simplified 5-step process that increased order accuracy by 20%.
- Oversaw the creation of a new employee-safety program that trained employees in OSHA standards and reduced on-the-job accidents by 30%.
- Used ReserveDock scheduling software to reduce the time from order to successful product shipment from 72 hours down to 48 hours or less.
- Managed an operation that processed over 500,000 products per year with high-tech automation and shipped them to 310 retail store locations with 98.6% order accuracy.
Top 5 Tips for Your Distribution Operations Manager Resume
- Keep your resume to one page
- Excellent resumes will be more impactful with descriptions to the point. For instance, you can explain how your new quarterly inventory system decreased product loss by 15 percent in one sentence.
- Combine hard and soft skills
- Warehouse management requires hard skills in management systems and soft skills like communicating with employees. Showcase your abilities by combining those skills in descriptions. For example, improving the product packaging system and helping employees learn it uses both.
- Use numbers to describe your impact
- As a manager, the more human aspects, like employee happiness, can be harder to portray. However, there are ways to do so using numbers. For example, you could explain how employee turnover decreased by 40 percent after you took over operations at the distribution center.
- Show career growth
- Many distribution operation managers work their way up in the field. So if you started as an entry-level warehouse packer and worked your way up to supervisor in two years, you can demonstrate this growth by formatting your resume in reverse order. Many hiring managers will appreciate that you’ve worked at all levels of a distribution center.
- Demonstrate leadership
- In management roles, it’s critical that your employer can trust you with the distribution process. Showcase in your bullet points things like your ability to keep shipments moving on time and employees up to date with training.
If you haven’t held a distribution management position before, list any experiences you can think of that showcase leadership skills. For example, if you helped train new employees at your last warehouse job, that would show good leadership ability.
Generate a cover letter to fill in gaps that don’t fit in your resume. For example, you can explain why you chose distribution management as a career path and why you want to work for the company you’re applying to.
Some companies look for distribution operations managers to have a bachelor’s degree, so list it if you have one. Listing relevant certifications, like an OSHA certification, can also be helpful.
