Coles Resume: What Australian Store Managers Look For

Most Coles applications go to a handful of role families, and the resume should be aimed at the one you are applying for:

• Team Member – checkout, service desk, nightfill, fresh (fruit and veg, meat, deli, bakery), online picking.
• Online / delivery roles – picking, packing and driving; a current Australian driver licence and a clean record matter here.
• Duty Manager / Department Manager – retail leadership, rostering, stock and food safety experience.
• Bakery, deli and meat – food handling, hygiene and food safety knowledge, early starts.

Name the exact role in your headline (for example Team Member – Nightfill, available weeknights and weekends) instead of writing a generic objective. Store managers read the availability line before anything else.

A supermarket advertises hundreds of casual shifts a year; the screening question is whether you will turn up and whether you can be rostered. Put these in the top third of the page:

• Availability – days and hours you can work, including weekends and public holidays.
• Right to work in Australia – citizen, permanent resident, or visa type and expiry. If you are on a student visa, state the hours you can legally work.
• Customer service evidence – one line with a number beats five adjectives: served 150+ customers per shift at a busy bakery counter.
• Reliability markers – previous retail, hospitality or volunteer work, and referees who can confirm attendance.

Use a single-column A4 layout in a common font, at 10 to 11 points, with headings in this order:

• Contact – name, mobile, email, suburb and state. A postcode is enough; no full street address.
• Headline and summary – two or three lines with the role you want and your strongest relevant experience.
• Availability – a short table or single line, not a paragraph.
• Experience – reverse-chronological, with duties and one measurable result per role.
• Skills and certificates – food safety, RSA or RSG if you have them, forklift or other tickets, POS systems.
• Referees – two people, name, position, company, phone. Tell them before you apply.

Write what you did, where, and with what result. These patterns are what a store manager recognises:

• Till: balanced a register averaging 200 transactions per shift with zero cash discrepancies over 12 months.
• Nightfill: replenished 30+ pallets per shift across three departments, working to a 6am deadline.
• Fresh: reduced produce wastage by rotating stock daily and logging markdowns.
• Customer: resolved complaints at the service desk without escalation, including refunds and online order issues.

If you have no retail history yet, list school or TAFE placements, volunteering, sports club roles and any cash-handling or rostering you have done – then keep the resume to one page.