My Account

You control your data

We and our partners use cookies to provide you with our services and, depending on your settings, gather analytics and marketing data. Find more information on our Cookie Policy. Tap "Settings” to set preferences. To accept all cookies, click “Accept”.

Settings Accept

Cookie settings

Click on the types of cookies below to learn more about them and customize your experience on our Site. You may freely give, refuse or withdraw your consent. Keep in mind that disabling cookies may affect your experience on the Site. For more information, please visit our Cookies Policy and Privacy Policy.

Choose type of cookies to accept

Analytics

These cookies allow us to analyze our performance to offer you a better experience of creating resumes and cover letters. Analytics related cookies used on our Site are not used by Us for the purpose of identifying who you are or to send you targeted advertising. For example, we may use cookies/tracking technologies for analytics related purposes to determine the number of visitors to our Site, identify how visitors move around the Site and, in particular, which pages they visit. This allows us to improve our Site and our services.

Performance and Personalization

These cookies give you access to a customized experience of our products. Personalization cookies are also used to deliver content, including ads, relevant to your interests on our Site and third-party sites based on how you interact with our advertisements or content as well as track the content you access (including video viewing). We may also collect password information from you when you log in, as well as computer and/or connection information. During some visits, we may use software tools to measure and collect session information, including page response times, download errors, time spent on certain pages and page interaction information.

Advertising

These cookies are placed by third-party companies to deliver targeted content based on relevant topics that are of interest to you. And allow you to better interact with social media platforms such as Facebook.

Necessary

These cookies are essential for the Site's performance and for you to be able to use its features. For example, essential cookies include: cookies dropped to provide the service, maintain your account, provide builder access, payment pages, create IDs for your documents and store your consents.

To see a detailed list of cookies, click here.

Save preferences

Visual Merchandising Resume: Samples and Guide

Create Your Resume Now

Our customers have been hired by:

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. Once you know the rules, you’ll sell like weighted blankets. The product? Your skills. The customer? Hiring managers. 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:

Sample Visual Merchandising Resume (Text Version)

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

  • Execute merchandising strategies using visual displays throughout the store. Contribute to the store’s visual appeal to bring in customers.
  • Aided an increase of coat sales by 20% by creating all aspects of in-store designs. Dress mannequins in latest trends.
  • Analyzed flow of traffic in store to ensure 80% more visibility of displays.
  • Design visual elements that contributed to 52% sales growth.
  • Worked with marketing team to integrate displays with campaigns.

Key Achievement:

  • Surpassed the store's quarterly sales goal by 45%.
  • Trained 25 sales staff in product features and display tips.

Visual Merchandiser

The Black Market

May 2016 to Sept 2017

Key Qualifications & Responsibilities

  • Selected fashions that helped us surpass our sales goal by 22%.
  • Developed seasonal themes that grew the business by 30%.
  • Recycled displays that reduced waste output by 18% monthly.
  • Developed floor plans and displays to maximize sales.

Retail Employee

Fashionable Fashionista

June 2014 to June 2016

  • Coordinated outfits for patrons leading to a 30% sales increase.
  • Helped customers find clothing per their requests.
  • Seller of the Month for most sales in February 2016.

Education

Associates Degree in Fashion Design

New York School of Fashion Design

2010–2014

  • Made clothes for local celebrities that increased exposure for a clothing line.
  • Wrote a popular fashion column in the student paper.

Skills

  • Presentation
  • Commercial Awareness
  • Trend Awareness
  • Brand Knowledge
  • Product Knowledge
  • Communication
  • Interpersonal Skills
  • Creativity
  • Efficiency

Fashion Writer, Trend Spot Weekly

  • Blog about the latest fashion trends in 2 articles per month.
  • Maintain readership of 10,000 readers per month.

Horticulturist, Community Farming Project

  • Teach 20+ young people how to grow food.
  • Sell produce at farmer’s market so youth can earn money.

Here’s how to write a visual merchandising resume step-by-step:

1. Start With the Right Format for a Visual Merchandising Resume

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:

  • Format: use the reverse-chronological resume format to put your Wegmans-level skills in the hot spots.
  • Resume fonts: go with Cambria or other respected fonts for your best look.
  • Font size: 11–12 points.
  • Resume headings: 13–14 points.
  • Resume margins: 1 inch.
  • Line spacing: 1 to 1.15.
  • File type: send PDF resumes unless the store says, “please send your resume in MS Word format.”

Write these resume parts:

  • Header: your name and the proper contact information.
  • Summary: give exposure to your resume’s best bits.
  • Experience: stock this section with visual merchandising accomplishments.
  • Education: include targeted school achievements.
  • Skills: spotlight the ones the store asks for.
  • Other sections: do you write fashion articles or speak a second language? There’s a place for that in your resume.

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

2. Add Experience to Your Visual Merchandising Resume

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.

To customize your resume:

  • Start with your freshest job title.
  • Add the store name, plus years and months.
  • Craft a two-line visual merchandising job description.
  • Write about six bullet points.
  • In your bullets, cite achievements with the PAR (Problem-Action-Result) formula.
  • Add numbers to make it pop.
  • Use resume action words and adjectives for an engaging read.

See these visual merchandising resume samples:

Visual Merchandising Job Description for a Resume

Right

Experience

Visual Merchandiser

Lacy’s Stores

October 2017–Present

Key Qualifications & Responsibilities

  • Execute merchandising strategies using visual displays throughout the store. Contribute to the store’s visual appeal to bring in customers.
  • Aided an increase of coat sales by 20% by creating all aspects of in-store designs. Dress mannequins in latest trends.
  • Analyzed flow of traffic in store to ensure 80% more visibility of displays.
  • Design visual elements that contributed to 52% sales growth.
  • Worked with marketing team to integrate displays with campaigns.

Key Achievement:

  • Surpassed the store's quarterly sales goal by 45%.
  • Trained 25 sales staff in product features and display tips.
Wrong
  • Responsible for selecting fashions that promote continued sales.
  • Handled the development of seasonal themes during busy holidays.
  • Strategically placed merchandise to attract the buying public.
  • Responsible for monitoring and tracking sales of promotional merchandise.

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:

Entry-Level Visual Merchandising Resume Samples [Experience]

Right

Retail Employee

Fashionable Fashionista

June 2016 to June 2019

  • Coordinated outfits for patrons leading to a 30% sales increase.
  • Helped customers find clothing per their requests.
  • Seller of the Month for most sales in February 2016.
Wrong
  • Welcome customers into the store and advise them of sales and in-store promotions.
  • Handled and resolved customers’ complaints in person and by phone.
  • Responsible for communicating with vendors and managers from other stores.

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.

Creating a resume with our builder is incredibly simple. Follow our step-by-step guide and use content from Certified Professional Resume Writers to have a resume ready in minutes.

When you’re done, our free resume builder will score your resume and our resume checker will tell you exactly how to make it better.

3. Make Your Education Section Count

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:

Visual Merchandising Resume Example [Education]

Right

Education

Associates Degree in Fashion Design

New York School of Fashion Design

2010–2014

  • Made clothes for local celebrities that increased exposure for a clothing line.
  • Wrote a popular fashion column in the student paper.

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

4. Put the Right Skills in Your Visual Merchandising 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:

Visual Merchandising Resume Skills (Hard Skills)

  • Display Creation
  • Endcaps
  • Specialty Displays
  • Fashion Sketching
  • Brand Promotion
  • Garment Fitting
  • Budgeting
  • Trend Awareness
  • Pricing
  • Commercial Photography
  • Consumer Research
  • MS Office Skills
  • Product Knowledge
  • Supplier Management
  • Communication
  • Marketing Skills
  • Adobe Photoshop
  • Spatial Relations
  • Design
  • Commercial Awareness
  • Computer Skills
  • Photoshoot Experience
  • Efficiency
  • Presentation Skills

Visual Merchandising Skills (Soft Skills)

But—

Here’s how to select the best visual merchandising skills:

  1. Make a list of your visual merchandising skills.
  2. List the store’s skills from the job ad.
  3. Make a third list of the skills that are in both lists 1 and 2.
  4. Select the best soft skills and hard skills from list 3.
  5. Add those resume keywords to your skills section.
  6. Show the best times you used them in your bullet points.

See this visual merchandising resume example:

Say the store wants traffic analysis, seasonal theme development, and POP displays.

Visual Merchandising Resume Examples [Skills]

Right
  • Analyzed in-store traffic to choose better display sites. Result: 30% sales boost.
  • Developed seasonal themes that grew the business by 20%.
  • Polled customers to determine wants. Identified 20 products for POP displays. Result: 25% increase in impulse buys at registers.

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

5. Add Other Sections to Your Visual Merchandising 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:

  1. Resume Certifications and Classes

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:

  1. Resume Volunteer Work

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.

  1. Languages on a Resume

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.

  1. Professional Associations

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.

  1. Conferences

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:

Visual Merchandising Resume Examples [Other Sections]

Right

Fashion Writer, Trend Spot Weekly

  • Blog about the latest fashion trends in 2 articles per month.
  • Maintain readership of 10,000 readers per month.

Horticulturist, Community Farming Project

  • Teach 20+ young people how to grow food.
  • Sell produce at farmer’s market so youth can earn money.
Wrong
  • Skating
  • Cooking

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.

6. Write a Visual Merchandising Resume Objective or Resume Summary

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:

  1. Start with an adjective like innovative or dynamic
  2. Add your title (visual merchandiser).
  3. List your years of experience. (1, 3+, 8)
  4. Say what you’ll do (increase sales at TFD).
  5. Include the best visual marketing skills and moments hand-picked from the rest of your resume.
  6. Cap it at about three lines.

See these career summary examples:

Visual Merchandising Resume Summary

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:

Entry-Level Visual Merchandising Resume Objective

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.

7. What About a Visual Merchandising Cover Letter?

“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:

  1. Format your cover letter in the 3-paragraph style.
  2. Start your visual merchandising cover letter with the GM’s name.
  3. Write a Nordstrom-worthy opening paragraph for your cover letter.
  4. Next, prove you’re familiar with the job duties in their ad.
  5. Last, make a sales pitch to end 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.

Key Takeaway

Here’s a recap of how to write a visual merchandising resume:

  • Format your visual merchandising resume template in reverse-chronological order.
  • Find visual merchandising skills in the online job listing.
  • Write your work history section first.
  • To get attention like a gondola, add merchandising achievements with the PAR formula.
  • List your degree.
  • Add bonus sections to show publications, volunteering, or a NASP membership.
  • Write a visual merchandising cover letter to sightline your application

That’s it! Now, we’d love to hear from you: 

  • What’s the most distressing part about writing a visual merchandising resume? 
  • Is it too hard to think of your past accomplishments?
  • Do you draw a blank when you try to start your cover letter?

Let’s chat below in the comments, and thanks for reading! 

About Zety’s Editorial Process

This article has been reviewed by our editorial team to make sure it follows Zety's editorial guidelines. We’re committed to sharing our expertise and giving you trustworthy career advice tailored to your needs. High-quality content is what brings over 40 million readers to our site every year. But we don't stop there. Our team conducts original research to understand the job market better, and we pride ourselves on being quoted by top universities and prime media outlets from around the world.

Sources

Rate my article: visual merchandising resume example
Article Helpfulness: 4.75 (4 votes)
Thank you for voting
Tom Gerencer, CPRW
Tom Gerencer is a career expert and Certified Professional Resume Writer who has published over 200 in-depth articles on Zety. Since 2016, he has been sharing advice on all things recruitment from writing winning resumes and cover letters to getting a promotion.
X.com Linkedin

Similar articles