Housekeeping CV Example & Writing Guide

There’s nothing like the feeling of walking into a clean and pristine hotel room after a long day of traveling and collapsing on a perfectly made bed. But behind every towel folded into a swan there’s a hardworking housekeeper to thank. As the guardian angels of the hotel experience, housekeepers make sure that one guest’s mess doesn’t become the next guest’s unwelcome surprise. 

Housekeeping can make great full-time and readily available work for people without a University degree. While housekeeping can be physically demanding, housekeepers take pride in the cleanliness and presentability of the places they clean. Housekeepers are most commonly associated with hotels, although some work in hospitals, private homes and other buildings. Cleaning staff in these situations are also referred to as hotel cleaners or housekeeping staff. These positions fall into the maintenance and repair category. 

How to create a compelling housekeeping CV

So to get on your way to landing a job as a housekeeper, you need to start with a great CV. This guide, along with our CV builder tool and field-tested templates, will allow you to:

• Highlight your stamina and personal qualities that make you a good fit for the job
• Create a clean and straightforward CV that stands out to a hotel manager
• Convey your trustworthiness and ability to work in a team
• Craft a CV that meets the demands of today’s hotels and offices.

What does a housekeeper do? 

Housekeeping is a job that requires a variety of cleaning and organisational skills and excellent time management. If 40 guests check out of their hotel rooms at 11 a.m., that means there could be 40 new guests waiting to check in at 3 p.m. That’s quite a time crunch, even without the added difficulty of extraordinary messes. When composing your CV, emphasise your ability to stay organised and efficient.

New housekeepers often time themselves to find out their average speed for tidying, cleaning and reorganising each room and then work to cut down that time. A typical checkout requires a housekeeper to strip and remake the bed, clean the bathroom toilet, sink, floor and shower, vacuum the carpet and replenish the minibar, toiletries, towels and other amenities.

Housekeepers are paid hourly but also benefit from tips from guests. While a fancier hotel may require extra attention to detail, housekeepers generally earn more in these situations. The right CV can give you a boost in landing a higher-paying hotel.

Profile summary CV example: Putting your best foot forward

As a housekeeper, your whole job is about presentation. It’s important that your CV also conveys this commitment to professionalism and organisation – starting with your profile summary. The summary serves as your first introduction to a hotel manager looking for the right candidate who quit the first week. This is a great place to show employers that you are a well-rounded candidate with tenacity, resilience and a positive attitude.

You can write an excellent professional summary by thinking of your strongest attributes and using those to describe yourself. Then add a few more lines to summarise your previous experience and skills. This is also a great place to include any standout qualities you possess. Maybe you were recognised for leadership or efficiency at your previous job. Maybe you have experience in ordering supplies or another special task. This is a great way to prove your worth to a potential employer.

Housekeeper employment history CV example: Share your career strengths

It’s best to list your experience in reverse chronological order, with the most recent first, working backward until you have at least three relevant examples. If you have yet to work as a housekeeper, related activities can also show your commitment to service and physical stamina. Remember that you should not only list your past jobs, but also provide details and context when possible. That’s what the short bullet-point list beneath each position is for. It’s also important to use specific action verbs to convey the type of work you did, whether it was as a housekeeper or in a related role.

Instead of:

• Cleaned rooms
• Took care of bathrooms
• Picked up trash
• Checked amenities.

Try:

• Vacuumed and scrubbed floors
• Wiped and sanitised bathrooms
• Collected and emptied trash
• Ordered and restocked supplies.

Numbers are also a great way to add weight to your words. Some possibilities include: How many rooms did you clean on a typical shift? How large was the hotel? How big was the staff you managed? How many stars did the hotel have? All of these figures give employers the sense that you’re not afraid of a challenge and you strive for excellence in your work.

Education CV sample: Polished and ready to go

Housekeeping is a great entry-level job for people without a University degree or formal education, since most of the work takes place during the day and indoors You can include your institution by adding the dates attended, name of the school and its location. Most housekeepers learn the majority of their skills through on-the-job training led by the head housekeeper. Since this section is not the most important part of your CV as a housekeeper, it’s best to keep it short, unless you have specific qualifications relating to the job.

Housekeeping skills CV example: Your personal touches

Chances are if you’ve ever made a bed or picked up the living room, you already have some of the skills needed to be a successful housekeeper. In fact, you may have no previous housekeeping experience, but with the right mix of hard and soft skills you’ll be able to ace your training and ease into the job in no time. On your CV, it’s important to highlight both these types of skills to give employers a well-rounded impression of you and your work style.

Hard skills

Hard skills are ones requiring objects, tools, exact knowledge or materials. Each day, you’ll need a fair amount of hard skills to clean rooms and other spaces. Think about the categories of work you do and the types of tools you are comfortable using. Then list out all the hard skills you possess. Later, you can remove any skills that are irrelevant or too specific, unless, of course, you think that skill will be hard for an employer to come by in other candidates.

Soft skills

Soft skills are almost equally important for housekeepers. You’ll need to work well in a team and have excellent organisational and time management skills. You’ll also need to have good customer service skills, taking care of problems correctly and immediately when guests bring them to your attention. 

Remember that the skills section is generally not too large, so keep it simple! Consider how much free space you have left on the page, how important each skill is and how important it may be to an employer or manager.

CV formatting: So fresh and so clean

Remember, your job as a housekeeper is all about being neat and orderly. Those standards should extend all the way to your CV layout. A busy hotel manager needs to quickly assess your skills and experience, and they won’t be able to do that with an impractical layout. For a housekeeping job, a straightforward CV layout is the way to go, and it’s best to avoid unnecessary colour or pictures. With CVapp.ie’s field-tested templates, you can take the frustration out of constructing a CV and land an interview in no time. For a housekeeping position, we recommend CVs in the Simple category for a clean feel with no frilly extras.

You may be dropping off a printed CV in person, or you may email it to a hotel manager ahead of time. Either way, a PDF is the best file format to make sure your formatting stays consistent between computers or on paper. CVapp.ie’s professional CV builder makes it easy to add your details, customise the template and download as a PDF in just a few clicks. If you want an editable Word file version, we have that too. CVapp.ie offers multi-format CV saving functions!

Key takeaways

• Your CV is an important career tool: don’t be afraid to share your professional talents and skills with employers!
• Don’t forget about your soft skills like time management and organisation since these are just as important as your cleaning know-how.
• Working in a higher level hotel or as a head housekeeper can come with a salary boost, but your CV will need to show a dedication to housekeeping to land one of those positions.

Now it’s your turn to craft the perfect CV! If you need a little help getting started, check out CVapp.ie’s field-tested cv templates and CV builder tool to land the housekeeping job you’re after in no time.