VP of Operations Sample

As you get into the world of upper-level management, your resume needs to pack a punch because competition for senior and executive-level roles is fierce. Once you get to this level, you become one of the final authorities – the embodiment of the phrase ‘the buck stops here,’ if you will – that ensures success within your company. 

Your decisions, leadership, and strategic contributions significantly impact revenues, trajectory, and performance. That’s a lot to say in a two-page document. On top of showing that you can handle daily operations, you have to prove that you can motivate teams and manage change because, let’s face it, business sometimes changes every day. 

Overwhelmed yet? Don’t be! 

You’re in the right place to craft a stellar and award-winning Vice President (VP) of Operations resume. Here you’ll learn some tips and tricks to help your resume land in the ‘Yes’ pile. There’s even a VP of Operations resume sample for you to use as inspiration in building your own. 

Let’s dig in!

How to write a resume

The first step in writing your new resume doesn’t actually involve writing down anything at all. You start by digging into some job descriptions to find out what prospective employers want. 

This is called dissecting job descriptions to learn the keywords you’ll need to use in your new Vice President (VP) of Operations resume. The idea is that your resume needs to be specifically targeted to open roles so that you can demonstrate the value you bring to each company using their terms. 

Resume length

You may feel like the best way to showcase your value to potential employers is by word-vomiting everything you’ve ever done on your resume. Did you notice earlier in the article that we mentioned it was a two-page document? That’s all it should be. 

The general rules of thumb regarding resume length:

• One page: This is for entry-level people who have less than five years of experience.

• Two pages: When you get more than five years of experience, you’ve basically earned the second page, so go ahead and use it.

• Three pages: You should only use three pages if you have a bunch of extras, like relevant volunteer work, specialized research, publications, or public speaking engagements. Even when you use the third page for these items, the bulk of your resume should still be on two pages. 

Throwing everything you’ve ever done onto your resume will not impress anyone, especially considering that the hiring managers are only skimming through it to find the details they want. Your resume has to be written strategically. That strategy comes from combing through job descriptions to get the right keywords to tailor your resume. 

Use the right format to pass the skimming test

When the human hiring manager or executive recruiter gets your resume into their hands, they are spending a grand total of about six seconds skimming through it. The best way to ensure that your resume is user-friendly is to use the right format. 

There are three to choose from:

1. Reverse-chronological

2. Hybrid, sometimes called Combination

3. Functional

The best bet for an executive-level VP of Operations resume is the reverse-chronological format. This is certainly true if you’ve had a progressive career without a lot of employment gaps or career changes. 

When you use the reverse-chronological format for your VP of Operations resume, you’ll follow a well-defined structure that allows prospective employers to easily navigate and digest the information surrounding your career history. The content should broken into at least seven sections and headers, including:

• Contact information: You want the hiring manager to be able to contact you for an interview, so give them the details they need to reach out to you.

• Title: This is a future-facing line of text that mirrors the title of the job description.

• Summary: Your elevator pitch – three to five sentences that describe your skills, qualifications, and achievements in a way that raises eyebrows and keeps the reader reading.

• Skills: Include a list of 9-12 (15, max) keywords and phrases that you find from the job description here as this is the ‘beat the bots’ section of your resume that will help you get past the applicant tracking system, or ATS.

• Experience: Here it is – the bulk of your resume, the pièce de résistance of your application. It should contain approximately 10 years of relevant experience and highlight achievements you’ve had at each position. These achievements are what let future hiring managers know what you’ll be able to do for them. 

• Education: Probably the smallest part of your resume will be where you list your degrees and where you got them because once you get to the executive level of employment, your experience is more important than your education.

• Extras: This is where you put things like relevant Volunteer Work and Publications. You can also include languages if you’re multilingual and awards and honors, especially if these details will help you in your target career. 

Vice President (VP) of Operations Resume example 

That is a metric ton of information and can be hard to visualize. So, to help you get a picture of what your resume could look like, here’s a Vice President of Operations resume sample for you to use as a guide.

Key hard & soft skills for Vice President (VP) of Operations

While you can wordsmith keywords into any section of your VP of Operations resume, including a  Core Competencies section is a great way to ensure that the right ones are standing out to hiring managers. You’ll want to use a fair balance of hard and soft skills to show that you can do the job, but also oversee and optimize activities that contribute to the overall success of the organization. 

Key hard skills for Vice President (VP) of Operations

Hard skills are technical in nature. They’re the things you know how to do because of education and experience. What’s more, is that hard skills are quantifiable, allowing you to prove that you are the right person for the job. 

Here are some examples of hard skills you can use on your VP of Operations resume:

• Operations Management

• Human Resources

• Acquisitions

• New Business Development

• P&L Management

• Revenue Growth

Key soft skills for Vice President (VP) of Operations

Don’t forget that you have to let future employers know you are capable of more than the daily tasks. Being an executive leader means that you understand how to inspire teams, drive positivity, make autonomous decisions, and overcome challenges. 

It should be noted that many hiring managers value soft skills over hard skills, especially when they have two viable candidates to choose from. In that case, soft skills will usually win the day. 

Here are some examples of soft skills you can use on your VP of Operations resume:

• Leadership

• Communication

• Adaptability

• Cross-functional Collaboration

• Innovation

• Stakeholder Relations

Summary & last words

Your career is akin to a professional journey that you’re proud of – it’s filled with achievements and milestones that make you an ideal leader. By following the tips and tricks in this article and using the VP of Operations resume sample for guidance, you’ll end up with an interview-winning resume that wows hiring managers. 

Introduction to ZipJob: Professional resume writers

If you want to elevate your VP of Operations resume even higher, then working with ZipJob’s team of professional resume writers is a great step in securing your position in an executive-level career. Our team has a lot of experience helping Vice Presidents and other executives cull out the most relevant and impressive career accomplishments for people in over 65 industries.

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When you decide to use ZipJob to write your resume, you’ll be paired with a writer and get a personalized approach that gives you about a 200% better chance of landing the job you want. On top of that, having a professionally written resume increases your confidence in explaining how your career history matches what employers want. 

Resume writing service for Vice President (VP) of Operations: Let us write your resume

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