Operations Director Resume Example & Writing Guide

Where do you begin to create an operations director resume without downplaying any of your vital abilities? Your bird’s-eye oversight of ground-level operations requires an unusual degree of close-up knowledge from all freestanding but interconnected corners. To stand out from other job contenders with the same bragging rights in their resume, your sky view must be focused through the target employer’s lens.

You’re in the right place for advice on channeling everything your next boss needs into a persuasive resume. Resume.io has created occupation-specific writing tips and resume examples for job seekers in more than 350 fields.

Here’s what we’ll cover in this operations director resume writing guide, with reference to wording from a corresponding resume example:

• What operations directors do and a job market snapshot
• How to write an operations director resume — starting with the correct structure and best format
• Optimizing the impact of each resume section: summary, employment history, skills, and education
• Professional resume layout and design hints. 
   

What does an operations director do?

Operations directors occupy a senior management role, commonly one level below the Chief Operating Officer (COO) in larger organizations, or instead of the COO in smaller businesses or nonprofits. Either way, they are the functional bridge connecting other managers at higher executive or department levels. Their focus is on ensuring all operations are efficient, effective, and aligned with the organization's goals and objectives. 

Depending on the industry, company size, and organizational structure, operations directors generally have a hand in one or more of the following: strategic planning, process optimization, resource management, performance monitoring, cross-functional collaboration, quality assurance, risk management, and leadership and team management. Their diverse preoccupations often overlap with other administrative roles.

How to write an operations director resume

As an operations director you lead to succeed with a logistical mindset. No detail is too small, no relationship is too inconsequential. When essentially everything and everyone matters to that extent, the prospect of doing justice to your organizational strengths in a concisely compelling resume can seem daunting. 

To put your mind at ease, start by getting a handle on the set structure that keeps all resumes on track. Regardless of a job seeker’s occupation, these are the essential resume sections that all hiring managers expect to find:

• Header
• Summary
• Employment history
• Skills
• Education

Your operations director resume should be no different when it comes to putting all the right content in the right place, so recruiters won’t get lost looking. But catching and holding their attention for longer than 10 seconds — that’s the longest resume skimming time on average  — depends on a lot more than an orderly framework of sections.

To convince any employer of your potential value on their senior management team, you need a solid understanding of hiring priorities. Scrutinize the career ad posting to pinpoint what counts most. This will guide your judgment in keeping all resume content specific and relevant.

Choosing the best resume format for an operations director

Of the three different resume formats available to job seekers, the chronological format is the best choice in about 90 percent of instances. That includes the vast majority of operations director resumes, where professional experience matters most to hiring managers. The employment history section thus takes precedence in telling a story of progressive growth and experience in employee roles, organized in reverse order from most recent to earliest dates. 

Only if the position you’re seeking is a significant career departure, or your management background is less straightforward, might you consider a functional or hybrid resume format instead.

Resume header

Suppose your operations director resume is shortlisted and the hiring team is ready to invite you for an interview. You’ve made that easy by displaying this identifying information in an eye-catching header: your name, job title, contact information and LinkedIn URL. 

Besides helping your job application stand out visually from the rest — especially effective on a matching pair of resume and cover letter documents — the header makes everything else on the page look more reader-friendly. 

Resume summary example

During the brief moment you have to wow recruiters with an exceptional resume summary — sometimes called the profile or personal statement — your future prospects with any target employer hang in the balance. 

While capturing your key experience and expertise in operational leadership roles, limited space allows you to hit only the high notes of what’s directly relevant. Frame these as bottom-line results you could deliver to your next employer, showing you’re familiar with this hiring organization’s needs and inner workings

Ultimately, you want recruiters to be thinking, “How remarkable! We must find out more about how this operations director might pull off the same thing for us. This resume needs our full attention.” 

Below is an operations director resume summary sample you can customize.

Employment history sample

Even if the summary was enough to get your resume shortlisted already, the employment history section will reinforce that duly impressed readers are onto a good thing. It’s time to double down on the evidence that you’re not just a qualified operations director, but rather the operations director that this organization must hire. You’ve already proven capable of meeting its goals but for a previous employer. 

The more extensive and diverse your work experience, even when confined to a specific industry, function, or type of operation, the more selective you must be in highlighting relevant accomplishments. Revisit the posted job requirements as a basis for crafting descriptive bullet points that show you’ve done your homework and are cut out for the job. Start each one with a dynamic action verb such as grew, raised, cut, streamlined, oversaw, or improved — but never responsible for or handled.

As noted above, bottom-line results are the key to captivating recruiters. They are keenly interested in what you did and how well you did it, with successful outcomes expressed in “why” and “how” terms. Did you help turn losses into profits, boost company-wide efficiencies, or reduce staff turnover? Was there a challenge to overcome or a problem to solve? What approach was taken — perhaps a new policy, streamlined communication process, or updated project management software? As an operations director, you can likely access performance metrics to quantify these success stories — so much the better.

This employment history section from our operations director resume sample can give you ideas for writing your own.

CV skills example

From leagues of expert sources, you’re sure to find endless variations on the hard skills and soft skills deemed vital or useful for an operations director. And you likely possess an impressive number of them. But again, you must be scrupulously selective in determining which ones belong on your list for this particular role. Deciding which ones to exclude may be tougher than you expect.

Start by making sure all the top hiring priority boxes are checked — each and every skill stipulated in the posted job specs. This can be an added opportunity to ATS-proof your resume using keywords. Any additional insights you have into the moving parts of this employer can reinforce your choice of skills.  

Check out our operations director resume sample for the skills section below.

Operations director resume education example

The education section of your operations director resume should start with a list of your relevant postsecondary degrees — typically a bachelor’s degree in business, IT, data science or a related discipline, and perhaps an MBA. These should appear in reverse chronological order, from highest to lowest level.

Continuous learning opportunities you’ve pursued should also be listed here — perhaps leadership training programs and courses in specific areas such as product management or sales. Be sure to also mention certifications in professional or project management, or in specialized areas like change management, in addition to professional organization memberships.

Below is the education section from an operations director resume you can modify.

Resume layout and design

However conscientious you are in saying all the right things the right way, this could all be in vain if your operations director resume fails to look as good as it sounds. The attention and effort you put into eye-pleasing visual details will never be wasted. 

Strive for a professionally polished impact that’s stylish but gimmick-free. Less is more when it comes to an impeccably clean, uncluttered, reader-friendly layout, and no more than two complementary font styles. Be generous about page margins and white space to balance the text-heavy sections. But go easy on graphic flourishes and color splashes.

Key takeaways for an operations director resume

1. An outstanding operations director resume connects your past and future successes in advancing the employer’s goals across all teams at every level.
2. With a background and talents that are likely diverse and extensive — even if concentrated in a particular industry or type of organization — you must target the employer’s specific hiring needs to stand out from other job candidates with similar abilities and work experience.
3. Our usual custom-tailoring tips hold true for a persuasive operations director resume. Let the posted job requirements be your guide for keeping it directly relevant and for keyword use to avoid ATS rejection.
4. Using one of our expert-designed resume templates frees you from fretting over the design details so you can focus on writing impressive content.