5 Things You Need on a Housekeeper Resume
If you're the type that likes the process of creating a clean, orderly home for yourself, you may have wondered on occasion if this is an interest you can monetize. Working as a housekeeper — which generally involves dusting, vacuuming, polishing and similar tasks — could be a great fit for you. However, if you've never written a resume for this type of position, it can be confusing. After all, a housekeeper job isn't quite like a traditional office job, so it will require a slightly different resume to highlight the appropriate skills. We'll give you some tips, guidelines and examples to help you craft a great housekeeper resume.
What should I put on my resume for housekeeping?
Ideally, your resume should highlight relevant experiences, such as previous housekeeping experience, and applicable skills, such as cleaning, organizing, tidying and using cleaning equipment. Because housekeeping jobs don't generally have specific education requirements, your previous experiences and relevant skills will be much more important than where or whether you got your degree (however, you should still include your educational experience).
Listing previous employers is a great way to show that you have experience in the type of housekeeping work you're looking for. So, for example, if you're looking for a housecleaning job in a hotel and have previously worked in a hotel housecleaning job, you'll want to be sure to have that experience on your resume.
If you have experience beyond basic housekeeping duties, such as helping manage staff, you should be sure to include that on your resume as well. Similarly, if you have specific achievements at previous jobs — such as recognition as a particularly valuable employee, positive guest feedback or contributing to a process improvement that saved your previous employer money — that should also go on your resume, as it shows you add value to your employer.
Finally, if you have the room for it, you can also consider adding hobbies, volunteer work and special interests to give a prospective employer a better sense of who you are and what your personality is like. Additionally, if any of these bonus items add to your value as a housekeeper (say, for example, that you happen to love sewing), they may even add to your candidacy.
Housekeeper duties and responsibilities.
At the most general level, housekeeping is about keeping a place — whether commercial or private — clean, presentable and comfortable. A housekeeper's general duties will involve:
- Cleaning and sanitizing bathroom areas (toilets, showers/bathtubs, countertops and sinks)
- Cleaning and sanitizing kitchen areas there are any (sinks, counters and floors)
- Washing windows
- Vacuuming or mopping carpets, rugs and floors as appropriate for each surface
- Dusting and polishing furniture and fixtures
- Taking garbage out
- General tidying up
In hotels, housekeeping staff are also responsible for keeping bathrooms stocked with clean linens, toiletries and other supplies, and making beds and changing linens. In a private environment, housekeepers may be responsible for sorting, washing, loading and unloading laundry for the household.
What skills should I list on my resume?
As previously discussed, a housekeeper resume should list applicable skills. Given the duties that housekeepers are expected to carry out, your resume should demonstrate that you have some experience with cleaning and tidying. Some of the hard skills you'll want to list include:
- Cleaning rooms
- Daily cleaning
- Deep cleaning
- Vacuuming
- Mopping
- Window treatment cleaning
- Carpet cleaning
- Replacing linens
- Removing trash
- Cleaning bathrooms
- Sweeping
- Reporting maintenance problems
If you speak another language, you should also list this on your resume. This is especially true for hotel housekeeping positions, as you may find that some hotels have many international clientele.
There are also some soft skills that prospective employers will likely want to see, as well. These will help them feel confident with you as an employee and, if the prospective employer is a hotel, recognize that you can work well with others on the housekeeping staff and solve problems on your own with minimal intervention from management. Some of the soft skills you'll want to list include:
- Communication
- Teamwork
- Time management
- Multitasking
- Problem-solving
- Flexibility
Below are some examples of ways to list your skills for a housekeeping resume:
- Executed housekeeping duties (including cleaning bathrooms, changing bed linens and cleaning rooms) for [type of establishment]
- Recognized by management for punctuality, attentiveness and attention to detail
- Managed staff of [specify size] for a [type of establishment] and prioritized duties to ensure timely completion of all tasks
Example resumes.
The below examples break down the components of a successful housekeeping resume section-by-section.
If a housekeeping applicant has plenty of relevant experience, they'll likely be best served by having a resume summary to pull all their experiences together at the top of their resume. For example, a housekeeping resume summary for a housekeeper with experience might read something like this:
As an alternative to a summary, a resume objective is a good choice for someone without direct housekeeping experience who is applying for a housekeeping job. For example, for a recent high school graduate with camp counselor experience but no housekeeping experience, this might look like:
Most critically, a strong resume for a housekeeping position will detail relevant experiences. The below is a great example of a detailed description of a past housekeeping experience:
Experiences should be listed in reverse chronological order, with the most recent experience(s) on top.
Finally, you should include an education section in your resume and highlight your key achievements and experiences in school:
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Lorelei Yang is a New York-based consultant and freelance writer/researcher. Find her on Twitter and LinkedIn.
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