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Department lead resume examples from 2026

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Land interviews using Zippia's AI-powered resume builder.

Updated March 26, 2025
6 min read
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How to write a department lead resume

Craft a resume summary statement

Your resume summary sums up your experience and skills, making it easy for hiring managers to understand your qualifications at a glance. Here are some tips to writing the most important 2-4 sentences of your resume:

Step 1: Start with your current job title, or the one you aspire to. Are you a passionate manager? A skilled analyst? It's a good starting point.

Step 2: Next put your years of experience in department lead-related roles.

Step 3: Now is the time to put your biggest accomplishment or something you are professionally proud of.

Step 4: Read over what you have written. It should be 2-4 sentences. Your goal is to summarize your experience, not recite your resume.

Hiring managers spend under a minute reviewing resumes on average. This means your summary needs to demonstrate your value quickly and show why you are the perfect fit for the department lead position.

Please upload your resume so Zippia’s job hunt AI can draft a summary statement for you.

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List the right project manager skills

Your Skills section is a place to list all relevant skills and abilities. Here is how to make the most of your skills section and make sure you have the right keywords:

  1. You often need to include the exact keywords from the job description in your resume. Look at the job listing and consider which of the listed skills you have experience with, along with related skills.
  2. Include as many relevant hard skills and soft skills as possible from the listing.
  3. Use the most up to date and accurate terms. Don't forget to be specific.
These five steps should give you a strong elevator pitch and land you some department lead interviews.

Here are example skills to include in your “Area of Expertise” on a department lead resume:

  • Cleanliness
  • Safety Procedures
  • Customer Service
  • Store Management
  • Inventory Management
  • Sales Floor
  • Math
  • Troubleshoot
  • POS
  • Inventory Control
  • Performance Reviews
  • Product Knowledge
  • Customer Orders
  • Leadership
  • Direct Reports
  • Loss Prevention
  • CNC
  • Pallet Jack
  • Jewelry
  • HR
  • Quality Standards
  • Sales Associates
  • Groceries
  • ISO
  • RF
  • Customer Complaints
  • QC
  • Windows
  • Customer Relations
  • Cycle Counts

Zippia’s AI can customize your resume for you.

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How to structure your work experience

A work experience section is a vital part of your resume because it shows you have the experience to succeed in your next job.

  1. Put your most recent experience first. Prospective employers care about your most recent accomplishments the most.
  2. Put the job title, company name, city, and state on the left. Align dates in month and year format on the right-hand side.
  3. Include only recent, relevant jobs. This means if you're a fairly experienced worker, you might need to leave off that first internship or other positions in favor of highlighting more pertinent positions.

How to write department lead experience bullet points

Effective job bullet points do more than just describe your job duties. Instead, they should be specific and measurable accomplishments. Here are some strategies to mastering job bullet points:

  • Use strong action verbs like Led, Built, or Optimized.
  • Follow up with numbers when possible to support your results. How much did performance improve? How much revenue did you drive?
  • Wrap it up by explaining the actions you took to achieve the result and how you made an impact.

Here are great bullet points from department lead resumes:

Work history example #1

Merchandising Associate

The Home Depot

  • Planned, directed, and managed designated TMO projects with other MEAS.
  • Navigated ship via rudder control, visual observation and coordination with other ships, and verbal communication/commands
  • Identified for specialty management position and asked to attend weekly district meetings.
  • Coordinated all merchandising in one of Home Depot's most profitable stores in Passaic County.
  • Preformed opening and closing procedures ensuring that all tasks were completed accurately.

Work history example #2

Numerical Control Programmer

Aerotek

  • Served as a programmer and operator of CNC EDM and Mills for the plastic injection mold industry 2.
  • Programmed and operated Fadal Mills for Aerospace industry.
  • Operated and maintained automated CNC equipment and general assembly.
  • Utilized dial micrometers for close tolerance quality control.
  • Trained on CNC HAAS SL20 to read program and set up tools according to specification of the program.

Work history example #3

Department Lead

PETCO Animal Supplies Stores

  • Addressed and resolved customer complaints while maintaining cordial customer relations and presented a positive company reputation.
  • Maintained positive rapport with customers aimed at offering a positive experience that promotes* member retention and referrals.
  • Calculated payroll and executed schedule changes.
  • Managed reports for data analysis including monetary reconciliation, payroll, and client tracking.
  • Supervised three different departments: Special Service Desk (Operations), Plumbing and Millwork (Merchandising Departments).

Work history example #4

Sales/Stock Associate

Dollar General

  • Opened and closed store, counted down money drawers, stock, made deposits for the store, etc.
  • Maintained good team morale through effective communications.
  • Facilitated inter-departmental communication to effectively provide customer support.
  • Coached and developed new-hire sales associates according to corporate policies and procedures.
  • Operated cash registers effectively and efficiently; counted money for registers and bank deposits daily.

Zippia’s AI can customize your resume for you.

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Add an education section to your resume

The education section should display your highest degree first.

Place your education section appropriately on your resume. If you graduated over 5 years ago, this section should be at the bottom of your resume. If you just graduated and lack relevant work experience, the education section should go to the top.

If you have a bachelor's or master's degree, do not list your high school education. If your graduation year is more than 15-20 years ago, it's better not to include dates in this section.

Here are some examples of good education entries for resumes:

High School Diploma

2010 - 2010

Highlight your department lead certifications on your resume

If you have any additional certifications, add them to the certification section.

Include the full name of the certification, along with the name of the issuing organization and date of obtainment.

If you have any of these certifications, be sure to include them on your department lead resume:

  1. Forklift Safety and Inspector