Air Traffic Controller CVs - How to Write Them Effectively

During the recruitment process employers merely scan CVs, usually for under a minute, the average being 30 seconds. You should therefore ensure your air traffic controller CV is written in the manner employers expect. This includes attractive presentation, brevity, conventional use of font styles and font sizes. Above all, you will need to include only information that is relevant to an air traffic controller’s daily operational duties.

Your air traffic controller resume should be written in 2 pages. This should be enough to fully highlight your professional experience, qualifications and training. However, if you are a supervisor or have amassed many years of experience within a Senior Controller position, your career profile might require more than 2 pages to fully highlight your expertise and experience. This is acceptable if you highlight only relevant information.

It is important to prepare your air traffic controller CV without clutter. The presentation and layout should be kept simple and easy for the reader to discern. Your resume should be written in black and you should also ensure it is consistent throughout the length of the document in terms of font style and font size. Times Roman and Arial are acceptable widely used font styles. Your CV should be headed boldly with your name using font style 14 or 16. The body of your resume should be written using font size 10 or 12.

The first few sentences in your CV will either encourage or discourage the reader. This first section is your professional profile and is your opportunity to briefly present your background as an air traffic controller and state your career objectives within this field. Keep your professional profile concise using 3 or 4 sentences. Following your professional profile, highlight your relevant skills in a bulleted key skills summary and keep the list to a maximum of 8 lines. Your key skills should include relevant skills such as the following:

• Ability to work proactively within a team setting


• Highly developed spatial awareness


• Ability to synthesize high volume of information from various sources quickly and accurately


• Excellent mathematical skills


• Good communication skills for issuing unambiguous instructions


• Ability to resolve problems and take decisions independently


• Ability to work in a calm manner under pressurised conditions including emergencies

If you are a newly qualified air traffic controller with little previous experience, you should highlight your education and training before any work experience, ensuring that you highlight relevant accreditations and other qualifications in subjects such as English and Mathematics. If you are an experienced air traffic controller then you should present your professional work experience before your education and training. Your work experience should, describe how you use relevant skills in your daily duties and where possible, how you were able to further develop these skills and acquire new relevant skills.

Finally, always write your CV in the third person and keep use of “I” to a minimum. Also ensure you consistently use dates along with names of educational institutions attended and names of employers. Employers also like to see records of achievement and other significant results such as commendable actions under emergency situations. These should be highlighted at the top of your CV.

Air Traffic Controller CVs - How to Write Them Effectively