If you’re looking for a Chief Operating Officer job, it’s important that you have a resume that speaks to your experience in the field. A good Chief Operating Officer resume will highlight the skills you have developed and the achievements you’ve made. It should also show off your leadership style and how you’ve managed people over time.
To help you write a great Chief Operating Officer resume, we’ve reviewed as many Chief Operating Officer resumes as we could find—that is, literally all of them. We took an objective lens to each COO’s skills and accomplishments, then analyzed them for consistency across industries. We also considered their career trajectory, including their current position and previous jobs on paper—as well as what they’d said about themselves in interviews or during their career-building process.
By doing this research for you, we can help make sure your COO resume is clear and concise—and that it highlights all of the best parts of who you are as a leader and person.
Methodology
To build our chief operating officer resume guide, we analyzed 132 chief operating officer resumes and 37 chief operating officer job postings using machine learning to identify the most common elements of good chief operating officer resumes and the things employers ask for most often when hiring.
We’ve also built a database of over 600,000 publicly available resumes from different professions & analyzed how the best resumes were written.
It’s always good to make your resume unique and to follow best practices. This guide will help you understand what you need to include to make it competitive based on a large set of data from real resumes and real job listings.
You can read about our methodology in more detail here.
Chief operating officer resume objective data + chief operating officer objective examples
Do chief operating officer’s need to include an objective on their resume?
The general advice for resume objectives and professional summaries is still true (read our guide on resume objectives), but here’s what the data says for chief operating officer’s specifically:
- 27% of chief operating officer’s included an objective section
- 27% of chief operating officer’s included a professional summary
- 50% of chief operating officer’s included neither an objective nor a summary
Chief operating officer resume objective examples
Productive and diligent operations manager able to win independently or collaboratively team. Looking to join a reputable company as a operations manager to help meet revenue benchmarks.
To secure a position as a operations manager in an organization that will enable me to leverage my skills and experience, contribute to an important mission, and be part of a team.
Transformational healthcare executive value-based care and population health leader founder investor entrepreneur innovator disruptor, 20+ years of leading-by-example, motivating and developing great leaders and teams, and producing strong clinical and financial outcomes through growth and performance excellence.
Lifelong operations manager looking for a new position. Lots of experience working collaborative and creating innovative systems to help meet company benchmarks .
Driving force behind growth-oriented, innovative, multisite senior care organizations with achievements in startup, turnaround, and expansion of Independent Living, Assisted Living, Nursing Care, Memory Care, Primary Care, and Nonmedical Home Care operations.
Skills for chief operating officer resumes
The best skills to put on any resume will be the ones most relevant to the job, but based on our analysis, these skills are among the most common on chief operating officer resumes, which means they can be a strong foundation and are probably good to list on yours (if you’ve got them).
To learn more about how to fully leverage your skills section, check out our guide to resume skills.
*Note: our machine learning essentially picks up common words and phrases in skill sections, so you may have to extrapolate what skills are needed based on your own professional experience.
Most common chief operating officer resume skills
Most common hard skills for chief operating officer resumes: management, operations, completion-oriented, understands finance, and delegation.
Most common soft skills for chief operating officer resumes: communication skills, decision-making skills, leadership skills, problem-solving skills, and time-management skills.
Other good chief operating officer resume skills
- Leadership
- Communication
- Time management
- Decision-making
- Problem-solving
- Organization
- Strategic planning
- Business development
- Budget development
- Knowledge of data analysis
- MS office
- Public speaking skills
- Delegation
- Completion-oriented
- Financial management
- Business planning
Chief operating officer skills section examples
Note: we formatted all these examples the same way here for the sake of simplicity, but you can read about skills section formatting in our guide to resume formatting.
Chief operating officer skills example 1
Leadership | management | time management | decision-making | operations | marketing| problem-solving
Chief operating officer skills example 2
Communication | communication skills | organization | decision-making skills | strategic planning | leadership skills | business development
Chief operating officer skills example 3
Completion-oriented | budget development | time-management skills | problem-solving skills | ms office | decision-making skills | public speaking skills
Work experience for chief operating officer resumes
Work experience is perhaps the most important part of any resume, and it’s no different for chief operating officer resumes.
For more detailed info on work experience sections specifically, check out our guide for writing a good work experience resume section and our guide for building a resume with no experience.
In general, when applying for chief operating officer jobs, you want to highlight the experience most relevant to each specific position. Here are a few samples.
Chief operating officer work experience examples
WORK EXPERIENCE
Sr. Associate Chief Operating Officer
Cyberdyne Systems, 2021-2022
Responsibilities
- Analyze financial statements, sales reports, and other performance indicators
- Appoint department heads and managers
- Consult with other executives, staff, and board members about general operations
- Direct and oversee an organization’s financial and budgetary activities
- Establish and carry out departmental or organizational goals, policies, and procedures
WORK EXPERIENCE
Associate Chief Operating Officer
Sanguine Services, 2016-2022
Responsibilities
- Identify places to cut costs and to improve performance, policies, and programs
- Manage general activities related to making products and providing services
- Acts as a strategic partner on the leadership team and works closely with the team to ensure they are meeting performance expectations
- Coaches and develops the team to ensure they are delivering against key business metrics
- Works collaboratively to develop and/or improve systems, processes, controls and procedures that improve the overall efficiency of the firm and insure excellent client service
WORK EXPERIENCE
Chief Operating Officer Intern
Eco Focus, 2009-2012
Responsibilities
- Provides timely, accurate and complete reports on the operating condition of the company
- Motivates and leads a high-performance management team
- Demonstrates a willingness to take on new tasks with a general attitude that no task is too small, impossible, or cannot be improved
- Establish policies that promote company culture and vision
- Write and submit reports to the CEO in all matters of importance
Education for chief operating officer resumes
Unless you’re applying for academic positions or don’t have any work experience, your work history will be more important than your education.
Still, education is usually listed on resumes, and often, chief operating officer job postings list a minimum education requirement.
See our guide for education on resumes for more detailed information.
Data from our sample of 132 chief operating officer resumes
- 3% chief operating officer resumes listed an associate’s degree
- 53% chief operating officer resumes listed a bachelor’s degree
- 39% chief operating officer resumes included a masters degree
- 0% chief operating officer resumes mentioned a doctoral degree
Chief operating officer resume education examples
EDUCATION
Bachelor of Management Studies
Universal Technical Institute of Arizona Inc, 2021
Awards & Honors
- Phi Beta Kappa
- Magna Cum Laude
- The Honor Society
EDUCATION
Associate of Science
Erie Institute of Technology Inc, 2016
Certifications for chief operating officer resumes
Not every job requires certifications, but certifications can almost always improve your odds of landing an interview, and there certifications for (or related to) nearly all jobs.
In fact, we wrote a playbook for listing certifications on resumes.
Here are a few certifications that can help chief operating officer’s specifically, according to CareerOneStop.
Chief operating officer certification examples
CERTIFICATIONS
Certified Association Executive
American Society of Association Executives, 2021
Certified Analytics Professional
Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, 2016
CERTIFICATIONS
Certified Analytics Professional, Energy Risk Professional, Certified Association Executive
Chief operating officer resume action verbs
After analyzing over 600,000 resumes, we built a huge library of of action verbs and cross-referenced it with our sample of 132 chief operating officer resumes and job postings to find which action verbs are most commonly used by chief operating officer’s and chief operating officer employers.
The most common action verbs on chief operating officer resumes are: process, develop, perform, prepare, and increase.
The most common action verbs on chief operating officer job postings are: lead, build, document, oversee, and track.
Other action verbs for chief operating officer resumes:
- Assist
- Create
- Direct
- Improve
- Program
- Design
- Establish
- Supervise
- Manage
- Implement
- Assist
- Create
- Direct
- Improve
- Program
Full chief operating officer resume example
We created a couple complete chief operating officer resume examples to help you see how all this fits together. Yours can be better than this. This is just a basic illustration.
To see “perfect” examples, check out our showcase of resume examples.
Chief operating officer resume example
Melissa Johnson
Chief Operating Officer
4887 Godfrey Street, Estacada, OR
Charismatic, results-oriented, executive leader with two decades of balancing strategic planning, operational and financial excellence.
WORK EXPERIENCE
Sr. Associate Chief Operating Officer
Cyberdyne Systems, 2021-2022
Responsibilities
- Identify and develop new business engagements.
- Based on clients’ needs, develop business proposals, statement of work, project scope, budget, and timelines.
- Assess current capabilities of an organization and provide recommendations for high priority opportunities.
- Analyzed and quantify the potential clinical quality outcomes as well as the financial impact of the opportunities.
Associate Chief Operating Officer
Sanguine Services, 2016-2022
Responsibilities
- Instrumental in design, implementation and execution of strategic and business plan of organization.
- Responsible for the development and operational execution of quality programs (STAR HEDIS, CAHPS, HOS, Quality Improvement initiatives, etc.) through our Model of Care (MOC) framework.
- Managed imports for 5 offices nationwide with a total of 25 import department staff while maintaining corporate compliance procedures
- Efficiently managed financial analysis and reporting activities for two locations including budgets, payroll, show cost estimates, purchasing, invoicing, and leased equipment contracts
Chief Operating Officer Intern
Eco Focus, 2009-2022
Responsibilities
- Responsible for managing the production of item storage PODs designed for robot logistics transport.
- Implemented inventory controls of small equipment, tools and spare parts reducing pilferage and waste by 30 percent.
- Established strict in house monthly and quarterly preventative maintenance procedures resulting in cutting costs associated with the use of outside contractors.
- Solicited bids for capital projects from outside contractors
CERTIFICATIONS
Strategic Planning Professional
Association for Strategic Planning, 2021
Operations and Performance Management Professional
American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers, 2016
SKILLS
Leadership | problem-solving | marketing | leadership skills | communication skills | nursing | budget development
EDUCATION
Bachelor of Management Studies
Universal Technical Institute of Arizona Inc, 2021
Associate of Science
Erie Institute of Technology Inc, 2016
What experts say about chief operating officer resumes
Before we wrap it up, we want to leave you with some advice from other experts we admire.
“Resumes with a LinkedIn profile see higher interview rates, but only 48% of resumes included a LinkedIn profile.” – Write an Incredible Resume: 5 Golden Rules!
” Measurable metrics improve resume outcomes, but only 26% of resumes include a five or more metrics.” – Write an Incredible Resume: 5 Golden Rules!
” In addition to all those basics, you should also include a website and portfolio if you can.” – 8 Tips for Writing a Winning Resume
Want help with your chief operating officer resume?
Well, that’s it! We hope you’ve enjoyed our guide to creating a great COO resume.
If you have any questions, let us know in the comments—we’d love to help!
