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Chief Operating Officer (COO) Resume—Examples & Writing Tips

You’re indispensable in the C-Suite, and your expertise ranges from marketing to operations. Prove it with a COO resume that highlights your skills and achievements.

Dominika Kowalska, CPRW
Career Expert
Chief Operating Officer (COO) Resume—Examples & Writing Tips

Hiring a COO can make or break the company. 

 

Choose the wrong person, and the company may never fully recover from bad financial decisions and poor performance management. 

 

Pick well, and the company will enter a real golden age. 

 

Time to write a COO resume that proves to the board you’re the right choice. 

 

In this guide:

  • A COO resume sample that gets jobs.
  • How to ace your COO job description on a resume.
  • How to write a resume for a COO that gets the interview.
  • Expert tips and examples on how to fill your COO resume template with job-winning achievements and skills.

 

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Considering other management positions? Take a look at our dedicated guides:

 

 

COO Resume Example

 

Damon Wester

COO

 

504-781-0931

damon.wester@gmail.com

Linkedin.com/in/1damon.wester

 

Summary

 

Energetic COO with over 10 years of professional experience in managing medium- and large-sized businesses with over $200 million in revenue. Eager to assist Miller & Sons in increasing its ROI and improving management processes worldwide. At Melcrow, cut time-to-market by 45% by introducing agile methodologies throughout the organization.

 

Experience

 

Chief Operations Officer

Melcrow, New York, NY

June 2011–July 2021

 

Key Qualifications & Responsibilities

  • Increased yearly profits by 25% by identifying new business areas.
  • Decrease the delivery time of the projects by introducing the SCRUM methodology across the organization.
  • Led product development to identify and fulfill unmet client needs. 
  • Cooperated with the marketing department and created 5 global marketing campaigns that raised the revenue by 25%

 

Key Achievements: 

  • Created a business trends analysts division that identified the prospective areas for growth, which increased the revenue by 150% within 5 years. 
  • Cut time-to-market by 45% by introducing agile methodologies throughout the organization

 

Senior Operations Manager

Cimex Digital, Lakewood, CA

September 2007–May 2011

Key Qualifications & Responsibilities

  • Implemented a quarterly review process that slashed operating the budget by 25% company-wide. 
  • Decreased client churn by 12% by identifying weak points in the sales cycle. 
  • Renegotiated outsourcing contracts and cut the operating costs by 15%, saving the company $25 million per year. 

 

Key Achievement: 

  • Reorganized the sales team to focus on customer communication, eventually increasing ROI by 35%. 

 

Education

 

MBA, Operations Management

University of North Carolina, Kenan-Flaglar Business School

2005–2007

 

Skills

  • Problem-solving
  • Process improvement
  • Quantitative analysis
  • Marketing
  • Sales
  • Business growth
  • Contract negotiation
  • Budgeting
  • Business Analysis
  • Communication skills
  • Leadership skills

 

Memberships

The International Association of Executives & Professionals—active member since 2011

  • Delivered an online workshop on Streamlining Operations, attended by 150+ executives

 

Awards

  • The ONCON Icon Award finalist, 2020

 

Languages

  • French—Advanced
  • Spanish—Intermediate

 

The COO (Chief Operating Officer or Chief Operations Officer) is responsible for business growth, flawless operations, and managing the performance of the business. The purpose of your COO resume is to highlight your leadership accomplishments and broad knowledge of business development. 

 

Here’s how to write a COO resume:

 

1. Apply the Right Format to Your COO Resume Template

 

You know the importance of sticking to tried-and-tested processes and templates. It makes everyone’s job easier if everything’s clear from the get-go.

 

In the same way, applying standard formatting to your resume will make it immediately readable to the recruiter and the board. You don’t want them to work for it—they should see your value immediately. Here’s how to get it right. 

 

  • Choose the reverse-chronological resume format to highlight your most recent accomplishments. This means listing your most recent experience first and working your way back through previous roles. 
  • Use an easy-to-read resume font, like Arial or Helvetica. Nothing too fancy—essentially, you don’t want the font to draw any attention to itself at all. 
  • Set the margins of your resume to one inch on all sides of the page. 
  • Consider what would be the right length for your resume. For most roles, a one-page resume works best—but as an executive, you may need more space than that to show off everything you have to offer. Don’t be afraid to make your resume two pages or even longer, but do make sure that everything you include is directly relevant to the role. Cut, cut, and cut again, until you’re left with an impactful resume that’s a fluff-free showcase of your best achievements. 
  • Divide your resume into sections: Header, Summary, Experience, Education, Skills, and Additional.

 

Unless instructed otherwise, always save your resume as a PDF file to preserve your resume layout and make sure it works well on every device. This also helps to make your resume readable by ATS (Applicant Tracking Systems)—software that’ll likely assess your application before it even reaches the recruiter. 

 

2. Write an Engaging COO Resume Summary

 

The stakes are high, but you need to make an excellent first impression. 

 

How?

 

By introducing yourself with a resume profile! This 3–5-stentence paragraph at the top of your resume is your chance to grab the reader’s attention and immediately show the value you could bring to the company. 

 

As an experienced candidate, opt for the resume summary.

 

Use:

 

  1. Anadjective (dynamic, efficient, hard-working)
  2. Job title (COO)
  3. Years of experience (10+, 11+)
  4. How you’ll do (increase the ROI by identifying new growth opportunities)
  5. Most impressive 2–3 achievements (decrease clients churn by reorganizing the sales department)

Expert Hint: Keeping the recruiter hooked right from the beginning is not easy. To make writing the resume profile more manageable, write once you’re done with your resume and have all skills and accomplishments listed. 

3. Add the Perfect COO Job Description and Skills Sections

 

Now it’s time to show you have what it takes to be the company’s next COO. Your experience is your greatest asset, so let’s get to work on making your work history section shine. 

 

Here are the basics of how to write a job description for a COO resume:

 

  1. Analyze the job advertisement carefully. 
  2. Make a list of skills and requirements it mentions. They will serve as your resume keywords
  3. Think of times you’ve used those skills to impress the CEO, the board, or other stakeholders. 
  4. Write resume bullet points that describe those situations. Quantify them when possible, and use action words to add impact to your statements. 

 

As you’ve probably already noticed, the key here is to focus on your best professional accomplishments—not on listing each of your day-to-day duties. And since each COO job will come with its own set of perks and challenges, it’s important to choose those of your accomplishments that best match the role at hand and adapt them by weaving in those resume keywords. 

 

This way, you’ll target your resume to each specific job you apply for, significantly boosting your chances of getting an interview. Recruiters aren’t just looking for a good COO—they’re looking for the best COO for their company

 

Speaking of tailoring your resume, there’s one more section that depends heavily on keywords: your COO resume skills section!

 

You’ll need to pick around 10 of your most important skills to list on your resume. The best way to do this is to focus on skills mentioned in the job ad—this way, you’ll show the reader you’re the perfect fit. Remember to include a mix of soft skills and hard skills. 

 

Here’s a list of ideas: 

 

COO Skills—Resume Examples

 

 

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4. Turn Your Education into Another Reason to Hire You

 

As you’re bound to already know, executives typically need at least a bachelor’s or a master’s degree to be considered for the role (alongside from tons of experience, of course). This means it’s essential that you list your education on your resume: you don’t want to give the reader the impression that you’re lacking an appropriate degree. 

 

Luckily, this is pretty straightforward. Under a new heading (Education), list your highest obtained degree, the awarding institution, and the years of attendance. If you have a master’s or above, you can include your second-highest degree if you think it’s relevant enough to give you an edge. 

 

5. Include Extra Sections on Your COO Resume

 

Time to make your application more human and your resume more memorable. 

 

Add one or two extra sections: 

 

 

And one last thing—you should write an executive cover letter to accompany your resume. It’s your chance to showcase your communication skills, highlight your motivation, and explain what makes you the right fit for the job. 

Expert hint: While hobbies and interests are okay on resumes for most other roles, you shouldn’t mention them on an executive-level job application unless they’re deeply relevant to the role. 

Double your impact with a matching resume and cover letter combo. Use our cover letter generator and make your application documents pop out.

 

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Key Points

 

For a COO resume that gets interviews:

 

  • Use a modern COO resume template that’s easy to follow and highlights the most important pieces of information. 
  • Mention the COO's accomplishments in the resume summary, job description, and education sections. Focus on achievements relevant to the particular job ad. 
  • Choose the right COO skills. Target the skills section to the specific position you’re after. 
  • Add extra sections to make your application stand out.
  • Attach a cover letter to your COO resume to state your case. 

 

Thanks for reading! Do you have any questions about writing a COO resume? Leave a comment below, we’d love to exchange expertise!

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Dominika Kowalska, CPRW
Dominika is a Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW) and a renowned career expert. With a passion for helping individuals achieve their professional goals, she crafts compelling resume and cover letter guides and offers invaluable guidance to navigate the job market successfully.

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