For example, if you’ve never worked in a customer support role at a technical company before, but you have worked in food service or as a barista, that’s still support. You’re directly interfacing with a customer to get them to their goals, it’s just that in the food service or coffee industries, those goals are things like getting an excellent coffee or a quickly served meal. So, play to those strengths when writing up your resume. An ideal resume applying to an entry-level support role with minimal experience should look something like this:

PROFILE
An enthusiastic customer advocate who is energized by the potential for growth in new industries. Extensive experience in customer service with a high aptitude for effective communication and people-first problem-solving in difficult situations.

EXPERIENCE
Specialty Buyer, ABC Grocery;
Manhattan, NYC — 2017-Present
Since shifting to the role of specialty buyer, I’ve assisted the Team Leader in everything from providing front-end support to both external and internal customers, to organizing and developing marketing strategies for our store. I am responsible for ordering, replenishing, and merchandising products to help suit our region and customer base’s shifting needs, and participated in regional programs for purchasing and promotions.

Front End Supervisor, ABC Grocery;
Austin, TX — 2014-2017
As a Front End Supervisor, it was my responsibility to oversee the customer service department for our store, including front of house support and the cashier team. I was responsible for researching customers’ experiences in our store, scheduling team members to provide quality customer support on a consistent basis, as well as managing and building new workflows to increase efficiency and exemplary experience on the front end of our store. I also assisted in training new team members, and worked maintaining and instilling company standards and practices for current team members and cashiers.

Team Leader, DEF Grocery;
Las Vegas, NV — 2013-2014
As a Team Leader at DEF Grocery, I was responsible for creating an ideal experience for our customer base, while also ensuring that all areas of the store ran smoothly. I supported our team in tasks such as receiving and stocking daily freight and checking all produce, ready to eat food, and meat for excellent quality. I also worked to teach and train our team members in effective methods for providing customer service and support as well as other types of ongoing training.

The resume, as you see, is not a person that has worked in “traditional” support, but is still someone that has extensive experience helping customers and working in customer-facing roles. A few key things to note and pay attention to:

• They have a profile at the top of their resume. This can sometimes be called a “summary”. For most people, if you’ve worked in support for a long time, you might not need a profile or summary. But, if you’re looking to break into an industry, it can be a great way to introduce yourself to your potential future managers and teammates.
• Despite the fact that these roles could all have been presented as just manual labor jobs, or the customer service and support aspects of them skipped over, this resume does a good job at presenting the aspects of service in each. You can take almost any role and tease out aspects of it that fit needs for the role that you are applying for. Don’t be lazy: customize your resume as needed for each individual role — you’ll be better for it. For example, if you are applying for a remote position and have experience working with a team located elsewhere or, in the case of the resume above, working with a store located somewhere in the United States, mention that in your resume.
• Keep your resume to one page. If that means that you need to cut out some of your jobs, or some of your education experience, that’s totally cool. Pick the things that are most relevant and use those as the best representation of yourself. Less is more in this case.
• Make sure to give the companies that you’re applying to a way to get back in touch with you. That might mean providing an email, phone number, or home address (though the address is a bit outdated).
• They did not include an offering of references. In some industries, this may be important, but in support, if they want references they’ll ask for them. So, don’t waste space on your resume with something that either isn’t important, or they’ll ask for if they need.

So, you’ve now created an awesome resume and landed an interview with a company that you’re really excited about. Awesome! On to the interview!