Home Nursery Hand Resume template
Nursery Hand resume template
A clean starting structure with example content grounded in what nursery hands actually do day to day, not generic filler. Download and replace the bracketed placeholders with your own details.
Which resume format should you use?
Reverse chronological
You have a steady work history. This is the format almost every recruiter and ATS expects by default.
Functional
You're changing fields or have gaps in your employment. Leads with skills rather than a job-by-job timeline.
Combination
You're early career or have worked consistently but for only a few employers. Blends a skills summary with a shorter chronological history.
This template uses the reverse chronological format: the one most nursery hands should default to, since most Australian recruiters and ATS software expect it.
Professional summary
I am a nursery hand with practical experience in propagation, potting and day-to-day plant care in a production nursery. I work to a supervisor's schedule, keep stock labelled and healthy, and follow hygiene and safety procedures on the bench and in dispatch.
Key skills
- Plant propagation from seed, cuttings and divisions
- Potting and repotting into tubes, pots and larger containers
- Irrigation scheduling and monitoring using controllers
- Pest and disease monitoring and basic nutrient problem identification
- Nursery hygiene and biosecurity procedures
- Forklift operation (current LF licence or willingness to obtain)
- Potting machine and hand and power tool operation
- Secateurs, pruning tools and manual handling
- Nursery inventory software and order picking
- WHS compliance and safe chemical handling (ChemCert accreditation or willingness to obtain)
Experience: example bullet points
- Potted and repotted stock across a 5000-plant production run, keeping batches labelled and traceable from propagation to dispatch.
- Set and adjusted irrigation controllers to a seasonal schedule, cutting hand-watering on outdoor benches from twice a day to once.
- Propagated native and ornamental species from cuttings and division, raising strike rates enough to reduce bought-in seedling orders for the following season.
- Monitored benches for pests, disease and nutrient deficiencies, flagging problems to the supervisor before they spread across a crop.
- Picked and packed customer orders against dockets, checking quantities and plant quality before dispatch to cut order errors.
- Operated a forklift to move pallets of potting mix and finished stock, keeping the potting line supplied through the shift.
- Followed hygiene and biosecurity procedures between propagation and growing zones, limiting cross-contamination during peak season.
Education
Entry is usually on the job and no formal qualification is required. A Certificate II or III in Horticulture is common for people moving into propagation, pest monitoring or supervisory roles.
Keywords an ATS is likely to scan for
Applicant tracking systems match your resume against terms in the job ad before a person ever sees it. Only include the ones that actually apply to your experience, but if a term below matches something you've done, use the same wording the job ad uses.
- Certificate III in Horticulture
- Certificate II in Horticulture
- plant propagation
- potting
- irrigation controllers
- integrated pest management
- nursery biosecurity
- WHS
- forklift licence LF
- Greenlife Industry Australia
- ChemCert
- manual handling
- nursery inventory software
- bush regeneration
- revegetation
- plant nutrition
Getting past ATS screening
- Match the specific skills, certifications and terms used in the job ad, not just your own wording for the same thing.
- Keep formatting simple: no tables, text boxes, columns, headers/footers or graphics. Parsers frequently drop content placed in these.
- Submit as .docx or PDF unless the job ad specifies otherwise.
- Use standard section headings (Experience, Education, Skills) rather than creative alternatives.
- List your core skills and technical competencies in their own section so a keyword scan can find them instantly.
This is a starting point, not a guarantee of interviews. Tailor every bullet point to your own real experience and the specific job ad.