Home Wood Turner Resume template
Wood Turner resume template
A clean starting structure with example content grounded in what wood turners 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 wood turners should default to, since most Australian recruiters and ATS software expect it.
Professional summary
Wood Turner with hands-on experience shaping timber on manual and CNC lathes to produce spindles, legs, bowls and decorative components. Skilled in reading drawings, selecting timber, sharpening tools and finishing to precise tolerances. Committed to safe workshop practice and quality craftsmanship for furniture, joinery and craft markets.
Key skills
- Craft and handmade production
- Hand and power tool work
- Wood lathe operation (Vicmarc, Teknatool)
- Bowl gouge and skew chisel technique
- Reading plans and specifications
- Bandsaw and dial caliper use
- SketchUp for design reference
- Tool sharpening and lathe maintenance
- Attention to detail and problem solving
- Work Health and Safety (WHS) compliance
Experience: example bullet points
- Turned matched sets of stair spindles and table legs to drawing specifications, maintaining consistent profiles across production runs.
- Selected and prepared timber blanks, minimising waste by assessing grain direction and defects before mounting on the lathe.
- Sharpened and maintained gouges, chisels and lathe equipment, reducing downtime and improving cut quality.
- Sanded and finished turned pieces, inspecting for tear-out, dimensional accuracy and surface defects before hand-off to assembly.
- Worked with furniture makers and joiners to produce custom components from samples, ensuring fit and finish met client expectations.
- Operated CNC lathe for repetitive runs while retaining hand-turning skills for one-off and heritage profiles.
- Collaborated with workshop team to improve workflow, reducing turnaround time from five days to three for standard spindle orders.
Education
Year 12 or equivalent, typically with a Certificate III in Furniture Making or Wood Machining, or extensive on-the-job training in a wood turning workshop.
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.
- Wood turning
- Lathe operation
- Vicmarc
- Teknatool
- Bowl gouge
- Skew chisel
- Timber selection
- Spindle turning
- Bowl turning
- Furniture manufacturing
- Joinery
- Wood machining
- WHS
- Australian Standards
- Dial calipers
- Bandsaw
- SketchUp
- Tool sharpening
- Timber finishing
- Cabinet making
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.