Why do you need a police officer resume?

You may not be aware of this, but your resume plays a key role in getting you the police officer job that you want.

Your resume needs to reflect your passion and commitment to a crime-free country. Only then will you stand a chance of getting shortlisted for your ideal police officer job.

This is where our resume guide comes in. In this blog, we will be covering everything that you should know to write the perfect police officer resume.

Before we begin, here's our police officer resume sample illustrating the ideal police resume.

Before we begin, here’s a summary of our Police Officer Resume 2020 Blog:

• Use action verbs to begin each point. This makes your resume professional.
• Write all the dates in your police resume using month & year format.
• Compose your resume using crisp one-liner points instead of paragraphs. This makes your resume more readable.
• Write the location in the city/state code format if you're applying for jobs in the country of your residence. If you aren't, write the location in the city/country code format.

That's not all.

By the end of this blog, you will be able to write an impeccable police resume and you will learn:

• What to write in your police resume and how to write it?
• How to effectively endorse your police officer resume skills.
• How to write an ATS-compliant law enforcement resume.
• How to write an entry level police officer resume.
• How to write your police officer resume duties on a resume.

. . . All so you can get the police officer job that you want!

Before we begin, feel free to make use of our Online Resume Builder for a hassle-free resume-writing experience.

It comes with 100+ design templates, 25+ content templates, and a police resume template that you can modify according to your needs and qualifications.

Your only job here is to fill the details and your perfect resume for a police officer is good to go!

Police Officer Resume Job Description

[Back to Table of Content]

A police officer, also known as a law enforcement officer, has a wide range of roles & responsibilities that comes with their job title.

They are responsible for protecting people and property, enforcing the law, patroling assigned areas, responding to calls, investigating crimes, making arrests, issuing citations, and occasionally testifying in court cases.

At the heart of it all, a police officer's job involves ensuring that law is enforced.

If you have a love for law and a drive to solve crimes, then a police officer's job is the job for you.

If being a police officer is your dream job, then you're in it for the right reasons.

Take the first step towards this by building an impeccable resume with our Online Resume Builder.

You may not be great at making excellent industry-ready resumes and that's okay. Our Resume Builder has got you covered.

All you have to do is fill in your details in our pre-designed police officer template and your perfect police resume is good to go!

Police Officer Salary

[Back to Table of Content]

Glassdoor: $35.5k - 82.3k per year.
Payscale: $34.3k - 89k per year.
Salary.com: $48.6k - 65.3k per year.

What is a Police Officer Resume & why do you need it?

[Back to Table of Content]

Your police officer resume is a job-specific resume for police officers.

It is the first point of contact between you and the recruiter. As such, it is your first shot at impressing the recruiter even before you meet the recruiter face-to-face.

So when you look at it objectively, your law enforcement resume has the potential to both make and break your job application.

Thus, your job before you get the job is to write an impeccable police resume.

However, your trouble doesn't end here.

In today's world, an impeccable police resume is one that is ATS-compliant.

ATS or the Applicant Tracking System is a hiring tool that most companies today have started using to optimize their recruitment needs.

Based on your resume, you are assigned a rank, and based on this rank, you get shortlisted. This means that the higher your rank, the higher are your chances of getting shortlisted.

Read on to learn all about curating an impeccable resume for a police officer.

While you're at, get your existing police resume professionally reviewed by Hiration’s AI-powered Resume Review Service and get a detailed analysis of your resume within minutes of uploading it on our tool.

Keep an eye out on the bottom left corner of this page for our AI-powered Resume Review Service!

Police Officer Resume Sections

[Back to Table of Content]

Knowing what to put in your resume is key to writing an impeccable law enforcement resume.

Given below is the quintessential sections that your resume should have if you want to make an ideal police officer resume:

• Header
• Personal Information
• Profile Title
• Summary/Objective
• Key Skills
• Professional Experience
• Education
• Certifications (if any)
• Additional Information (if any)

To learn more about resume sections and how to perfect them, read Hiration's 2020 Guide to sections in a resume.

How to write a Police Officer Resume

[Back to Table of Content]

Now that you know what sections to put in your resume, the next big thing in your checklist is to approach resume-writing the right way.

Here are 3 stages of resume writing that you should follow to write your police resume using the right approach:

• Stage 1: Master Police Officer Resume
• Stage 2: First Draft of Police Officer Resume
• Stage 3: Final Draft of Police Officer Resume

Master Police Officer Resume

The first stage of resume-writing involves the master stage.

In this stage, all you have to do is collect all your information in one place. This helps in information-accessibility and helps you in the following way:

• Resume writing in the present: Writing a resume becomes an effortless endeavor with the master stage because it eliminates the need to explicitly look for information. All you have to do is single out the relevant information and use them in your resume.

• Resume update in the future: The second use of a master stage is in resume update. Since you have a library of information, it helps you compose your resume in the future as all you have to do is add on the extra information and source the relevant information from your master resume.

First Draft of Police Officer Resume

The second stage of resume writing involves curating the following sections:

• Header
• Personal Information
• Profile Title
• Work Experience
• Education
• Certifications (if any)
• Awards & Recognition (if any)
• Additional Information (if any)

Final Draft of Police Officer Resume

The final stage of resume writing involves concluding the resume. As part of this stage, you have to compose the sections that we have mentioned below:

• Summary or objective: Compose this section towards the end after concluding the rest of your resume. Doing this helps you pick the best highlights of your career. Moreover, it is wise to tackle this section in the end as it eliminates the need to unnecessarily go back and edit your summary all over again.

• Key skills: Right before you compose your resume summary, compose the key skills section. Having finalized everything else, your task becomes simplified as your only job now is to identify the core skills of your career through a simple evaluation of your resume!

Additionally, you can use Hiration’s Online Resume Builder to stand a high chance of getting shortlisted for the police job of your dreams.

It comes with a huge library of pre-filled police officer resume templates that you can personalize to suit your specific qualifications and work history.

Police Officer Resume: Professional Experience

[Back to Table of Content]

Now that you know which sections to put in your resume and how to approach resume-writing, we will now discuss the most important sections of your resume i.e. the professional experience section.

This section is the most relevant section of your resume because it carries your work-centric information such as the places you worked, the duration of your work experience, and your seniority level.

As such, the need is to write an impeccable resume, one that is ATS-compliant.

Here's what you should do to accomplish this:

• Frame Points
• Use the STAR Format
• Use Bucketing & Bolding

Framing Points

When it comes to writing resumes, there are two types of people:

Type 1: Uses paragraphs.
Type 2: Uses points.

If you fall into category #1, it's high time to switch to using one-liner points instead.

We'll explain why using points is a better alternative, but before we do, take a look at the police officer resume examples that we have mentioned below:

Police Officer Resume Example 1

"As part of my professional stint at New York Central Police Station, I was responsible for solving crimes for approximately 50 cases with a success rate of 96%. My day-to-day activities include an investigation of over 20 incidents - something I did with 100% efficiency. I also recruited, trained, and personally supervised over 15 patrol officers who worked directly under me. This led to an overall improvement in departmental performance. Additionally, I observed and studies criminal behavior to get to the roots of a crime and to understand why it is committed".

Police Officer Resume Example 2

• Solved crimes with a success rate of 96% for ~50 cases annually
• Analyzed criminal behavior to understand why a crime is committed
• Investigated 20+ incidents with 100% accuracy daily
• Trained ~20 new professionals by organizing training programs
• Improved departmental performance by 50% by supervising patrol officers

Framing Points: Analysis

Both the police officer resume examples that we have mentioned above presents us with the following observations:

• Both police officer resume examples illustrated above communicates the same message.
• While example 1 uses a long 8-liner paragraph to talk about the candidate's roles & responsibilities, example 2 does this in 5 simple one-liner points.
• Framing one-liner points is better than example 1 which is unnecessarily long and bulky. Moreover, using one-liner points makes your resume reader-friendly. It is easy to read and easier to comprehend.
• Good readability is a hallmark of a good resume. You cannot write an impeccable police resume if it fails to do the bare minimum of getting read. This is why framing points is a better alternative to using paragraphs.
• To conclude, you should use one-liner points to compose this section of your police resume.

Bucketing & Bolding

We talked about the importance of good readability and its importance in writing an impeccable police resume.

While good readability is important, it isn't enough. Your resume needs to be as effective as it is readable.

You can accomplish this by using bucketing & bolding.

Here are two police officer resume examples for your reference. We want you to observe them and pick the better one.

Police Officer Resume Example 1

• Prevented life-threatening events for 50+ major cases annually
• Generated 10+ reports daily regarding crimes and department performance
• Tackled emergencies in 5 assigned districts with 100% accuracy
• Received ‘Best Employee Award’ in Jun ’18 due for ensuring law enforcement
• Investigated ~30+ incidents including theft, domestic violence, assaults, collisions, etc. daily

Police Officer Resume Example 2

• Crime Investigation & Report Generation

• Tackled emergency situations in 5 assigned districts with 100% accuracy

• Generated 10+ reports daily regarding crimes and department performance

• Investigated ~30+ incidents including theft, domestic violence, assaults, collisions, etc. daily

• Key Achievements

• Prevented life-threatening events for 50+ major cases annually

• Received ‘Best Employee Award’ in Jun ’18 due for ensuring law enforcement

Bucketing & Bolding: Analysis

The police officer resume examples demonstrate the following conclusions:

• Example 1 uses one-liner points and example 2 uses bucketing & bolding.
• Bucketing is the practice of grouping similar one-liner points under unique subheadings. Bolding is the practice of highlighting words by marking them in bold.
• Bucketing helps a recruiter identify a candidate's police officer resume skills in one glance. Bolding helps a recruiter identify a candidate's key achievements in each point without explicitly looking for it.
• This is something that using points alone fails to do.
• After evaluating both police officer resume examples, you can easily conclude that example 2 is better than example 1. This is why you should use bucketing & bolding alongside one-liner-points to compose the professional experience section of your police resume.

STAR Format

While the twin combination of bolding & bucketing alongside using points is a fantastic way to make the professional experience hard to ignore, using the STAR format can add the much-needed relevance to your roles & responsibilities.

The STAR Format uses the cause-effect relationship to structure each one-liner point.

It stands for the following:

• S stands for situation: The situation/backdrop/context of your contributions
• T stands for task: The actual task that was assigned to you
• A stands for action: The strategy you used to execute the assigned task
• R stands for result: The result/outcome of your action in the form of an achievement figure

By using the STAR format, you can prove your proficiency using actual quantifiable figures.

When you do this, you're not only showing how your efforts benefitted old organizations but you're also making a proficiency statement by demonstrating that you can replicate the same results in your news organizations as well.

To conclude, you should use bolding & bucketing to group each one-liner point and optimize each point using the STAR format. This helps you write an impeccable professional experience section.

Police Officer Resume Sample for Professional Experience

To learn more about this section, read an in-depth guide on Hiration's Blog on how to compose the work experience in your resume.

Here's a police officer resume sample showcasing the ideal professional experience section for your police resume:

Police Officer Resume: Header

[Back to Table of Content]

Now that we have tacked the professional experience section, the next thing we will now discuss is your resume header.

In simple words, your resume header is your name. It features on the topmost part of your police resume.

Writing your name at the top gives your resume an individual identity of its own. One look at your resume helps a recruiter identify who the resume belongs to.

This is why you should write your resume in the largest font size. Try to write it in 16-20 points and give a single space between your first name and last name.

Hiration Pro Tip: If you have a middle name, write your first name, followed by the first initial of your middle name in capital letters, followed by your last name. Eg: Jeffy Mary Verghese should be written in your resume header as "Jeffy M. Verghese".

To learn more about resume headers and how to perfect them, read Hiration’s 2020 Guide To Writing The Perfect Resume Header.

Given below is a police officer resume sample illustrating the ideal resume header for your police resume.

Police Officer Resume: Personal Information

[Back to Table of Content]

Writing a perfect police resume demands that each section is perfected. This means that the personal information section needs to be perfected too.

In simple words, the personal information section of your police resume is that section of your resume which illustrates your contact details. Using the details provided in this section, a recruiter gets in touch with you.

Ideally, this section should consist of the following information:

• Mobile Number
• Email ID
• Location

Hiration Pro Tip: Evaluate the resume requirements around personal information for the country you are targeting. Once you identify them, update your police resume accordingly.

Mobile Number

The right way to showcase your mobile number in your police resume is listed below:

• Give only one mobile number in your police resume.
• Make sure that the number you provide is an active number on which you are available 24x7.
• Use your country’s ISD code as a prefix before your phone number.
• Put a plus sign (+) before the ISD code.
• Example: +1 92839 02831.

Professional E-mail Address

Your email ID is a professional communication channel between you and your recruiter. Thus, your email ID should be professionally written.

An ideal email ID is one that is stripped of fancy nicknames.

For example, if your name is Sarah Thomas, you can write your email ID in the manner stated below:

• sarahthomas@xyz.com
• sarah.thomas@xyz.com
• sarah_thomas@xyz.com
• thomas.sarah@xyz.com
• sarah.t@xyz.com

The idea is to incorporate your name in your email ID. Doing this tells a recruiter that you are a professional who is to be taken seriously.

Moreover, using fancy email IDs would do more bad than good. For all we know, it will potentially land you in the spam folder!

Stay away from using email IDs such as:

• sexysarah@xyz.com
• sarahthesavage@xyz.com
• sweetgirlsarah@xyz.com

Location

Next up in the personal information section is your location.

Mentioned below is a list of points on how to write your location impeccably in your police resume:

• In the language of resume-writing, locations stands for your current city of residence.
• Follow the 'city/state code format' for structuring your location in your police resume.
• Do not flood your location with details such as your house number, street number, and your locality name.
• If you are looking for a job opportunity in your home country, mention the city and state code in your law enforcement resume.
• If you are looking for opportunities in another country, mention your city and country code in your police resume.

Police Officer Resume Sample for Personal Information

Read Hiration's 2020 Guide to composing your contact information to read an in-depth guide on the personal information section of your police resume.

Use our Online Resume Builder to put together an impeccably composed resume for police officer jobs that you are targeting.

Our pre-designed and ready to use police officer resume template that comes with our Online Resume Builder can be easily modified to suit your needs & requirements.

We have attached below a police officer resume sample showcasing the ideal personal information section for your resume.

Police Officer Resume: Profile Title

[Back to Table of Content]

Your profile title is an important section of your police resume. It communicates important career-centric information about your work-life such as:

• Your official designation (a.k.a your latest job title).
• Your functional industry and level of seniority in your functional industry.

To perfectly compose your profile title, write it in the font size of 14-16 points in your law enforcement resume.

Hiration Pro Tip: Do not exaggerate your profile title. This might lead to a potential dismissal of your job application as it will be seen as a deliberate attempt to cheat a recruiter to get a job that you're not qualified for.

Would you like to find out blunders like these that you could be potentially making in your resume?

If you do, use our Resume Review Service. Brought to you by the best of AI, our AI-powered Resume Review gives you a detailed account of the flaws that you're making with suitable suggestions to reverse it.

Given below is a law enforcement resume sample that we have composed using our Online Resume Builder. It endorses the perfect profile title for your police resume.

Police Officer Resume: Education

[Back to Table of Content]

The education section of your resume for police officer communicates the following information:

• Name of the school/university you have attended.
• Name of the courses you have pursued.
• The location of your school/university.
• Enrolment and graduation dates.

While your educational background might not bring momentum changes to your job application, it will enhance your chances of getting shortlisted if you have relevant degrees as opposed to someone who doesn't.

To learn more about this section, read Hiration's 2020 Guide on how to list education on your resume.

In the meanwhile, feel free to use Hiration's Online Resume Builder to write an impeccable police officer skills resume.

It comes with 100+ design templates and 25+ content templates that you can easily modify to suit your professional endeavors.

We have attached a sample police resume below. It illustrates what the perfect education section of your resume for a police officer should ideally look like.

Police Officer Resume: Certifications

[Back to Table of Content]

This section ideally communicates the following information:

• Certification course name
• Name of the institute of affiliation
• Location of the institute of affiliation
• Enrolment and completion date of the course

Arrange these points in the below format:

{Name of certification} | {Affiliating Institution} | {Location} | {Date} (in month & year format)

The certifications section is really helpful for those professionals who are writing an entry level police officer resume.

In other words, if you are writing an entry level police officer resume, the certifications section can help. Someone who has relevant certifications almost always gets picked over someone who doesn't.

So if you have done relevant certifications that complement your target job, list them down in this section.

If you are just beginning your career, are looking for your first job, don't lose heart.

Do the relevant certifications and list them down in your resume!

Is this too vague? Would you like to learn more?

If the answer is yes, read Hiration's 2020 Guide on listing certifications on a resume.

Mentioned below is a police officer resume sample illustrating the perfect certifications section for your resume for police officer.

Police Officer Resume: Additional Information

[Back to Table of Content]

Important pieces of information about you such as your hobbies and your multilingual skills should be endorsed in the additional information section of your police resume.

This section is the miscellaneous section of your resume where you can incorporate information about you such as the ones cited above.

Here's a police officer resume sample illustrating the ideal additional information section for your resume for police officer.

In the meanwhile, feel free to get your existing resume professionally reviewed by our AI-powered Resume Review Service.

Get valuable feedback on your resume and learn how to reverse the blunders that you are unintentionally making in your police resume.

Just keep an eye out on the bottom-left corner of this page to avail our Resume Review Service!

Police Officer Resume Key Sections

[Back to Table of Content]

Police Officer Resume: Key Skills

[Back to Table of Content]

Your skills are what matters most to a hiring body. Once you have the much-needed skills, you pass the first qualification test and recruiters take the much-needed steps to further evaluate your resume.

Thus, this section is equal in importance with the professional experience section. Perfecting this section is key as it encourages a recruiter to further evaluate your resume in its entirety.

This is why you need to endorse your police officer resume skills impeccably.

It should be a reflection of the skills that you have accumulated over the years.

Here's what you can do to optimize this section:

• Compose this section only after you have concluded the professional experience section: Once you have textual documentation of your roles & responsibilities, identifying your skills becomes a walk in the park. All you have to do is evaluate your resume and identify your core skills.

• Incorporate keywords to make this section ATS-compliant: Keywords are skill-sets that a hiring body looks for in an ideal candidate. Showcasing these skill-sets will dramatically elevate your chances of getting shortlisted. Your only job here is to identify these keywords and replicate those keywords that you are skilled in. This will show a prospective recruiter that you have the right skills and that you are qualified for the job that you are targeting.

To learn more about perfecting your police officer resume skills in your resume, read Hiration's 2020 Guide on what skills to put on a resume.

Here's a law enforcement resume sample illustrating the ideal key skills section for your resume.

Police Officer Resume Summary

[Back to Table of Content]

Your police officer resume summary is an overview of your entire resume.

It gives the recruiter a glimpse of what to find in your police resume. Thus, your job here is to concisely write an impactful resume summary.

Here’s a list of what you should do to perfect this section:

• Write your summary at the end. This simplifies the process of perfectly drafting the summary by eliminating the need to revisit your resume summary which happens if you write it in the beginning.
• Your resume summary is a brief pitch of what you can do for the prospective recruiter. Your job here is to make it powerful and make it short.
• Make sure that you pick the best highlights of your career and write them in this section. While you do this, make sure that it does not exceed the 5-line limit.
• Keep your resume summary limited to 3-5 lines. Anything more is not as ideal as the whole point of composing resume summaries is to give a brief account of your professional proficiency.
• Write a resume summary only if you have worked for over 3 years. If you have less than 3 years of work experience, write a police officer resume objective instead.

Read Hiration's 2020 Resume Summary Guide to learn how to write an impactful summary for your law enforcement resume.

If you're running short of time, feel free to use Hiration's Online Resume Builder for a hassle-free resume writing experience.

Learn from the law enforcement resume examples that come with our resume builder to learn what your ideal resume should look like.

Here's a law enforcement resume sample showcasing the ideal resume summary. Your law enforcement resume should replicate the summary example that we have attached below:

Police Officer Resume Objective

[Back to Table of Content]

A police officer resume objective is only written by those professionals who are writing an entry level police officer resume.

In other words, you should only write a police officer resume objective if:

• You are an entry-level worker with no work experience.
• You have very limited work experience of fewer than three years.
• You are a fresh graduate writing an entry level police officer resume.

Instead of highlighting a shopping list of the things that you're looking for, your police officer resume objective should emphasize on the value that you can deliver in your next organization.

In this capacity, your police officer resume objective is a sales pitch and you are the salesman selling your skills.

To learn how you can optimize this section, head right over to Hiration's 2020 Guide on Resume Objectives.

Resume Review Service

[Back to Table of Content]

Your resume is no good if it makes blunders that can easily be avoided.

Learn the mistakes you're making in your police resume and learn how to reverse it by getting your resume professionally reviewed with Hiration's AI-powered Resume Review Service.

With us, your police resume will be reviewed in compliance with the parameters that we have listed below:

• Compliance with industry norms
• Content Relevance
• Recruiter Friendliness
• Design Compatibility
• Conversion Scope
• ATS Compliance
• Global Compatibility
• Performance Assessment
• Resume Formatting (font, margins, the order of sections, etc.)

Online Resume Builder for Police Officer Resume

[Back to Table of Content]

If you don't have the time to compose your resume, use our Online Resume Builder.

Our Resume Builder comes with a pre-designed police officer resume template that you can easily modify alongside the resources that we have mentioned below:

• Option to save unlimited resumes
• 25+ resume designs
• Full rich-text editor
• Unlimited PDF downloads
• 100+ resume templates
• 1-click design change
• A sharable link
• Live resume editor

It doesn't get any better.

So if you aren't already, make use of Hiration's Online Resume Builder now!

Key Takeaways

[Back to Table of Content]

• Write all dates in the month & year format across all sections in your police officer resume.
• Write your summary at the end: Doing this saves you the unnecessary trouble of writing a resume summary in the beginning just to edit it again at the end.
• Your key skills section should be crisp and to the point. Do not use phrases like 'experienced in' or 'expertise in' to endorse your police officer resume skills.
• Use one-liner points instead of using paragraphs in your police resume.
• Begin each one-liner point with a power verb. Eg: Adept, Proficient, Kickstarted, Spearheaded, Managed, etc.
• Use power verbs in the past tense for past profiles and present continuous tense for present profiles.
• Group similar one-liner points under unique subheadings using bucketing and highlight your key achievement under each point using bolding.
• Use achievement figures to quantify your achievements. Doing this helps you prove your skills and helps you show how you benefitted the organizations you worked with.
• Make a 'Key Achievements' bucket at the end of your respective work profile to talk about an outstanding achievement in that specific organization.
• Write a police officer resume objective if you have less than 3 years of work experience. If you don't, write a summary.