Banks expect a lot from their tellers. You need to be trusted with thousands of dollars, but just as importantly, you’re trusted to represent the bank. Your resume needs to walk a fine balance between accounting skills and people skills, all while showing unimpeachable character.

How on earth can one resume do all that?

Don’t worry, we’ll walk you through the entire process. There are a few crucial tricks that will make all the difference when that bank hiring manager picks up your resume. From forming a strong first impression to choosing the perfect skills, we’ve got everything you need to land a bank teller job today.

This guide will show you:

• Bank teller resume templates to get you inspired
• How to optimize your resume for ATS
• How to read a job ad and craft your resume around it
• What it takes to appeal to a hiring manager
• What formatting is best for a bank teller resume
• How long a bank teller resume should be
• Which sections you might want to include
• How to add certifications and which ones make the difference
• Which hard and soft skills you should include and how to back them up with examples
• How to highlight your achievements
• How to write an objective or summary
• How to write a bank teller resume with limited or no experience
• And much more!

Bank teller resume template examples

Most of us don’t create a new resume very often so it can be intimidating. There’s a lot to get right and a new job on the line. That’s why we find the best way to start is with some template examples.

Have a look and notice how these bank teller resumes might look different than what you’re used to. That’s because the era of the dull black and white Word doc resume is over. You need a resume that shows you put in the effort. Good design and careful attention to the content will do just that.

As you look through these examples, begin building a list of what elements you’d like to use for your own resume. With that list, you won’t be starting with just a blank slate.

[Examples]

How to write an eye-catching bank teller resume

The real question here is, do you want an eye-catching bank teller resume? The reason to ask that is that not all bank hiring managers are looking for “eye-catching” when hiring a bank teller. Where you do want to make a strong impression is with all the little details that add up to an excellent bank teller resume: the achievements, certifications, and design.

Or, put another way, creating an eye-catching resume begins with understanding who’s eyes you want to catch.

Who will read your resume?

If your best friend came up to a teller window, you wouldn’t interact with them the same way you would the president of the bank right? That’s because the audience matters for everything we do. So to create an effective bank teller resume, you have to begin by understanding the audience your resume needs to appeal to.

Optimizing your resume for ATS

Ironically, your resume’s first audience likely isn’t a who at all. It will be a “what.” That’s because the vast majority of larger companies (including banks) use ATS to screen initial applicants. ATS stands for Applicant Tracking System, it’s artificial intelligence driven software that scans resumes for keywords and information before sending them to a human to review further or rejecting them.

Sending your resume around without thinking about ATS is like sending your resume via pneumatic tube (okay, maybe a bad example for bank tellers, but you get the point). The likelihood your resume will never be seen by human eyes goes way up when you don’t consider ATS. So what should you be doing? Let’s break it down:

1. Use the right format. If your partner is a designer and creates an amazing looking custom resume for you and you submit it as a .png image file, it’s likely going straight into the digital trash can. While there are dozens of ATS out there and each one is a bit different, they’re generally designed to only read .doc, .docx, and .pdf files. So stick to these formats..
2. Make sure your files are ATS-friendly. That said, not all .pdfs are created equal. The way the data is structured within the file is also tremendously important. If you’ve ever tried to copy paste some text with many columns and special sections into a Word document, you have some idea why this is a challenge. The best way to ensure your resume is ATS-friendly is to use a great resume builder (more on that later).
3. Reflect what’s in the job ad. As mentioned, the function of ATS is to scan for specific information. It wants to know whether you’ve got the skills and experience to warrant a human looking over your resume. So, if the job ad asks for “ledger balancing” and you write “basic accounting skills” the ATS might not realize that you have the required skill. You want to make it as easy as possible for the ATS to see you have exactly what’s asked for, so phrase your skills and experience as close to how it’s written as possible to boost your chances.

Optimizing your resume for recruiters

Once your resume has made it past ATS it’s time to face the recruiter or hiring manager. The best way to ensure success here is to get into their head and really understand how to appeal to them. But how can you know what they want?

The key is to get down to the most basic elements of human psychology. We are more likely to do something if it’s easy. So your job is to make it easy for the hiring manager to say “yes” to your resume.

Doing that requires understanding how their review process works. While a hiring manager has their own discretion, they likely still have a list of requirements for an applicant. By making sure your skills and experience match what’s written in the job description as closely as possible, you’re not only optimizing for ATS, but you’re making it extra easy for a hiring manager to quickly see you have what it takes for the job.

Add to that a clean overall design and well structured information (more on how to do that below) and your resume will be a welcome break from the usual dense and poorly written competition.

How should a bank teller resume be formatted

As alluded to above, proper formatting is key. Your resume will have a lot of information so it needs to be easy to navigate. Doing that means putting the most important information towards the top of your resume. The first glance a recruiter or hiring manager takes should immediately tell them a few key facts about you as a candidate.

That’s why your resume needs to be in reverse chronological order, meaning your most recent work experience goes at the top. In addition, this is why beginning your resume with an objective or summary is so crucial (more tips and examples on writing those later).

How long should a bank teller resume be?

One of the most frequently asked questions about bank teller resumes is how long they should be. There’s no perfect answer, because the people reading the resumes will have different preferences. But, we can still go back to the mission of ensuring your resume makes the recruiter’s job easy.

Obviously going through a single page resume will be easier than going through a 3-4 page resume. With that in mind, try and limit your resume to one page. The best technique for doing this is to evaluate every piece of information on your resume and ask yourself if it really adds value. If it doesn’t, then delete it.

What are the most important sections to include in your resume?

Don’t include all of these (that would make getting to a single page impossible). Instead, ask yourself which of these sections will best allow you to highlight what makes you an ideal bank teller.

• A resume summary or objective
• Professional qualifications
• Work experience
• Hard skills
• Soft skills
• Certifications or training
• Education
• Languages
• Volunteering
• References

How to list bank teller certifications

The added professionalism conveyed by a certification is invaluable for a bank teller. Considering the amount of trust placed in you, showing you’ve gone above and beyond to obtain a certification and develop your skills speaks volumes. This is particularly true if you don’t have as much experience and still want to stand out (more tips for these cases later on).

But how should you list your certifications? Simply list the certification, followed by the organization which granted it and the year you’ve obtained it.

Bank Teller Certificate, American Bankers Association, 2017

The best certifications to include

• ICBA Teller Certification Program
• ABA Bank Teller Certificate
• Certified Bank Teller (CBT)

How to include skills

Your skills as a bank teller make all the difference. As mentioned previously, you should make sure you list as many of the skills requested in the job ad as possible and phrase them the same way they are listed. However, resist the temptation to exaggerate. Only list skills you feel confident in.

The other way to make your skills more effective is with examples. For soft skills that are so difficult to measure or prove, this is particularly important. Including examples of instances when you concretely demonstrated that you have a particular skill will go a long way towards building confidence in your work.

Practically, these examples can go within a special skills section, in your work experience, or in an achievements section. For example, here is a skill and an example showing you have that skill:

Works well under pressure.

By itself this doesn’t mean much. Anyone can write that they work well under pressure, so a recruiter or hiring manager will probably just ignore this.

Effectively handled hundreds of disgruntled customers at once following a mass failure of projector equipment at a movie theater, receiving “Employee of The Month” in recognition for my handling of the situation.

This example shows a case when you handled a highly stressful situation, showing that you can both work well under pressure and have excellent customer service skills.

The best soft skills to include on your bank teller resume

• Customer service
• Problem solving
• Friendliness
• Works well under pressure
• Written and verbal communication
• Attention to detail

The best hard skills to include on your bank teller resume

• Balancing a cash drawer
• Basic accounting
• Excel
• Data entry
• Speaking a foreign language

How to highlight your achievements

The same rules for skills apply to your achievements. This section is ideal for including relevant cases when you accomplished something outside of the formal workspace. Specificity is key. Simple stating that you did something “successfully” doesn’t carry much meaning with a branch manager reviewing your resume. Try and include precisely what you achieved and what you overcame without being too wordy.

Here are some examples to illustrate that:

Church volunteer.

That’s nice, but it’s not really an achievement. This might be listed under a special “Volunteer” section, but it should still be more specific.

Church treasurer for 5 years, managing general finances as well as fundraising drives, salaries, and budgeting for building improvements.

This example shows a combination of volunteering (which makes you seem more trustworthy for banking work) as well as financial and organizational skills. This is an example of a short “achievement,” which effectively connects to many relevant bank teller skills.

Should you include a resume objective or summary?

A great bank teller resume should begin with an objective or summary. The difference between the two is that a resume objective is a single sentence that simply states who you are and what you aim to achieve. If you’ll be submitting a cover letter along with your resume, this is the best choice, because the information that would go in a summary can be included there.

If you won’t be submitting a cover letter, a resume summary is a short paragraph, which can go into a bit more detail about you. This could be explaining a career change, a gap in your work history, or just adding some details about why you’re a great candidate.

Whether you’re including an objective or summary, this text should provide context which enhances the other information on your resume. It should prime the reader the same way an opening act does for a comedian or band.

How to write a resume objective with an example

An objective needs to be short and sweet. It needs to be dense with useful information so it can make a strong first impression on the reader. Let’s see what that should look like:

I have many years of retail experience handling money and hope to work in your bank as a teller.

This is a bad example of a resume objective. It speaks in first person (resumes should be written in the third person) and sounds almost pleading. It wastes the reader’s time with vague information like “many years of retail experience.” Lastly, the phrasing “your bank” tells the reader this is a resume that’s been sent to many jobs and not a custom one, witten specifically for this position. For many recruiters or hiring managers, their next thought will be “well if you didn’t take the time, why should I?” Just like that, you’ve made a bad first impression. Now let’s see a better version of that objective:

ABA Bank Teller Certificate candidate with 4 years retail experience, looking to work as a teller at Ryte Bank.

This version fixes those issues by getting specific about the retail experience, mentioning a certification, and naming the bank where this person is applying. Overall, this resume objective tells the reader that you’re detail-oriented, self-motivated, and take the time to do things right. In other words, it makes an excellent first impression that will enhance the rest of the resume.

How to write a resume summary with an example

Just because a resume summary can be a bit longer, doesn’t mean you should write an essay. Both space on your resume and reader time are in short supply, so make it count.

I’m a local student who speaks multiple languages and is looking to work part time, mostly on weekends, evenings, and Wensday afternoons. I’m hard working and diligent and will do a great job at your bank.

Spelling errors are one of the worst ways to start off a resume. This is especially true when you’re applying for a position, which requires the precision and attention to detail of a bank teller. In addition, this summary spends far too much time going into detail about availability. This should be left for later on in the hiring process. Finally, this example is written in the first person and contains too many vague terms to be effective. Let’s see another version of that summary with the errors fixed.

English and Spanish speaking finance student looking for part time work at ABC Bank. 3 years of previous retail experience managing a register without any count issues.

In this case, it was important to quickly mention that this applicant is a student and looking for part-time work. That information is probably elsewhere in the application, but it’s important enough that it should be prominently included on the resume itself as well. Also, instead of stating that they speak multiple languages, they specifically mention them.

How to write a bank teller resume when you have limited or no experience

Fortunately, most of the crucial skills needed to be a great bank teller can be learned. A bank knows this and will generally be ready to train you. That said, to compete with other applicants who might have more training to begin with, you need to show related skills. These harder to teach skills like responsibility, diligence, and customer service are extra important in these cases.

Obtaining or even being in the process of obtaining a certification also shows that you’re a serious applicant who’s thinking ahead. Lastly, be upfront about not having direct experience. It doesn’t come off well to pretend you’re perfect for a position when you have some new skills you need to develop. An employer will appreciate the honesty.

How to prepare for a job interview as a bank teller

Remember, you’re applying to be the face of a bank. So appearance is critical in the interview. Dress professionally and act as if you’re already representing a bank to a customer. That said, you still need to be friendly and personable.

Also go back over your resume and consider what expectations it will have created. Make sure the way you present yourself matches what the interviewer will be expecting. If they’ve called you in for an interview, it’s because they’re interested, so be sure you match what likely made them interested in you as a candidate.

How to make your resume stand out

Your bank teller resume should stand out the same way a great bank teller does: subtly. You don’t need any flashy design or big claims. You want to appear calm, collected, friendly, and above all competent. Your resume will stand out by clearly communicating your value and demonstrating you have the skills needed to excel in the teller position. That means great examples, specific experience, and clear writing throughout.

How Resumebuild.com resume builder tool could be utilized for an easy resume setup

The single best thing you can do to make creating a great bank teller resume easier is to use a resume builder. It takes much of the guesswork out of the resume creation process. First, by making it easy to select a great design that enhances, rather than distracts, from your content. Going above and beyond the simple Word document shows that you’re the kind of person who will go above and beyond in other ways.

Next, a resume builder will ensure sure your resume is ATS ready. With so many banks screening applicants with ATS, you can’t be too careful in ensuring your resume makes it to that recruiter.

All that said, not all resume builders are created equal. Resumebuild.com offers all of the features and options you need to create the perfect bank teller resume. With plenty of templates to choose from and an account to keep track of your resumes for future use, you’ll be ready to apply with confidence.