How to Write a CV for a Plumber Role

What a hiring manager scans for first

If the role involves gas appliances, the first thing scanned for is your Gas Safe Register number. Not the phrase "Gas Safe registered" – the actual number. Anyone hiring for gas work is legally required to check it, either against your ID card or the register itself, so putting it on the CV saves them a step and signals you know that's how this works. If your CV doesn't mention gas work at all, that's read as meaning you don't do it, not as an oversight.

After that, the scan is for your qualification route and level: whether you're NVQ Level 2 or Level 3 (or the older City & Guilds 6189 equivalent), and whether that was through an apprenticeship or an adult conversion course. Then ACS certificates – CCN1 for natural gas appliances, CENWAT or CPA1 for water heaters, HTR1 for central heating, CKR1 for cookers, depending on what the job actually involves. A hiring manager working in domestic servicing wants to see CCN1 and CENWAT before anything else; someone hiring for commercial catering gas wants CKR1 and possibly ICPN1. List the specific letters, not "fully ACS accredited," because the letters tell them exactly what you're certified to touch.

After qualifications, the scan moves to what kind of plumbing you've actually done: bathroom first and second fix, unvented hot water cylinders (which need a separate G3 certificate, distinct from your core ACS), underfloor heating, power flushing, soil and waste, drainage, macerators. "Plumbing and heating engineer, 6 years" tells them nothing. "Unvented cylinder installation and servicing, combi and system boiler swaps, underfloor heating manifolds" tells them whether you're the right fit for the vacancy in front of them.

Qualifications, registrations and cards that belong on this CV

These are the specific items worth naming, and where each one matters:

• Gas Safe Register number – required if the role touches gas appliances at all. Quote the number itself.
• ACS certificates (CCN1, CENWAT, CKR1, HTR1, and any others relevant to the job) with the dates they're valid to, since they expire every five years and a hiring manager will notice a cert that's about to lapse.
• NVQ Level 2 or 3 Diploma in Plumbing and Domestic Heating, or the equivalent City & Guilds qualification, stated with the level, not just "qualified plumber."
• G3 Unvented Hot Water Systems certificate if you install or service unvented cylinders – this is separate from your general ACS and is often the thing that gets someone shortlisted for boiler-and-cylinder work over someone who only has the basic gas certs.
• WRAS approval knowledge – not a personal qualification, but if you specify systems to WRAS-approved standards, say so; it tells a commercial or new-build employer you understand water regulations compliance, not just installation.
• JIB grading, if you have it (Improver, Advanced Craftsman, Craftsman, Technician Plumber) – used more in the mechanical services and commercial side of the trade, less in small domestic firms, so include it if you have it but don't worry if you don't.
• CSCS card, and which colour, if you work on construction sites – site access is often refused without one, so this can be a hard gatekeeper before your plumbing skills are even considered.
• Full UK driving licence with no more than minor points, because most plumbing jobs assume you're driving a van, and a licence with heavy points can be enough to rule someone out for insurance reasons.
• DBS check, particularly for domestic work in vulnerable people's homes or contracts with housing associations and schools – if you have one and it's current, say so.
• Public liability insurance, if you're self-employed or applying to a firm that expects you to arrive insured for subcontract work.

Not every job needs all of these. A domestic bathroom fitter with no gas work doesn't need Gas Safe or ACS; a new-build plumbing subcontractor may need CSCS more than anything else. Match what you list to what the advert is actually asking for, rather than listing everything you've ever held.

How experience is normally evidenced in this trade

A plumbing CV that just lists employer names and dates is invisible. What actually shows competence:

• The property and system type, not just the task. "Serviced and repaired combi boilers" is vaguer than "serviced combi and system boilers across domestic properties, including diagnosing PCB faults and replacing diverter valves." Naming the components (PCB, diverter valve, expansion vessel, pressure relief valve) does more work than any adjective.
• Whether you worked solo or as part of a team, and if you supervised apprentices – this matters for roles at Craftsman or Technician level, where the employer wants to know you can be left on a job unsupervised or can sign off someone else's work.
• The scale and setting: domestic, commercial, industrial, new build, social housing, or maintenance contract work. A hiring manager for a facilities maintenance contract wants reactive and planned maintenance experience; a bathroom fitting company wants first and second fix domestic installs. These are different CVs even though the trade is the same.
• Callout or emergency work, if relevant, since some employers specifically want someone comfortable being on an out-of-hours rota, and this is easy to miss off if you've only ever done scheduled jobs.
• Tools and van, briefly – whether you have your own core kit (press-fit tools, pipe freezing kit, leak detection equipment, power flusher) and your own van, since for many smaller firms this changes what they're offering you in terms of pay and what they expect you to turn up with.

References in this trade are often checked against the Gas Safe register directly, or by a phone call to a previous employer asking specifically whether your gas work was ever flagged in an inspection. Naming a previous employer who'll confirm this, with a phone number, tends to carry more weight than a generic reference paragraph.

What plumbers routinely leave off their CV

The most common gaps, in order of how often they cost someone an interview:

1. The Gas Safe number itself. Plenty of CVs say "Gas Safe registered" and stop there. The number takes ten seconds to add and removes the need for a follow-up email just to ask for it.
2. ACS certificate expiry dates. An employer hiring for gas work needs certs that are in date for the duration of employment, not just currently valid. If yours expires in two months, that's worth addressing directly rather than leaving them to find out.
3. System types, named specifically. "Boiler repairs" instead of "combi, system and conventional boiler diagnostics and repair" reads as less experienced even when it isn't.
4. Coverage area or willingness to travel. Plumbing is local work. Not stating a postcode or radius means a hiring manager can't tell if you're even geographically viable, and CVs get filtered on this before anything else is read.
5. Unvented cylinder work and the G3 certificate, specifically – it's a distinct qualification from general ACS, and leaving it off when you have it undersells you for any role that includes cylinder servicing.
6. CSCS card colour. "I have a CSCS card" isn't the same as a Gold card, and site recruiters read the colour as a shorthand for experience level.

What to do next

Pull your ACS certificates, Gas Safe card, and any NVQ or G3 certificates in front of you before you write anything. Put the numbers, levels and dates on the page exactly as they appear on those documents – don't paraphrase them. Then go through your last two or three jobs and rewrite each one around the system types and property types you actually worked on, not the generic task list. If you're applying to more than a couple of jobs with genuinely different requirements – domestic servicing versus commercial new-build, say – you'll likely need two versions of this CV, not one that tries to cover both.

jobmarket.pro reads the full advert for a plumbing role, checks it against your actual certificates and job history, and builds the application from that rather than from a template, without inventing qualifications you don't hold.