Short version: A strong General & Operations Manager resume proves three things fast — that you can run the P&L (revenue, cost base, gross margin, and the operating metrics that drive them), lead people at scale (direct reports, indirect headcount, safety culture, and turnover), and improve the system (lean, Six Sigma, S&OP, or a turnaround that changed the numbers). Lead with the P&L you owned and a single quantified outcome — margin expanded, cost taken out, throughput lifted — mirror the tools and certifications the posting names, and keep the format single-column and ATS-safe. Below is a complete example you can model line for line, then build yours free.
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What a general & operations manager actually does
A General & Operations Manager runs the business. Not a slice of it — the whole engine that turns inputs into a delivered product or service, on time, at a margin the company can live with, with a workforce that shows up tomorrow. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics groups more than three million of these roles under SOC 11-1021, and while the title spans a plant, a distribution center, a hotel, a restaurant group, a services branch, a franchise, and a mid-market company's whole operation, the underlying job is constant: own the P&L, lead the people, and keep improving the system. The scoreboard is a set of numbers — revenue, cost, margin, safety, quality, service level — and your resume has to prove you moved them.
On a typical week, a general and operations manager will:
- Own a P&L and manage a budget — approving spend, reading a variance report against plan, and defending an operating-margin target to a controller, an owner, or a board.
- Run daily and weekly operations meetings — reviewing KPIs (throughput, on-time-in-full, cost per unit, occupancy, ticket time, safety incidents), assigning owners, and clearing blockers before they compound.
- Lead people at scale — hiring, coaching, and if necessary parting with supervisors and front-line workers; setting culture and safety expectations; and managing turnover in a labor market that punishes weak leadership fast.
- Drive continuous improvement — chartering Lean and Six Sigma projects, running Kaizen events, standardizing work, and locking in gains so they don't slide back the quarter after the project closes.
- Manage vendors, contracts, and capital — negotiating supplier terms, approving capex, and building the business case for a piece of equipment, a new location, or a systems upgrade.
- Partner with sales, finance, and HR — sitting inside S&OP, aligning operations to a demand plan, defending forecast accuracy, and making sure the numbers finance publishes are ones operations can actually deliver.
The work that gets operations managers promoted is not the meeting cadence itself; it is the judgment about which two or three metrics matter most this quarter and the credibility to hold a hundred-person team accountable to them. That is exactly what your resume must demonstrate — not that you "managed operations," but that a set of operating decisions you made this year changed how the business performs.
What hiring managers & ATS look for
Two readers screen your resume, and they want different things. The applicant tracking system (ATS) and the recruiter running keyword searches want literal terms — P&L management, operations management, continuous improvement, Lean, Six Sigma, KPI, S&OP, the named ERP — matched to the posting. The hiring committee — often a VP of Operations, a COO, a franchise owner, a private-equity operating partner, or a general manager one level up — wants evidence you can do the job: the dollar size of the P&L you owned, the headcount you led, the operating metric you actually moved, and proof you can hold a room accountable without being feared.
Across hundreds of general and operations manager postings, the signals that move a resume to the "yes" pile are consistent:
- P&L scope, named in dollars. A skills line is not enough — put the revenue, cost base, or gross margin of what you ran in the summary and in each role's context line ("$40M P&L, 3 sites, 220 FTEs").
- Headcount and span of control. Direct reports, indirect headcount, union or non-union, single-site or multi-site. Hiring managers read this before they read your bullets.
- An operating metric you moved. Throughput, on-time-in-full, cycle time, defects per million, safety incident rate, occupancy, unit economics, NPS — pick the one your industry lives by and prove you improved it.
- Continuous-improvement fluency. A Green or Black Belt, a Kaizen event count, a lean transformation, or a specific tool (5S, value-stream mapping, SMED) — spelled out and abbreviated so both forms match.
- Financial fluency. Budget owned, cost taken out, margin points gained, capex managed. Operations leaders who can't hold their own in a finance conversation get filtered out fast at director and up.
- People leadership. Coached, developed, promoted, retained. Turnover reductions and internal-promotion counts are hire signals; a wall of activity verbs without a people number is not.
Full general & operations manager resume example
Here is a complete, realistic one-page example for a mid-career general and operations manager stepping up to a director-level operations role. Every bullet follows the same shape — action verb, what you built or owned, the tool or method, and the quantified result, ideally in dollars, points of margin, or a named operating metric. Treat it as a model, not a fill-in-the-blank; your numbers must be your own.
Professional Summary
General and Operations Manager with 11 years running multi-site operations across light manufacturing and third-party logistics, owning P&Ls up to $60M with 300+ FTEs across three states. Fluent in Lean, Six Sigma (Black Belt), S&OP, and SAP-based operations planning; trusted by ownership and the executive team to inherit under-performing sites and rebuild them without breaking service. Known for margin-expansion turnarounds, a safety-first floor culture, and a bench of supervisors that gets promoted from within. MBA, The Ohio State University Fisher College of Business.
Core Skills
Continuous improvement: Lean, Six Sigma (Black Belt), Kaizen, 5S, value-stream mapping, SMED, standard work, root-cause analysis
Systems: SAP, Oracle NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics 365, WMS (Manhattan, HighJump), Power BI, Tableau, Smartsheet
People & safety: Multi-site leadership, hiring at scale, supervisor coaching, union & non-union environments, OSHA compliance, EHS program design
Other: Vendor & contract management, cross-functional partnership with finance and sales, executive presentation, turnaround leadership
Professional Experience
- Own the P&L for a $60M, 3-site third-party logistics operation with 300+ FTEs; inherited a 4-point margin gap to plan and closed it in 14 months by rebuilding the S&OP cadence in SAP and renegotiating two carrier contracts, adding $2.4M to operating income.
- Led a Lean transformation across the flagship Columbus DC — chartered nine Kaizen events, deployed 5S and standard work at every put-away zone — lifting on-time-in-full from 88% to 96% and cutting cost per unit by 11%.
- Rebuilt the safety program floor-by-floor (behavior-based observations, near-miss reporting, monthly EHS reviews); reduced OSHA recordables by 42% and the total incident rate from 4.1 to 1.9 across all three sites in 18 months.
- Coached the three-site supervisor bench through a structured 12-month development plan; promoted five supervisors to shift-manager or assistant-GM roles and cut annualized front-line turnover from 74% to 41%.
- Built the business case for a $3.2M WMS upgrade (Manhattan Active); modeled a 22-month payback, secured approval from the board, and led the six-month rollout on time and 8% under budget.
- Owned the operating budget for a $28M plant; delivered three consecutive years of positive variance to plan by tightening MRP discipline in NetSuite and cutting overtime spend by 18%.
- Led a Six Sigma DMAIC project targeting first-pass yield on the highest-volume SKU family; moved yield from 91.4% to 97.2% in eight months and eliminated $780K of annual scrap and rework.
- Partnered with sales and finance inside a new monthly S&OP cycle; improved forecast accuracy from ±19% to ±7% and cut finished-goods inventory by $1.6M without a service-level regression.
- Promoted from Production Supervisor to Operations Manager in year two after leading a 5S rollout that recovered 2,400 sq ft of floor space and freed capacity for a new product line.
- Ran daily production meetings and shift huddles; hit the plant's OEE target of 78% in seven of eight quarters and coached three team leads into supervisor roles.
- Championed a floor safety-observation program that cut recordable incidents on the shift by half in 12 months.
Education & Certifications
MBA — The Ohio State University Fisher College of Business · 2020
BS, Industrial & Systems Engineering — The Ohio State University · 2014
Lean Six Sigma Black Belt (ASQ) · OSHA 30-Hour General Industry · APICS CPIM
Two things to notice in this example. First, every role opens with a one-line scope that names the P&L in dollars, the sites, and the headcount — the three numbers a director-level hiring committee reads first. Second, roughly two-thirds of the bullets carry a currency figure or a named operating metric with a before-and-after. Neither is decoration; both are the load-bearing signals a general and operations manager résumé has to send in the top third of the page.
Key skills & ATS keywords for general & operations managers
Pull the eight to twelve terms the posting names, confirm you genuinely have them, and place each into a real bullet or your skills line. These are the keywords that show up most across general and operations manager job descriptions — match the ones that are true for you, in the posting's exact phrasing. Where a term has both a spelled-out and an abbreviated form (Sales & Operations Planning / S&OP), include both once so the ATS matches either.
| Hard skills (must show) | Soft skills (must signal) |
|---|---|
| P&L management — revenue, cost, gross margin, variance to plan | Executive presence with owners, boards, and PE operating partners |
| Continuous improvement — Lean, Six Sigma, Kaizen, DMAIC | Ability to hold a floor and a leadership team accountable |
| Operations planning — S&OP, forecasting, inventory strategy | Business partnering across finance, sales, and HR |
| Systems fluency — ERP (SAP, NetSuite, Dynamics), WMS, BI | Judgment on which two or three metrics matter this quarter |
| Safety & quality — OSHA, ISO 9001, EHS program design | Change leadership without breaking service or morale |
| People leadership at scale — hiring, coaching, succession planning | Coaching supervisors into managers and managers into directors |
For a deeper method on weaving these in without keyword-stuffing, see how to choose resume keywords and how to quantify resume bullets.
A realistic salary range
Compensation for General & Operations Managers varies widely by industry, region, P&L size, and whether the role is single-site or multi-site, but the bands are well established. In the United States, most general and operations managers earn roughly $70,000 to $180,000 in base salary, with a national median around $101,000 — consistent with Bureau of Labor Statistics data for SOC 11-1021 (General and Operations Managers), the country's largest management occupation with roughly 3.4 million people in the role. Small-business and single-site branch managers commonly start in the mid-$60,000s to low-$90,000s. Mid-market multi-site operations managers and plant managers frequently land $120,000 to $180,000 in base, and senior general managers and directors of operations at PE-backed or large enterprise employers reach $180,000 to $260,000+ in base, often with a 15–30% annual bonus and equity or profit-sharing on top.
- What pushes you up the band: a bigger P&L (revenue and headcount), multi-site scope, a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, an MBA or engineering degree, ERP-heavy environments (SAP is a premium), turnaround experience, and quantified proof you moved margin or throughput in a prior role.
- What anchors the number: geography (a rural single-site GM does not price like a Chicago multi-site director), industry (banking, tech operations, and PE-backed manufacturing pay above hospitality and nonprofit), and whether you truly own the P&L or just execute a plan someone else built.
Common general & operations manager resume mistakes
Frequently asked questions
A General & Operations Manager resume should include a 3–4 line professional summary that names the P&L size you have owned, a Core Skills block covering P&L management, operations planning, KPI ownership, continuous improvement, and team leadership, and two to three roles of experience written as outcome bullets. Every operations bullet should ideally carry a number — revenue owned, cost saved, margin improved, headcount managed, safety incidents reduced, on-time-in-full percentage. Close with education, an MBA or engineering degree if you have one, and any Lean, Six Sigma, PMP, or industry-specific certifications.
One page for operations managers with under roughly ten years of experience, and up to two pages for senior directors and general managers running multi-site or multi-BU operations. Recruiters read the top third first, so anchor it with the biggest P&L you have owned, the headcount you have led, and a single number that proves you moved the business — margin, throughput, safety, or working capital.
The load-bearing skills are P&L ownership, operations planning and S&OP, KPI and dashboard design, continuous improvement (Lean, Six Sigma, Kaizen), vendor and contract management, team leadership at scale, and financial fluency — budgeting, forecasting, and reading a variance report. Below those, employers look for ERP or MRP fluency (SAP, Oracle, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics), safety and quality systems (OSHA, ISO 9001), and program-management skill for cross-functional initiatives.
Quantify in the language of the business you ran. Name the P&L in dollars (revenue, cost base, or gross margin), the headcount you led (direct and indirect), the operating metric you moved (OTIF, throughput, cycle time, defects per million, safety incident rate, NPS, unit economics), and the financial delta you produced (dollars saved, margin points gained, working capital freed). A bullet should read like a small business case: what you inherited, what you built, and what changed on the scoreboard.
Use a summary — never an objective. Operations managers are hired on track record, not intent. Three to four lines are plenty: your years leading operations, the industries and P&L scale you have owned, one or two signature capabilities (lean transformation, multi-site turnaround, S&OP build), and the single strongest quantified outcome. Save the aspiration for the cover letter.
You almost always do have experience — it is just not titled Operations Manager. Lead with any role where you owned throughput, coordinated a team, held a budget, or ran a process end to end: shift supervisor, team lead, project coordinator, military platoon leader, franchise owner, or GM of a small business. Frame it in operations language — headcount led, cycle time reduced, cost saved, KPI improved — and add a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, a Certified Manager credential, or a PMP if you can. A general management MBA is a strong accelerator for candidates coming from engineering, finance, or the military.
A single-column, reverse-chronological format with clean section headings — Summary, Core Skills, Experience, Education, Certifications. Skip icons, photos, and multi-column layouts that ATS parsers scramble. Save as a text-based PDF unless the posting asks for .docx. Keep it to one or two pages, use standard fonts, and leave enough white space that a recruiter can scan the top third and see the P&L scale, headcount, and one or two signature outcomes without hunting.
Don't want to do this alone?
A great resume gets you parsed. It doesn't get you in front of the COO, the private-equity operating partner, or the franchise owner who actually decides the hire — and for operations roles, the top opportunities are frequently filled through search-firm relationships and internal referrals before they hit a job board. That's where Marqee comes in. We're a Career Concierge: a real strategist runs your search, tailors your resume to each general and operations manager posting, reaches the hiring committee directly, and finds a referral inside the company so you skip the pile. You stop refreshing job boards at night and start showing up to shortlist calls with the people who matter.
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