On this page
- Resume guide for a maintenance worker resume
- How to write a maintenance worker resume
- Choosing the best resume format for a maintenance worker resume
- Include your contact information
- Make use of a summary
- Right vs wrong: the same maintenance worker summary, twice
- Outline your experience
- The safety cards that make you hireable, and the order to get them
- Build a snapshot of your key skills
- List your education and certifications
- Choose the right layout and design
- Maintenance worker job market and outlook
- What salary you can expect as a maintenance worker
- Key takeaways for a maintenance worker resume
- How this differs from the two neighboring maintenance resumes
- Related maintenance and repair resume examples
- FAQ
A maintenance worker resume is a one page document for the most common way into the building trades, and it is the resume most people in this category write badly because they think they have nothing to put on it.
You almost certainly do. In short, this is the general buildings and grounds role: repairs, painting, mowing, snow, moving furniture, setting up rooms, changing filters, clearing drains, and helping a technician with anything more complicated. For example, a school district, a hospital, a city parks department or an apartment community hires for it constantly, and what they are screening for is not a trade record. It is whether you will turn up, whether you will be safe, and whether you can be left alone with a task.
Resume guide for a maintenance worker resume
To start, this guide and the corresponding maintenance worker resume example will cover:
- How to write a maintenance worker resume when you have no trade background
- What counts as relevant experience, including work you would not think to list
- First, the safety certifications worth getting first, and the order to get them
- Next, three adaptable summaries: entry, working and crew lead
- Finally, what the job market looks like and what you can expect to earn
How to write a maintenance worker resume
In total, five sections: contact header, summary, experience, skills grouped by the kind of work, and certifications and training. One page, and one page only, until you are leading a crew.
The one structural decision that matters is whether to put certifications or experience first. If you have a year or more of relevant work, experience goes first. If you are changing careers or starting out, certifications go first, because a short list of safety cards is the fastest way to look employable to someone whose main worry is that you will hurt yourself in week two.
SectionWhat it is answeringWhere it goes
- Certifications and trainingIs this person safe to put on a ladder or a mower?First, if experience is thin
- ExperienceHave they done physical work reliably, for anyone?Reverse chronological, dates visible
- Skills by work typeWhich of our tasks can they take without supervision?Grouped: building, grounds, seasonal, support
- EquipmentWhat can they already operate?Inside skills, named by machine
Reliability is the actual qualification, so make it countable
Every posting for this role asks for skills it does not really screen on. The thing a supervisor is actually deciding is whether you will be there on Monday, and again in March.
Count something. Attendance over a defined period. Months in one job. Shifts covered for other people. A season completed without a missed day. A 5:30am start held through a winter. "Fourteen months with no unscheduled absence" is a sentence almost nobody writes and every facilities supervisor reads twice.
If you have a patchy history, do not hide it behind vague dates, because gaps are normal in this occupation and unexplained ones are not. Give the months honestly and let the most recent stretch of steady work carry the file.
Run the finished file through the free ATS resume checker before you apply. School districts, municipalities and hospital systems all run applications through a portal, and public sector portals are among the least forgiving of unusual formatting.
Choosing the best resume format for a maintenance worker resume
Reverse chronological, one page, with a skills block grouped by the kind of work rather than a single long list.
Do not use a functional resume even if your history is short. Public employers in particular score applications against minimum qualifications that are written in months of experience, and a format without clear dates makes you unscoreable rather than mysterious. If your work history is genuinely thin, the fix is not to hide it. Instead, the fix is to widen what counts, which the next section covers.
Include your contact information
Abel Tesfaye-Brooks
Buildings and Grounds Maintenance WorkerOSHA 10 General Industry. Forklift certified. NY driver, clean record.(585) 555-0163, abel.tesfaye-brooks@example.com, Rochester, NYAbel Tesfaye-Brooks
Hard worker looking for any available positionVarious safety training completed(585) 555-0163, abelt_2003@example.comThe driver line is not filler. In addition, a very large share of these jobs involve a pickup, a plow, a utility vehicle or a van, and a clean record is a real qualification. If you have a commercial license or a plow endorsement, that belongs in the header too.
Make use of a summary
For the summary, three or four lines: what kind of maintenance work you do, where you have done it, the equipment you run, and one number that proves reliability.
Entry level maintenance worker adaptable resume summary example
Working maintenance worker adaptable resume summary example
Maintenance crew lead adaptable resume summary example
Right vs wrong: the same maintenance worker summary, twice
In other words, a reader can score the right column against a minimum qualification list. The left column is what everyone writes, and it is why so many applicants who would have been good at this job never get a call.
Outline your experience
Employer, site, dates and scale. Then bullets. In each bullet, give volume, area, building count, route size or frequency.
- Instead of
Performed general maintenance duties
UseCovered general repair, painting and grounds across 11 buildings and 34 acres for a district of 4,200 students
- Instead of
Assisted with repairs
UseCompleted roughly 22 work orders a week from the SchoolDude queue, escalating HVAC and panel work to the licensed technician
- Instead of
Responsible for grounds upkeep
UseRan a 34-acre mowing route on a 6-day cycle with two zero-turn mowers, plus trimming, mulch and irrigation checks
- Instead of
Removed snow in the winter
UseHeld a 6-lot snow route on a 4:30am call-out, 4 winters with no missed activation, running a compact tractor with a plow and a walk-behind blower
- Instead of
Helped set up for events
UseSet up and struck 180 room configurations a year for events, testing and graduation, including staging, seating and AV cart moves
- Instead of
Did minor plumbing and electrical
UseCleared drains, replaced faucets, flush valves and traps, changed ballasts and lamps, and swapped receptacles and switches under the district electrician's direction
Adaptable resume employment history example
Maintenance Worker, Genesee Valley Central School District, Rochester, NY, August 2021 to Present
Cover buildings and grounds across 11 buildings and 34 acres serving 4,200 students, working from a SchoolDude work order queue on a 6:00am start.
Complete roughly 22 work orders a week: general repair, drywall and paint, door hardware, furniture repair, drain clearing, fixture replacement and lamp and ballast changes.
Run the 34-acre mowing route on a 6-day cycle with two zero-turn mowers, plus trimming, mulch, irrigation checks and fall leaf clearance.
Hold a 6-lot winter snow route on a 4:30am call-out, 4 winters with no missed activation, operating a compact tractor with a plow and a walk-behind blower.
Set up and strike roughly 180 room configurations a year for events, state testing and graduation.
Assist the district HVAC technician on filter and belt PM routes across 46 units, and escalate all refrigerant, panel and gas work.
Fourteen months in the most recent review period with no unscheduled absence.
The safety cards that make you hireable, and the order to get them
This is the section that matters most if you are trying to get into this work, and it is the one thing on this page that you can act on this week.
Maintenance work is dangerous, and employers know it better than applicants do. In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics notes that general maintenance and repair workers "have one of the highest rates of injuries and illnesses of all occupations", with sprains, cuts and fractures the common outcomes (BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, general maintenance and repair workers, accessed September 2026). As a result, a supervisor hiring someone with no trade record is weighing that risk against a vacancy they need filled, and every card you hold moves the decision.
Likewise, the hazards are not a mystery. OSHA's most frequently cited standards for fiscal year 2024 were led by fall protection in construction, hazard communication in general industry, ladders in construction, respiratory protection, the control of hazardous energy known as lockout and tagout, and powered industrial trucks (Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Top 10 most frequently cited standards, fiscal year 2024, accessed September 2026). Read that list again as a shopping list, because it is exactly the training a facilities supervisor wishes a new maintenance worker already had.
The order to get maintenance safety cards
Below, then, is the order that produces the most hiring value for the least time and money.
| Order | What to get | Why it is first |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | OSHA 10-Hour General Industry | The cheapest, fastest signal that you understand hazards. Many public employers list it as preferred and a few require it. |
| 2 | Forklift or powered industrial truck certification | A legal requirement rather than a preference, and it is employer-specific, so getting trained makes you immediately useful. |
| 3 | Driver license in good standing, plus any plow or commercial endorsement | These roles come with vehicles. A failed motor vehicle check ends offers late in the process. |
| 4 | First aid, CPR and AED | Required or preferred at schools, campuses and public buildings, and it takes a day. |
| 5 | State pesticide applicator technician certification | Opens the grounds half of the job. Required in most states to apply herbicide on someone else's property. |
| 6 | Aerial and scissor lift training | Removes the tasks a new worker otherwise has to be walked through, and pairs directly with the fall protection standard. |
| 7 | EPA Section 608 Type I | The first step out of general work and into technician work. It does not expire once earned. |
What forklift certification really means
The forklift item deserves a note, because it is widely misunderstood. Specifically, under 29 CFR 1910.178(l), the employer must certify that each operator has been trained and evaluated, and must evaluate each operator's performance at least once every three years (Occupational Safety and Health Administration, accessed September 2026). Therefore a card from a weekend course does not on its own make you certified at a new employer, and saying "forklift certified, evaluation current, willing to be re-evaluated on your equipment" is more accurate and reads better than the card alone.
Do
- List every safety card with the issuing body and the year.
- Name the equipment you can operate, by machine type.
- Give the building count, acreage or route size.
- Put one reliability number on the page.
- Say what you escalate, because knowing your limit is a safety qualification.
- Keep dates visible even where the history is short.
Don’t
- Do not write "willing to learn" as a qualification; show a card instead.
- Do not claim electrical or plumbing work beyond what you did under direction.
- Do not describe snow work without the call-out time, since that is the whole difficulty.
- Do not leave equipment as "various machinery".
- Do not stretch to two pages; a one-page file with numbers beats a padded one every time.
Build a snapshot of your key skills
For skills, twelve to sixteen entries in four groups: building, grounds, seasonal and equipment. Group them, because a supervisor is mentally sorting you into the half of the job they need covered.
Adaptable resume skills example
Building: General repair, drywall patch and paint, door and lock hardware, furniture and fixture assembly and repair, ceiling tile replacement, lamp and ballast replacement, drain clearing, faucet, trap and flush valve replacement, filter and belt changes
Grounds: Mowing routes, string trimming and edging, mulching and bed maintenance, irrigation controller checks, tree and shrub pruning, leaf clearance, litter and grounds inspection, athletic field lining
Seasonal and set-up: Snow plowing and salting routes, walkway clearing, room and event set-up and strike, summer deep clean and floor program, furniture moves, delivery receiving
Equipment: Zero-turn mower, compact tractor with plow and loader, walk-behind snow blower, scissor lift, forklift, floor scrubber and burnisher, pressure washer, hand and power tools
List your education and certifications
Schooling is short here and that is fine. The certifications carry the section, so give each one its issuing body and year.
Adaptable resume education and certifications example
OSHA 10-Hour General Industry, OSHA Outreach Training Program, 2023
Powered industrial truck (forklift) certification, employer-issued under 29 CFR 1910.178(l), most recent evaluation 2025
Adult First Aid, CPR and AED, American Red Cross, 2025
New York State pesticide applicator technician certification, category 3a, 2024
Aerial and scissor lift operator training, 2024
EPA Section 608 Type I, 2026
High school diploma, East Rochester High School, Rochester, NY, 2019
New York Class B driver license with plow experience, clean motor vehicle record
Choose the right layout and design
As for layout, single column, 11 or 12 point type, one page, no photograph, no graphics. Public sector application portals are the least tolerant of formatting in this category, and a school district or municipal system will frequently ask you to retype the whole resume into a form anyway, which is far easier from a plain document.
Also keep a plain text version saved for exactly that reason. After all, copying from a designed PDF into a public portal is where line breaks, bullet characters and column order get mangled.
Maintenance worker job market and outlook
One of the largest entry points in the American labor market, with openings driven overwhelmingly by turnover rather than growth.
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Maintenance and repair workers, general, employment 2025 | 1,621,800 |
| Projected change, 2025-35 | +4% (+68,600) |
| Projected annual openings | ~148,700 |
| Typical entry-level education | High school diploma or equivalent |
| Work experience required | None |
| Typical on-the-job training | Moderate-term |
| Median annual wage, May 2025 | $49,590 |
The volume of openings is the opportunity, and it is very large
Three adjacent occupations that hire from the same pool are projected to produce roughly 633,000 openings a year between them over the decade: about 148,700 for general maintenance and repair workers, about 162,500 for grounds maintenance workers and about 321,800 for janitors and building cleaners (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2025-35 projections, accessed September 2026).
None of the three requires a trade qualification to enter. Grounds maintenance workers and janitors and building cleaners have no formal educational credential requirement at all, and general maintenance and repair workers require a high school diploma or equivalent with no prior work experience (BLS, accessed September 2026).
The pay follows the same order and so should your plan. Janitors and building cleaners had a median of $36,840 as of May 2025, grounds maintenance workers $40,080, and general maintenance and repair workers $49,590 (BLS, May 2025). If you are trying to get in somewhere and move up, the honest route is to take whichever of the three has a vacancy, build a documented record of reliability and safety cards, and move across. That move is far easier from inside a facilities department than from outside one.
Here, then, is where the work sits, and what it pays:
| Industry | Share of employment | Median annual wage (May 2025) |
|---|---|---|
| Real estate and rental and leasing | ||
| Manufacturing | ||
| Government | ||
| Educational services | ||
| Accommodation and food services |
In particular, two of those columns are worth a candidate's attention for reasons other than the number. Government and educational services pay in the middle but come with pension systems, formal pay steps and posted promotion routes, which matter more over a career than a starting rate does. Manufacturing pays the most and is the hardest of the five to enter without a mechanical record, which is why a maintenance worker who wants that column should be collecting machine-side experience deliberately rather than waiting to be offered it.
What salary you can expect as a maintenance worker
The median annual wage for general maintenance and repair workers was $49,590 as of May 2025, with the lowest 10 percent earning less than $35,350 and the highest 10 percent more than $77,180 (BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, May 2025).
That top decile is the interesting part, because it is roughly double the bottom one for an occupation with no entry qualification. However, what separates the two ends is not years. It is whether you acquired a named capability and documented it.
Instead, the four routes out of the bottom half all start from the same job. One option is to specialize into a trade within the employer, which usually means an apprenticeship or an in-house technician post. Another is to take the EPA Section 608 and move toward HVAC, where heating, air conditioning and refrigeration mechanics and installers had a median of $61,010 as of May 2025 with employment projected to grow 11 percent to 2035 (BLS, May 2025). Alternatively, move into the licensed trades directly, where electricians had a median of $63,190 and plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters $63,800 as of May 2025 (BLS, May 2025). Or lead, by taking the crew lead post and then the supervisor post inside a facilities department.
In every case, all four are documented the same way: a certification with a date, a piece of the operation you owned, and someone you trained.
Key takeaways for a maintenance worker resume
- Put a reliability number on the page, because that is the real screen.
- Lead with safety cards if your experience is thin, and list the issuing body and year.
- First, widen what counts as experience: warehouse, grounds, janitorial, farm, kitchen and retail stocking all qualify.
- Then name the equipment you operate by machine, not as "various machinery".
- Also give scale in every role: buildings, acreage, route size, work orders a week.
- Say what you escalate, because knowing your limit reads as safe rather than limited.
- Finally, keep it to one page and keep a plain text copy for public sector portals.
How this differs from the two neighboring maintenance resumes
Note that three roles in this category share a toolbox and hire on completely different evidence.
A maintenance worker is the general buildings and grounds role and the usual way in, hired on reliability, safety training and breadth of task rather than on a trade record. A maintenance technician is the skilled in-house version of the same job, measured by a work order system and gated in practice by the EPA Section 608 refrigerant certification. A handyman is the self-employed version, selling breadth to clients and capped by state licensing thresholds rather than by a certification.
The route from here usually runs through the technician job, so read that guide next and treat its metrics list as a description of what to start collecting now.
Related maintenance and repair resume examples
- Handyman resume
- Maintenance technician resume
- Custodian resume
- Janitor resume
- Housekeeping resume
- Landscaping resume
- Painter resume
- Carpenter resume
- Cement mason resume
- Facilities manager resume
- Electrician resume
- Maintenance and repair resume
Maintenance worker resume questions, answered
How long should a maintenance worker resume be?
One page. There is no version of this role where two pages helps, and a padded second page usually contains a tool list or a repeated duty description that makes the whole file look thinner rather than fuller.
What counts as relevant experience for a maintenance worker resume?
More than most applicants think. Warehouse and stocking work, landscaping, farm work, janitorial and housekeeping, kitchen work, moving and delivery, construction laboring, and military service all count, because they demonstrate physical work, equipment use, safety compliance and attendance. Write them with the same detail as a maintenance job: what you moved, what you operated, how often, and for how long.
What do I put on a maintenance worker resume with no experience at all?
Certifications first, then any paid work, then anything you have maintained for someone else. Get the OSHA 10-Hour General Industry card and a first aid and CPR certificate before you apply; both are short and cheap and they move you out of the untrained pile. Then write your work history honestly with visible dates, and add a line naming the equipment you can already operate.
Which certification should I get first?
OSHA 10-Hour General Industry. It is the fastest and cheapest, it maps directly onto the hazards employers get cited for, and a large share of public sector postings name it. After that, forklift certification, first aid and CPR, and a state pesticide applicator technician certification if you want the grounds half of the work.
How do I move from maintenance worker to maintenance technician?
Collect three things. A certification that gates real work, usually EPA Section 608 Type I to start with, since it does not expire. A record of the technical work you already assist with, described specifically rather than as "assisted the technician". And a measurable piece of the operation you own, such as a PM route, the filter schedule or the snow route. Then read the [maintenance technician resume guide](/resume/maintenance-technician/) and start recording the metrics it lists.
Should I list snow removal on a maintenance worker resume?
Yes, and give the difficult part. Anyone can clear a walkway; what an employer is buying is someone who answers a 4:30am call-out in February and has done it before. Give the route size, the call-out time, the number of winters and any missed activations, and name the equipment you ran.