Top 12 Shipping Manager Skills to Put on Your Resume
In today’s crowded job market, a sharp resume gives shipping managers an edge. Show the skills that keep freight flowing, costs tamed, and customers calm. Move fast, stay accurate, prove impact.
Shipping Manager Skills
- Logistics Coordination
- Inventory Management
- SAP Software
- Oracle SCM Cloud
- Freight Negotiation
- Compliance Knowledge
- Safety Standards
- Microsoft Excel
- Quality Control
- Team Leadership
- Project Management
- Continuous Improvement
1. Logistics Coordination
Logistics coordination means planning and steering the movement and storage of goods from origin to delivery, balancing time, cost, capacity, and compliance. It’s the connective tissue across suppliers, carriers, warehouses, and customers.
Why It's Important
It keeps shipments on time, trims waste, improves resource use, controls spend, and protects service levels. Better flow, fewer surprises.
How to Improve Logistics Coordination Skills
Focus on clarity, data, and rhythm in operations:
Sharpen communication: Set clear channels and cadences with teams, carriers, and suppliers. Standardize status updates and escalation paths.
Adopt a TMS: Use a transportation management system for routing, tendering, tracking, and freight audit to tighten control and visibility.
Tune inventory signals: Sync order promising with actual stock and inbound schedules so shipping plans match reality.
Strengthen supplier alignment: Share forecasts, agree on SLAs, and run regular performance reviews to reduce lead-time variance.
Continuous improvement: Track dwell time, on-time performance, claims, and cost per shipment. Use root-cause analysis and Lean techniques to remove bottlenecks.
Small improvements stack. Keep iterating as conditions shift.
How to Display Logistics Coordination Skills on Your Resume
2. Inventory Management
Inventory management controls ordering, storage, and distribution so the right stock is in the right place at the right time. For shipping, it underpins accurate picks, clean loads, and punctual dispatches.
Why It's Important
It prevents stockouts and bloated shelves, cuts carrying costs, and supports fast, error-free fulfillment.
How to Improve Inventory Management Skills
Tighten accuracy and flow while trimming waste:
Use modern inventory software: Real-time visibility for receipts, picks, counts, and returns. Integrate with sales orders and shipping.
Apply Just-in-Time wisely: Lower buffers where demand is stable and lead times are reliable. Keep safety stock where risk is higher.
Count continuously: Cycle counting beats annual shutdowns. Reconcile exceptions fast.
Forecast with data: Blend history, seasonality, and current pipeline signals to set reorder points and lot sizes.
Design the warehouse for speed: Slot fast movers near pack lines, reduce touches, and mark clear pick paths.
Develop supplier reliability: Monitor on-time, in-full, and quality; align on lead-time windows and packaging standards.
Think Kaizen: Make small, steady changes—bin labeling, visual cues, standard work—then measure impact.
Aligned systems and disciplined routines drive steady gains.
How to Display Inventory Management Skills on Your Resume
3. SAP Software
SAP provides integrated ERP capabilities across order management, inventory, shipping, and finance. It centralizes data, automates workflows, and supports compliant, traceable fulfillment.
Why It's Important
It links departments, reduces manual handoffs, improves accuracy, and gives real-time visibility across the shipment lifecycle.
How to Improve SAP Software Skills
Turn the system into a force multiplier:
Automate routine steps: Configure shipping conditions, output forms, and packing instructions to cut keystrokes and errors.
Integrate carrier tracking: Use APIs or connectors for live status updates, labels, and EDI events.
Adopt SAP Fiori: Provide role-based, mobile-friendly apps for picking, packing, shipping, and exceptions.
Lean on analytics: Build dashboards for on-time, cost-to-serve, and dock-to-door cycle time. Decide with data, not guesses.
Enable mobility: Equip floor teams with handhelds for scanning and real-time confirmations.
Standardize master data: Clean carriers, routes, packaging materials, and shipping conditions to prevent transactional chaos.
Good configuration plus disciplined data management unlocks the value.
How to Display SAP Software Skills on Your Resume
4. Oracle SCM Cloud
Oracle SCM Cloud connects planning, sourcing, warehousing, transportation, and global trade in one platform. For shipping managers, it means better visibility, faster decisions, and tighter control from pick to proof of delivery.
Why It's Important
Unified tools streamline tendering, tracking, and cost management, helping reduce delays and spend while improving reliability.
How to Improve Oracle SCM Cloud Skills
Dial in the pieces that matter most on the dock and the road:
Keep current: Apply regular updates to access new transportation, GTC, and WMS features.
Train the team: Use structured learning paths and certifications so superusers can configure and troubleshoot confidently.
Use embedded analytics: Monitor on-time pickup/delivery, carrier scorecards, and exception trends. Act quickly on outliers.
Add IoT signals: Real-time telemetry—location, temperature, shock—reduces blind spots for sensitive or high-value loads.
Tailor with low-code: Build lightweight extensions and pages that match your workflows without heavy customization.
Leverage WMS: Orchestrate receiving, picking, packing, and loading with directed tasks and scanning.
Engage support and community: Share lessons, adopt proven setups, and resolve issues faster.
Configuration discipline and continuous learning pay off quickly.
How to Display Oracle SCM Cloud Skills on Your Resume
5. Freight Negotiation
Freight negotiation secures favorable rates, terms, and service levels with carriers and brokers. It’s part data crunching, part relationship craft.
Why It's Important
Better pricing, steadier capacity, and service commitments translate into real dollars saved and fewer operational headaches.
How to Improve Freight Negotiation Skills
Prepare hard, then negotiate smart:
Know the market: Track lane-level rates, fuel trends, and capacity swings. Enter talks with a clear walk-away point.
Leverage volume and mix: Bundle lanes, seasonality, and equipment needs to offer carriers balanced freight.
Build partnerships: Communicate openly, pay on time, share forecasts, and reward performance. Trust compounds.
Use a multi-carrier strategy: Avoid single points of failure. Competition keeps rates sharp and service honest.
Negotiate beyond price: Lock in accessorial caps, payment terms, tender acceptance SLAs, and claims resolution timelines.
Adopt procurement tools: Run structured bids, compare alternatives apples-to-apples, and manage contracts centrally.
Review regularly: Measure carrier scorecards and rerun events when market shifts open new opportunities.
Relationships matter, but clarity and data carry the day.
How to Display Freight Negotiation Skills on Your Resume
6. Compliance Knowledge
Compliance knowledge covers customs rules, import/export controls, sanctions, hazardous materials handling, security programs, and environmental requirements—across local and international jurisdictions.
Why It's Important
It protects the company from fines and delays, speeds border crossings, and maintains licenses and trusted-trader statuses.
How to Improve Compliance Knowledge Skills
Make compliance a steady drumbeat, not a scramble:
Track regulatory changes: Follow updates from organizations like the International Maritime Organization, World Customs Organization, and national customs authorities.
Invest in training: Enroll teams in courses on trade compliance, classification, and dangerous goods handling. Refresh often.
Standardize procedures: Document screening, classification, origin declarations, and record retention. Audit them.
Use compliance tools: Screen parties, embargoes, and denied lists; automate documentation where possible.
Consult experts when needed: For complex regimes, seek specialized legal or brokerage support.
Proactive compliance shortens lead times and keeps cargo moving.
How to Display Compliance Knowledge Skills on Your Resume
7. Safety Standards
Safety standards govern how goods and equipment are handled, stored, and transported. People first, property protected, environment respected.
Why It's Important
Accidents cost money, time, and trust. Strong safety practices prevent injuries, damage, and regulatory trouble.
How to Improve Safety Standards Skills
Build habits that stick under pressure:
Train relentlessly: Onboard thoroughly and run refreshers for forklifts, PPE, hazardous materials, and incident response.
Maintain equipment: Schedule inspections and preventive maintenance for lifts, conveyors, dock plates, and racking.
Stay compliant: Align with applicable standards and regulations; document and verify regularly.
Promote a safety culture: Encourage hazard reporting, run toolbox talks, and close corrective actions quickly.
Prepare for emergencies: Keep evacuation procedures current, drill the plans, and stage kits and signage where they count.
Continuously improve: Analyze incidents and near misses. Fix root causes, not just symptoms.
Consistency beats slogans. Make safety the default behavior.
How to Display Safety Standards Skills on Your Resume
8. Microsoft Excel
Excel is the workhorse for organizing shipments, tracking inventory, modeling costs, and reporting. Fast, flexible, everywhere.
Why It's Important
It enables quick analysis, automation of routine tasks, and crisp reporting while bridging gaps between systems.
How to Improve Microsoft Excel Skills
Make spreadsheets do heavy lifting:
Start with templates: Build standard sheets for pick lists, route plans, dock schedules, and freight audits.
Master key functions: XLOOKUP (or VLOOKUP), INDEX/MATCH, SUMIFS, TEXTSPLIT, and LET speed analysis and cleanup.
Constrain data entry: Use data validation and dropdowns to reduce typos in SKUs, carriers, and locations.
Use conditional formatting: Flag late orders, low stock, or rate exceptions so issues jump off the page.
Summarize with PivotTables: Roll up volumes, costs, and on-time metrics by carrier, lane, or customer.
Connect data sources: Pull from CSVs, databases, or APIs to keep dashboards fresh.
Automate with macros: Record or script repetitive steps—report generation, label merges, weekly KPIs.
Protect sensitive info: Apply permissions, passwords, and version control on shared files.
Less clicking, more insight. That’s the goal.
How to Display Microsoft Excel Skills on Your Resume
9. Quality Control
Quality control verifies that packaging, labeling, documentation, and loading meet standards before a shipment leaves the dock. Right item, right count, right condition.
Why It's Important
It reduces returns, claims, and rework—protecting customer satisfaction and margins.
How to Improve Quality Control Skills
Catch defects early, prevent them sooner:
Standardize SOPs: Document every step from pick to seal. Base your system on recognized quality frameworks where possible.
Use checklists: Verify lot/serial, packaging specs, hazmat marks, and documents before loading.
Digitize and scan: Barcodes and track-and-trace cut manual errors and improve traceability.
Train and empower: Teach inspection criteria; give authority to stop the line when defects appear.
Audit regularly: Run internal audits and create fast feedback loops with customer complaints and carrier claims.
Manage vendors: Share specs, monitor supplier defects, and collaborate on corrective actions.
Improve continuously: Apply root-cause analysis and small experiments to harden weak spots.
Quality is a system, not a checkpoint. Build it into the process.
How to Display Quality Control Skills on Your Resume
10. Team Leadership
Team leadership means aligning people, resources, and priorities so shipments roll out on time and issues get resolved without drama. Clear direction, steady coaching, fair accountability.
Why It's Important
Good leadership boosts productivity, retention, and safety—while shrinking errors and delays.
How to Improve Team Leadership Skills
Lead with clarity and care:
Communicate often: Share goals, constraints, and shifts. Listen to floor-level signals.
Delegate smartly: Match tasks to strengths, set guardrails, and let people own outcomes.
Recognize wins: Celebrate reliability, problem-solving, and safety behavior quickly and specifically.
Grow your people: Provide cross-training and advancement paths. Skills multiply flexibility.
Decide with facts: Use KPIs—on-time, lines picked per hour, dock-to-load time—to guide choices.
Adapt: The environment changes. Encourage experiments and share lessons learned.
Leadership is daily practice. Small, steady improvements add up.
How to Display Team Leadership Skills on Your Resume
11. Project Management
Project management plans and orchestrates resources, timelines, and budgets to deliver defined outcomes. In shipping, that might mean a carrier transition, a warehouse move, or a new system rollout.
Why It's Important
It reduces risk, aligns stakeholders, and keeps critical initiatives on schedule without breaking daily operations.
How to Improve Project Management Skills
Structure the work, then keep it moving:
Adopt an agile mindset: Deliver in increments, review frequently, and adjust course as constraints surface.
Use project tools: Track tasks, dependencies, and risks in a shared workspace. Make ownership visible.
Elevate communication: Set meeting rhythms, clear RACI roles, and crisp status reports.
Manage risk: Identify threats early, assign owners, and prepare mitigations and contingencies.
Keep learning: Follow industry bodies (such as PMI, ASCM, or CSCMP) for evolving practices and benchmarks.
Momentum matters. Short feedback loops beat big-bang bets.
How to Display Project Management Skills on Your Resume
12. Continuous Improvement
Continuous improvement is the ongoing hunt for better flow, lower cost, fewer errors, and happier customers. Measure, learn, tweak, repeat.
Why It's Important
Operations never sit still. A steady improvement engine keeps you competitive as volumes, products, and networks change.
How to Improve Continuous Improvement Skills
Build a simple system and keep cycling:
Apply Lean principles: Remove waste—excess motion, waiting, rework—and standardize best-known methods.
Use the right tech: TMS, WMS, and scanning provide data and control that reveal inefficiencies.
Engage the front line: Invite ideas, run quick experiments, and recognize improvements publicly.
Set SMART goals: Define specific targets for on-time rates, damage reduction, and cost per shipment.
Review often: Hold regular performance huddles, fix what’s broken, and retire what no longer works.
Benchmark: Compare against internal sites and external peers to spot gaps and opportunities.
Make improvement part of the job, not an afterthought.
How to Display Continuous Improvement Skills on Your Resume
