We review hundreds of CVs a year. We talk to the hiring managers who read them, and we hear, consistently, what makes them stop, and what makes them move on.
The flex and commercial real estate market is specialist in a way that generalist job boards and generalist recruiters rarely reflect. Operators aren’t just looking for someone who has managed an office. They’re looking for someone who understands the commercial model; the blend of hospitality, retention, sales, and community that makes a flex site work.
That doesn’t mean you need to have worked in flex before. It means your CV needs to show the right foundations, wherever they came from. Here is what we look for.
01
Some of the strongest hires in flex workspace come from adjacent industries. Hospitality, hotel management, property, events, and corporate facilities all build skills that translate directly, and operators know it. What they’re looking for isn’t a specific job title. It’s evidence that you understand how to run a commercial environment where people are at the centre.
If you’re moving from one of these backgrounds, here is how your experience is transferable:
Hospitality and hotel management: Guest experience, front-of-house operations, and revenue management are directly transferable. If you’ve managed rooms, F&B, or events in a hotel environment, you already understand occupancy, yield, and the commercial value of a great member experience.
Property and real estate: Commercial property experience (especially anything client-facing, leasing, or operations-led) gives you immediate credibility with operators who think of themselves as landlords as much as service providers. Residential property experience (lettings, block management, build-to-rent) also translates well, particularly for community and retention-focused roles.
Events and venue management: Running events in a commercial space requires exactly the kind of logistics, stakeholder management, and member-facing skills that flex operators look for. If you have experience programming community events, managing third-party suppliers, or handling high-footfall environments, this is worth highlighting explicitly.
Corporate facilities and workplace: If you’ve managed a corporate office environment, particularly a large, multi-tenant, or amenity-rich one, you’ll recognise the rhythms of flex. Service delivery, contractor management, member (or employee) satisfaction, and cost control are all relative.
Retail and customer experience: High-volume, customer-facing retail builds commercial instincts that are genuinely useful in flex, especially for front-of-house and community roles. If you’ve managed a team, hit revenue targets, or owned a customer satisfaction metric, make sure that’s visible.
The key, whatever your background, is to make the connection explicit. Don’t assume a hiring manager will join the dots. Show them where your experience overlaps with what flex requires; in your summary, in how you describe your roles, and in the outcomes you lead with.
02
A title like “Community Manager” or “Business Development Manager” means something very different depending on the operator. Hiring managers in this sector know the difference between a 10-desk managed office and a 500-member multi-site coworking operation, your CV should make that clear immediately.
In the first line of each role, name the operator, describe the space type (serviced offices, coworking, managed, hybrid), and give a sense of scale: members, floors, desk count, or revenue target.
Example: “Community Manager, [Operator] – 12,000 sq ft coworking and serviced office site in Central London, 250 members.”
This takes five seconds to read. It signals sector fluency before a hiring manager has finished the first paragraph.
03
This is one of the most consistent gaps we see, even from experienced candidates. Flex workspace roles are commercial, front-of-house, community, and operations positions all sit close to retention, occupancy, and revenue. If you held one of those roles and didn’t quantify it, you are underselling yourself.
Think about:
Occupancy or utilisation rates you contributed to or maintained
Renewal and retention figures
Revenue from upsells, virtual office sales, or meeting room bookings
Membership growth or community size over your tenure
NPS or member satisfaction scores
Events run, and any measurable engagement or referral outcomes
You don’t need to have owned a P&L to demonstrate commercial awareness. You need to show you understood how your work connected to the business.
04
One of the things that makes flex workspace roles genuinely distinctive is how much they span. A Community Manager at a busy coworking site is part host, part ops lead, part salesperson, part events coordinator. A Centre Manager is often also a line manager, a facilities contact, a BD rep, and a member liaison; all in the same afternoon.
A flat bullet list of tasks doesn’t convey this. Group responsibilities into themes: member experience, operations, sales and occupancy, team and contractor management. It reads more clearly, and it reflects the actual seniority and range of the role.
Experienced candidates often undersell here. If you were effectively running a small business within a building, say so.
05
The underlying CV can stay consistent, but what leads should shift depending on the role. Applying for a sales-focused position? Open with pipeline, revenue, and conversion. Applying for a GM or operations role? Lead with multi-site experience, process improvements, and team management.
Hiring managers in this sector read a lot of CVs. The ones that make an impression open with exactly what the role requires. If yours doesn’t, it creates friction, and in a competitive market, friction costs you the shortlist.
06
If you’ve been in the sector for five years or more, the CV challenges are different. The risk isn’t underselling your experience, it’s presenting it in a way that doesn’t reflect how far you’ve come.
We regularly speak with candidates at General Manager, Head of, or Director level who are still leading their CVs with responsibilities rather than outcomes, or who have buried the most impressive parts of their career in dense paragraphs a hiring manager won’t reach. At this level, your CV should open with a clear, senior narrative: the scale you’ve operated at, the commercial results you’ve driven, and the type of role you’re targeting next.
Your CV is not an archive of everything you’ve done. It’s a curated case for why you’re the right person for this specific role. The more senior you are, the more editorial that requires.
07
The personal statement is often the weakest section of a CV; vague, generic, and easy to skip. Use it properly.
In two to four sentences: what you do, what sector experience you have, what you bring that is specific, and what you’re looking for. That last part matters more than most candidates realise. “Seeking a new opportunity” tells nobody anything. “Looking to move into a Business Development Manager role within the flex sector after five years in community and operations” tells a recruiter exactly whether to read further.
08
The flex sector runs on people skills: managing a member who is unhappy, retaining a client who is growing out of the space, creating a community that makes a site feel different from the one down the road. These are real commercial skills, but they need to be evidenced, not asserted.
Listing traits such as “great communicator,” “people person,” “proactive” adds nothing. Frame them as outcomes instead: the member you retained through a difficult period, the community initiative that drove referrals, the process you introduced that cut onboarding time.
Evidence always beats assertion.
09
Your CV and LinkedIn profile don’t need to be identical, LinkedIn is more conversational, your CV more formal. But they need to tell the same story: same roles, same dates, same narrative arc.
In a market where most hiring decisions involve at least a quick LinkedIn check, an incomplete or out-of-date profile quietly undermines an otherwise strong CV.
10
In a sector that cares about presentation, a poorly formatted CV does quiet damage. Two pages maximum, reverse chronological, month and year for all dates. No columns, no graphics, no unusual fonts, formatting that looks distinctive on screen often breaks when it hits a recruiter’s CRM. Save as PDF unless asked otherwise.
If there is a gap or an unusual career move, a brief note in your summary pre-empts the question. Don’t leave it unexplained and hope it goes unnoticed.
We have been placing talent within the Flex and CRE sector for over 22 years. We know this market in detail; the operators, the roles, what good looks like at every level, and what hiring managers are genuinely screening for when they read a CV.
When you register with us, your CV is the first thing we use to match you to live roles and represent you to clients. A strong, well-structured CV makes that process faster and puts you in front of the right people sooner. If you want a fresh pair of eyes before you apply for something, we are happy to help.
Hiring in Flex or CRE? We work with operators across the UK and US to find candidates who genuinely understand the sector. If you’re building a team and want to talk about what strong looks like right now, get in touch.
Written by Anastasia Edey, Partnerships & Growth Manager at TRC London
