Top 12 Export Coordinator Skills to Put on Your Resume
An Export Coordinator sits at the nerve center of global trade, juggling logistics, documents, and deadlines so goods clear borders cleanly. Put the right skills front and center on your resume and you signal mastery of regulations, timing, and customer care—everything that keeps shipments moving and clients calm.
Export Coordinator Skills
1. Multilingual
Multilingual means you can operate in more than one language—reading, writing, speaking—so you can talk to overseas partners, decipher local requirements, and keep documents precise across borders.
Why It's Important
It shrinks misunderstandings, smooths negotiations, and speeds paperwork. Faster answers, fewer errors, stronger relationships. That’s revenue and reliability.
How to Improve Multilingual Skills
Daily conversation: Practice with native speakers through language exchange communities (Tandem, HelloTalk). Short, frequent chats beat marathon sessions.
Targeted coursework: Take classes focused on business and trade vocabulary via platforms like Coursera or LinkedIn Learning.
Cultural immersion: Films, podcasts, news in the target language. Absorb tone, idioms, and context.
Industry reading: Read export manuals, HS codes, and trade articles in that language. Write summaries to lock in terms.
Smart tools: Use apps such as Duolingo for spaced repetition; a grammar checker helps polish writing.
Pro translation aids: DeepL or similar tools can cross-check phrasing for emails and draft documents (always review for nuance).
Feedback loops: Tutors on platforms like italki can correct persistent mistakes quickly.
Keep at it, little and often, with trade-specific words prioritized.
How to Display Multilingual Skills on Your Resume
2. Negotiation
Negotiation for an Export Coordinator is the give-and-take on price, terms, risk, and timing so both sides can ship with confidence and profit intact.
Why It's Important
Good deals prevent margin leaks, late deliveries, and bitter surprises. Agreements stick. Relationships age well.
How to Improve Negotiation Skills
Define your edges: Know your objectives, walk-away points, and concessions you can trade.
Do the homework: Market rates, carrier capacity, seasonality, regulatory quirks, cultural norms—arrive informed.
Build trust early: Rapport reduces friction. Share context, not just demands.
Ask, then listen: Open questions surface hidden constraints you can solve without giving up price.
Shape options: Offer packages (price–Incoterm–lead time combos) to find mutual wins.
Practice, review, repeat: Role-play tough scenarios. After each negotiation, debrief what worked and what wobbled.
How to Display Negotiation Skills on Your Resume
3. SAP
SAP is enterprise software that connects orders, inventory, shipping, invoicing, and compliance so export workflows run in one place instead of ten.
Why It's Important
It centralizes data, automates steps, enforces controls, and gives visibility across the supply chain—vital when deadlines sprint and regulations shift.
How to Improve SAP Skills
Get the core: Learn navigation, master data, and document flow. Understand how SD, MM, and FI talk to each other.
Go module-deep: Focus on SD (pricing, deliveries, billing), MM (purchasing, goods movements), and export/compliance features (e.g., GTS if available).
Practice in a sandbox: Create orders, pick/pack/PGI, run billing, simulate export scenarios. Break it, then fix it.
Map process to system: Document your company’s export process and tie each step to SAP transactions and roles.
Use help resources: Lean on the SAP Help Portal, learning hubs, and community Q&A to solve real issues fast.
Stay current: Track updates to S/4HANA features impacting logistics, trade, and analytics.
How to Display SAP Skills on Your Resume
4. Compliance
Compliance means following export laws and controls—sanctions, restricted parties, licensing, classification, valuation, and recordkeeping—across every shipment.
Why It's Important
It avoids fines, seizures, and reputational harm. More than that, it builds a defensible, repeatable export program.
How to Improve Compliance Skills
Track rule changes: Monitor updates from authorities like the U.S. Bureau of Industry and Security and the International Trade Administration (trade.gov).
Master controls: Understand ECCN/HTS classification, embargoes, red flags, and when licenses apply.
Build an ICP: Create an internal compliance program with written procedures, training, escalation paths, and record retention.
Screen automatically: Use denied party screening and embargo checks (tools from providers such as Descartes, E2open, or SAP GTS).
Train continuously: Workshops, refreshers, and scenario drills keep teams sharp.
Audit and test: Run periodic self-audits; fix root causes, not just symptoms.
Call experts when needed: Trade counsel or specialist associations can resolve thorny edge cases.
How to Display Compliance Skills on Your Resume
5. Logistics
Logistics covers planning, moving, and storing goods from origin to far-flung destinations, without busting cost or time windows.
Why It's Important
Because on-time delivery is oxygen. Missed cutoffs, wrong documents, or poor routing suffocate margins and trust.
How to Improve Logistics Skills
Digitize the flow: Use TMS/visibility tools for real-time milestones, capacity checks, and exceptions.
Talk early, talk often: Tight communication with suppliers, forwarders, carriers, and customers prevents micro-delays from becoming disasters.
Right-size packaging: Reduce dim weight and damage. Test pack-outs; document specs.
Kill bottlenecks: Map every step. Standardize handoffs. Automate manual re-typing wherever it hides.
Document accuracy: Commercial invoice, packing list, certificates—error-free and consistent. One version of truth.
Reliable partners: Build a bench of forwarders and carriers to flex when markets tighten.
Keep learning: Follow trade press and lane-specific trends; spot shifts before they whack service levels.
How to Display Logistics Skills on Your Resume
6. Incoterms
Incoterms (from the International Chamber of Commerce) define who pays for what, who carries which risk, and where delivery happens in cross-border deals.
Why It's Important
Clear terms prevent the “I thought you handled that” spiral. Costs, risk, and responsibilities land exactly where intended.
How to Improve Incoterms Skills
Know the 2020 set cold: Understand each rule’s split of cost, risk, and obligations.
Choose fit-for-purpose terms: Factor buyer sophistication, routing control, and insurance when selecting the rule.
Be explicit in contracts: Always state the rule and place—e.g., “CIP Frankfurt, Incoterms 2020.” No ambiguity.
Educate partners: Brief sales, finance, and customers on what a chosen rule does—and doesn’t—cover.
Review regularly: As lanes, costs, or partner capability change, revisit the Incoterm.
Log feedback: Capture issues from shipments to refine your term selection playbook.
How to Display Incoterms Skills on Your Resume
7. Excel
Excel is the workbench for schedules, rates, costs, and inventory—organize, analyze, and track without drowning in data.
Why It's Important
It speeds planning, flags exceptions, and supports decisions when you can’t wait for an IT ticket.
How to Improve Excel Skills
Lock the basics: Clean data, clear formatting, named ranges, structured tables.
Use modern lookups: Favor
XLOOKUP,INDEX+MATCH, and dynamic arrays over older approaches.Pivot like a pro: PivotTables and PivotCharts to summarize shipments, lead times, and costs instantly.
Visual cues: Conditional formatting to spotlight delays, overages, or margin swings.
Automate drudgery: Record macros and write simple VBA for repetitive tasks (formatting, report builds).
Power Query: Import, clean, merge, and refresh data from ERPs, CRMs, and TMS systems.
Data validation: Guard inputs (dates, Incoterms, codes) to prevent downstream errors.
How to Display Excel Skills on Your Resume
8. CRM
CRM (Customer Relationship Management) keeps every conversation, order touchpoint, and follow-up in one place so global customers never feel forgotten.
Why It's Important
Coordinated communication lowers response times, boosts retention, and aligns sales, logistics, and service around the same facts.
How to Improve CRM Skills
Centralize the record: Capture quotes, orders, claims, and preferences in one CRM profile.
Automate updates: Trigger shipment notices, document requests, and delivery confirmations without manual nudges.
Personalize wisely: Use history and preferences to tailor cadence and content.
Integrate systems: Connect CRM with ERP, TMS, and email so data flows both ways.
Train the team: Shared definitions, clean data habits, and consistent workflows make the CRM worth using.
Listen to customers: Gather feedback and log it; convert pain points into playbook changes.
Watch the numbers: Monitor response times, on-time updates, and satisfaction scores; course-correct fast.
How to Display CRM Skills on Your Resume
9. Forecasting
Forecasting anticipates demand and shipment volumes across markets so supply, space, and cash line up with reality.
Why It's Important
It trims stockouts and overstocks, secures carrier capacity, and steadies margins when markets wobble.
How to Improve Forecasting Skills
Mine history: Clean past sales and shipments; adjust for promotions, holidays, and anomalies.
Blend methods: Combine statistical models with sales input and market signals for a balanced view.
Cross-functional sync: Tie forecasts to S&OP with sales, marketing, finance, and operations in the same room.
Track external drivers: Watch currency moves, lead-time trends, and policy shifts that hit demand or transit.
Measure accuracy: Monitor MAPE/bias; tune models and assumptions regularly.
Upskill steadily: Keep learning tools and techniques; iterate into better accuracy.
How to Display Forecasting Skills on Your Resume
10. Documentation
Documentation is the full paper trail—commercial invoices, packing lists, certificates of origin, export declarations, licenses—assembled precisely so shipments clear without drama.
Why It's Important
Correct documents speed customs, ensure correct duties and taxes, support payment, and protect you in audits and disputes.
How to Improve Documentation Skills
Standardize everything: Templates, naming conventions, version control. Consistency slashes errors.
Automate where possible: Use documentation modules in platforms like CargoWise, Descartes, or SAP GTS to prefill data from master records.
Train on rules: Keep current on country-specific requirements and documentary standards.
Checklists win: Per shipment and per destination—never skip the essentials.
Peer review: Second eyes on critical docs catch typos that stall containers.
Secure cloud access: Store and share with permissions so teams and brokers fetch the right file fast.
Stay updated: Follow guidance from customs authorities and trade agencies as requirements evolve.
How to Display Documentation Skills on Your Resume
11. Customs
Customs agencies police borders, collect duties, and enforce trade rules. Your job: make sure goods and data match the law, so clearance is routine, not roulette.
Why It's Important
Compliance avoids penalties and delays, while accurate declarations and duty planning protect pricing and profit.
How to Improve Customs Skills
Automate declarations: Use software to generate compliant entries and reduce keystrokes and errors (AEB, Descartes, or similar).
Follow the regulators: Check official customs portals (e.g., U.S. CBP, EU customs) for rule changes and guidance.
Invest in training: Learn classification, valuation, origin rules, and special programs through structured courses.
Use brokers wisely: Partner with seasoned customs brokers for complex lanes and high-risk goods.
Compliance program: Formalize procedures, audit trails, and corrective actions using WCO-aligned best practices.
Carrier coordination: Sync with carriers and forwarders on cutoffs, AMS/ENS filings, and document readiness; ocean booking platforms can help align milestones.
Leverage FTAs: Validate eligibility, maintain origin documentation, and reduce duties where possible.
Package and label right: Match destination requirements to avoid inspections and repacks.
How to Display Customs Skills on Your Resume
12. ERP
ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) ties orders, inventory, finance, compliance, and shipping into a single source of truth.
Why It's Important
It cuts rework, speeds handoffs, and exposes issues early, so exports run predictably even when volumes spike.
How to Improve ERP Skills
Integrate the stack: Connect ERP with CRM, TMS, WMS, and customs tools to eliminate swivel-chair data entry.
Automate routine: Use workflows for order release, document creation, screening, and invoicing.
Harden data quality: Validation rules for HS codes, Incoterms, partners, and addresses prevent costly mistakes.
Real-time tracking: Turn on event updates and dashboards for inventory, shipments, and exceptions.
Collaborate in-system: Notes, tasks, and alerts keep teams and partners aligned without endless emails.
Train relentlessly: Feature rollouts and refreshers raise adoption and reduce workarounds.
Feedback loops: Gather user input and iterate configurations to match real-world flow.
How to Display ERP Skills on Your Resume
