Engineering Resumes
Engineering Resumes
We work with a lot of clients in engineering, from graduate to senior engineers across civil, mechanical, chemical and electrical.
Your engineering resume should essentially reflect what makes you a strong engineer – i.e. your ability to design and construct strong components that come together to exceed the sum of their parts, to ultimately reach a specified objective.
Your engineering resume should therefore be precise in technical language, short and to the point. It should comprehensively cover the elements a recruiter or hiring manager will look for.
Many recruiters and hiring managers like to informally prescribe a 2 page limit for engineering resumes. This is understandable, given the sheer volume of applications for the more sought after engineering positions.
As professional resume writers, we’ve seen more than our fair share of 2 page resumes. Most often than not, they are extremely difficult to read. This really defeats the purpose of a shorter-form engineering resume.
Engineering resumes at heart are the same as other marketing documents – they are after all, essentially personal marketing documents. Marketing documents that are hard to read are never going to be anywhere near as effective as one that is clearly laid out, easy to navigate and easy to read.
When we’re constructing engineering resumes, we aim to build 3-4 page documents. The level of technical detail in the breakdown of your responsibilities will depend on your level of experience.
At the graduate level, you might discuss all aspects of your responsibilities within an engineering placement. At this level, it would be valuable to let your readers know of the different areas you’ve gained exposure to.
At the senior level, you’d want to provide much less detail about your day-to-day tasks. Priority should go to the size of your team, the scope of your operations, notable projects (including specs such as budgets, challenges and deliverables), notable collaborations and industry recognition. These should be the priority for your content and described in high-level statements.
From our experience, and industry feedback, we’ve found that a well formatted, well presented engineering resume that is extremely easy to navigate and easy to read is much more effective than a 2 page resume crammed with content.
Our professional resume writers include senior writers that specialise in working with engineering clients.
by Edward Grant
