Crafting an Effective Engineering Resume

content about how to write and format a good resume

provide examples

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Hey @Dexter_Kenta_Yanagis! Thanks for the comment, you don’t need to subscribe. I haven’t had the chance to populate this post yet due to time-constraints but will get around to it soon.

The purpose of a resume is to effectively communicate your qualifications to the reader. There’s two parts to that statement 1. Communicate and 2. Qualifications

1. Communicate

  • Format your resume in such a way that’s easy to read and to extract your qualifications
  • Start with a simple font (Arial, Garamond, Times New Roman, etc.)
  • Select font sizes around 10-12 (may be larger for section headings/your information)
  • Have your information at the top (Name, Email, Phone number, LinkedIn, Github, etc. if applicable)
  • Add educational and experience sections along with any sections that suit your strengths (extracurricular, projects, research, skills, etc.)
  • Now the “frame” of the resume is complete. Play around with the spacing/sizing/bolding until its visually appealing

2. Qualifications

  • This step will largely consist of the bullets used to describe your experiences
  • A good approach is (Past Tense Verb) + (Task) + (Quantifiable Impact)
  • Quantifiable impact can be anything that companies would care about such as time savings, weight reduction, space reduction, improvement in capacity, cost reduction, number of users, etc.
  • Ex. (Designed) + (5 3D-printed parts to replace preexisting hardware) + (for a 40% reduction in weight)
  • The bullet follows the format, but also adds more detail through the number of parts and manufacturing method
  • Generally, a more direct and specific bullet will help alleviate the reader of any confusion, ambiguity, or doubt

Polishing tips

  • The brain is good at picking up patterns, any grammatical errors or inconsistencies in format will distract the reader and impact their ability to extract your information
  • Knowing that the reader may only spend about 10-20s reading, skim your resume to ensure it paints the picture of yourself you’d like it to

Good Examples and Takeaways

  • This website has a few good examples, most notably #2, #4, and #6 for their simple layout, use of white space and bolding, and use of direct bullets that are quantified
  • Note: these are just for reference. Using a template may cause issues with ATS parsing and may be difficult to modify. Formatting your resume from a fresh page will give you the most freedom.

Don’t have readily available experience to write about?

  • The fastest way to get experience is through independent projects. There are lots of open-source programming languages, CAD softwares with student versions, and fabrication resources at universities to get started immediately and with little to no cost.
  • The next quickest way is to join on-campus clubs such as Formula SAE or a robotics team. Be intentional about ownership/contributions so you have detailed examples to talk about
  • Longer term solutions are research labs at your university and internships