Resume Writing Tips for Engineering & Manufacturing Professionals

For anyone seeking a job, the good old resume remains the most important ticket you can own to get your foot in the door. A resume is a summary of your professional experience, skills, education and achievements, and its entire purpose is to get you to an interview, where you can actually sell yourself and take your best shot at landing the job.

For anyone seeking a job, the good old resume remains the most important ticket you can own to get your foot in the door.  A resume is a summary of your professional experience, skills, education and achievements, and its entire purpose is to get you to an interview, where you can actually sell yourself and take your best shot at landing the job.
If you think of it in these terms, your resume does its job successfully if it does NOT exclude you from being considered for an open position.  That means it’s extremely important that your resume is written and presented in a way that maximizes your chances of breaking through the initial review of applicants for a job.

There are some basics to effective resume writing that apply to all professionals in virtually any industry, but here are six especially important tips specifically for engineering and manufacturing professionals.

1. Self-Assessment

Before you start to write, take time to do a self-assessment in writing.  Jot down your skills, unique abilities, work experience, accomplishments, extracurricular activities and educational history.  Just refreshing yourself of this information and putting it all on paper will make it easier for you to prepare a thorough resume.

2. Settle on a Good Design

Employers are human too and often make snap judgments when glancing at a resume.  If they are confused with how you laid out your information or can’t determine an immediate connection between your background and their open position, you will be excluded from consideration.  The design of your resume should highlight the most important information about your qualifications including a list of your accomplishments.  It is very important to show accomplishments in a results oriented way.  For example, redesigned a production line that improved production time by 10% resulting in a savings of $15 million. In other words, you want to design your resume so that you help the reviewer form a positive image of you and your skill set.

3. Use Titles that Match the Job You Want

With employers wading through hundreds of resumes, you want to make sure that your resume catches someone’s attention within a five-second glance.  A great way to do this is to use job titles and skill headings that match up with the job you are targeting.  This is especially important for engineering and manufacturing jobs because all employers want to know if your experience is on the “process” or “production” side.

4. Create Content that Sells You

As important as the design and appearance of your resume may be to get you past the five-second glance, it’s really the content that will ultimately determine whether you get that interview you want.  Your resume needs to include specific descriptions of your experience, skills and abilities that really elevate you above the pack.  For engineering and manufacturing professionals, there are so many different kinds of jobs in your field that it is crucial to be very specific about your own area of expertise in order to make you attractive to an employer.

5. The Hidden Messages

In addition to the skills that will be explicitly sought in a job posting, most employers also have other needs they would ideally like to have met by a candidate as well.  Try to anticipate what those might be and include descriptions about your experience that would address those needs.  For example, what notable customers have you served in your career and how did that experience shape your experience?  Have you worked in Union or Non-Union labor environments and what have you learned in either one?

6. Get a Reality Check

Finally, once you’ve written your resume, do yourself a favor by having it reviewed and critiqued by a career counselor or a recruiting firm.   In addition to serving as your reality check, they may also have some suggestions for ensuring quality, such as grammar, spelling and even font size.