Six Tips for writing an effective mechanical engineer resume

Do you know why many of the mechanical engineers are not invited for a job interview though they all have studied almost same courses? The only reason which makes your employer not to call you for interview is poorly written resume or CV which you submitted. A survey shows that many poorly written and poorly designed resumes of mechanical engineers are crossing the desks of recruiters and hiring managers these days than ever before. Here in this article I will tell engineers some great tips about resumes which will help you in creating an effective and attractive great resume or CV which will eliminate chances of your being rejected and will increase interview offers for you.

1. First impression is the last impression – so format your resume or CV wisely and in an attractive manner

Always remember, no employer has sufficient time to read your mechanical engineering resume thoroughly. They might have hundreds of thousands of resumes of different mechanical engineers at their desk. So make your format or design to speak out for you. No matter how well written your CV is, no one is going to read it thoroughly for the first time. Generally a CV gets scanned for 20-25 seconds only. So your resume will be thrown away in dustbin if it is not well organized.

• Use a clean and logical format. Use wide margins, clean and clear headings.
• Use bold or Italic typeface where necessary to attract readers’ eye to those terms
• Use bullets to attract the reader towards your important points like awards, honors and achievements).

2. Identify what you did (accomplishments) not just job descriptions

No hiring manager is interested in your previous job rather he wants to know what you did in your previous job. As in any technical field like mechanical engineering, all HR managers require mechanical engineers who are good at solving the problems. So you need to write in your CV that how have you previously solved the problems in other companies and situations.

• Focus on what you did in the job, NOT what your job was – there’s a difference
• Include a one or two top line job description first, then list your accomplishments
• Ask yourself, “what was the benefit of doing what you did?”
• Accomplishments should be unique to you, not just a list of what someone else did
• Avoid using the generic descriptions of the jobs you originally applied for or held

3. Increase your marketability by quantifying your accomplishments

This is very important. As a mechanical engineer, your resume is a marketing document which is going to market your skills so design it to sell your skills and strengths. It’s a very common mistake among many mechanical engineers to make too many general claims and using too much industry jargon in their CV.

• Include specific achievements which show your strengths and present a comprehensive picture of your marketability
• Quantify your achievements to ensure greater confidence in the hiring manager and thereby generate interest – percentages, dollars, number of employees, etc.
• Work backwards to quantify your accomplishments by asking, “If I had not done X, what could have happened?”

4. Furnish Your Resume for the Industry

Unlike media and design professionals who have greater creative license in designing their CV for those fields, the mechanical engineering industry won't be impressed and may be turned off by distinctive mechanical engineering resume design.

• Be very conservative stylistically
• Your accomplishments, awards, achievement, well written resume, clean and clear format will be enough to speak out for you.

5. Use “career summary” instead of “objective”:

While working as an internee in HR department of a well known organization, I got a chance to have a look on many resumes. The “objective” part of almost all of the resumes of mechanical engineers looked almost the same. Which looked like something: “I am looking for a challenging/interesting position in a challenging environment where I can use my skills to do this and that”. It doesn’t give you a good impression, so replace “objective” with “career summary” in your CV. State who you are and what you do.

• Here I will remind you again that you have to grab the attention of your HR manager in only 25 seconds, so why not give your resume an excellent start with career summary?
• Spend some time in gathering good vocabulary lines for your career summary. Write in a way to get immediate attention. Write accurately and powerfully to make your employer speak: “This is the guy we are looking for!”

6. Networking and a lot of it:

Network. Network. Network. Do you know most of the start up and even mid to senior level job positions and filled through networking, so contact absolutely everyone you know. If you are not employed yet then the full time job of a mechanical engineer is to drop his/her CV or resume to maximum people he/she knows. Believe me it helps. Networking may include:

• Your personal business contacts. People whom you worked for previously or people who worked for you previously.
• People listed in the Alumni directory of your institute.
• Other companies, vendor or sales representatives with whom you have worked during your previous job etc.

If you are a recent and fresh graduate out of university, read more mechanical engineering resume tips for fresh graduates. Implementing all these tips and techniques will help you a lot when writing your resume for a mechanical engineering job or mechanical engineering internship. You can also download sample format of resume in pdf form.