No matter how well written, your resume won’t get a thorough reading the first time through. Generally a resume gets scanned for 15-20 seconds before the recruiter decides whether or not they’ll put it in a pile that they’ll look at later… Scanning is more difficult if it’s hard to read; is poorly organized or exceeds 2 pages.
Note: Some of these guidelines are for a basic resume if you plan on doing it yourself. Especially the “Clear Guidelines” section below.
Clear Guidelines
- Use logical format and wide margins, clean type & clear headings.
- Selectively apply bold and italic type face that help guide the readers eye
- Use bullets to call attention to important points (i.e. accomplishments)
Everybody has accomplishments
But how do you write them so they stand out? You have to identify accomplishments not just job descriptions
- 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.
- For each point… ask yourself, what was the benefit for having done what I 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.
Quantify your accomplishments
Q: What is the most common resume mistake?
A: Making too many general claims and using too much industry jargon that does not market the candidate. A resume is a marketing document designed to sell your skills and strengths rather than just portray a bio of the candidate.
- Include and highlight specific achievements that present a comprehensive picture of your marketability.
- Quantify your achievements to ensure greater confidence in the hiring manager and thereby generate interest (i.e. percentages, dollars, numbers of employees, etc).
- Work backwards to quantify your accomplishments by asking, if I had not done X, what could have happened?
Cater your resume for your industry
Unlike advertising and design professionals who have greater creativity in designing their resume to those fields, the mechanical engineering industry won’t be impressed and may be turned off by an overdone resume design. : ( Your accomplishments, error-free writing, grammatically-correct, clean, crisp type and paper will make the impression for you.
A career summary is designed to give a brief overview of who you are and what you do. Most objectives sound similar: “Seeking a challenging, interesting position in X where I can use my skills of X,Y, and Z to contribute to the bottom line…”
- Remember your goal is to grab a hiring managers attention right from the beginning.
- Spend time developing a summary that immediately gets their attention, and accurately and powerfully describes you as a solution to their problems.
