Mechanical Engineer Resume Example and Tips

A good resume is important in any industry. This is especially true for mechanical engineers, who have many complex and varied specialties that take more than a simple title to explain. Encapsulating all these accomplishments while also keeping it easy to read can be a challenge.

To help, here are five resume tips and a format specifically for mechanical engineers.

1. Be Concise 

Just like good engineering work itself, you'll want to keep your mechanical engineer resume streamlined and free of extraneous complications. Stay concise, direct, and to the point. Keep your resume to a single page and focused on the most important information. Allow your accomplishments to speak for themselves.

Avoid focusing too much on soft skills (good listener, fast learner, etc), which may be seen as resume padding designed to compensate for a lack of experience. Instead, highlight the skills that are particular to your field and especially those that are particular to you. The same goes for education. Degrees, emphasis, and honors may be appropriate, but listing specific classwork is most likely not.

You can view a completed mechanical engineer resume example following our suggested format here.

2. Lead with a Brief Introduction

Lead with a short description of yourself and your main collection of proficiencies and area of expertise. While not all industries call for a section like this, it's a good idea for a mechanical engineer, which is a title that can encompass many different duties and areas of knowledge. Think of this introduction as a long-form job title designed to describe the thrust of your professional career.

This practice ensures that the reader starts with an understanding of who you are as a professional, and also helps them contextualize the rest of the more technical details contained later in your resume.

Example: Mechanical Engineer with a focus on data analytics, systems optimization, and electromechanical systems design. Specialized knowledge in solar power, battery systems, and grid integration. Particularly interested in pursuing projects supporting sustainable energy practices.

3. Prioritize Skills and Proficiencies

Continue with your skills and proficiencies, which should be the main focus of your resume. Experience is important, but engineering employers are more concerned with what you know how to do than the titles you've held. List your skills, certifications, and the processes and tools you're proficient in within an organized bulleted list. The exact placement of this section on the resume is flexible, but make it the main focus and display it prominently.

As you do so, keep in mind that many companies use automation during the job search process and will pull out resumes with the proper keywords for a closer look. For this reason, don't be afraid to use proper technical terms, even if you may have to explain them to first-round interviewers, who may be part of an outsourced hiring group.

Even if some of the hard skills you could list here feel a bit obscure or less relevant to the job you're applying for than they might be, don't be afraid to list them even if it's under a second heading such as “additional skills.” You never know what an automated search might be looking for, or who else may take a look at your resume.

4. List Previous Positions and Emphasize Your Accomplishments

Include your previous job positions and titles. Underneath each one, include some bullet points which describe your proudest accomplishments there. This is a great opportunity to showcase the bread and butter of your mechanical engineer skills – your problem-solving abilities. If you need help wording these statements, think of a problem you had to solve using the STAR method:

Situation: What did you have to work with and what were you up against?

Task: What were the goals you were tasked with carrying out?

Action: What did you do?

Result: What were the results of your actions? Quantify them if possible.

Example:

Situation: A camera produced by your company was selling well, but the internal microphone was breaking down frequently, leading to costly returns.

Task: Find the problem and reduce returns in future iterations of the camera.

Action: Studied and tested returned cameras determined that the microphones failed due to inadequate cooling. Redesigned the housing of the microphone component to improve airflow and ease of replacement.

Result: Future iterations of the camera had 50% fewer returns and repairs increased in speed by 25%. 

Final statement: Conducted a study of a popular camera model produced by our company with a high return rate. Redesigned the failing component to improve the failure rate and ease of replacement. Reduced returns by 50% and the speed of the return process by 25%.

Read more about the STAR method here. 

5. Avoid Breaching NDAs

As an engineer, working with trade secrets is often part of the job description, which frequently comes with non-disclosure agreements (NDA). This may make describing your experience to future employers more challenging. When describing past work, carefully review any NDAs you may have been working under and exercise care to ensure that you aren't including any information that could land you in trouble.

Interested in finding mechanical engineering jobs to apply to? Find them at CyberCoders.com.