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Engineering Job Interview Advice

How to Write a Quality Engineering CV?

The term engineering covers a wide range of technical skills, qualifications and career profiles on the job market. For this reason, it is very important that you highlight your specific skills, qualifications and professional experience when you are writing or updating your engineering CV and that you display these skills prominently on the first page. Engineering recruiters go over a great number of applications and resumes every time they advertise a job and they need to see right away that you are a good candidate for the position and that reading your CV will not be a waste of their time.

Whether you are writing your engineering career profile, objective statement, summary of technical qualifications or list of engineering jobs you have held, you need to put the emphasis on quantifiable results, your personal achievements and contributions rather than your job responsibilities, duties and soft skills. The value you added to your previous employers is always more important to an engineering recruiter than your team, leadership or client facing skills. Use keywords specific to the engineering industry as much as possible to let the recruiter know exactly what skills, experience and value you would bring to his/her business.

An engineer's CV should not be longer than two pages. It typically has four sections – a brief profile or objective statement, summary of qualifications, technical expertise, and professional experience – but you can also add related interests for some colour, as long as they are related to your work or to industry sectors in which your engineering skills are in demand.

Your profile or objective statement needs to effectively summarize your career in the engineering sector in no more than a few lines. It needs to include your occupation, field in which you specialize and areas in which you have accumulated work experience as an engineer.

The summary of qualifications should give a brief overview of your strongest points. These need to stand out on the page and be easy to read, so it is best to use bullets. The same applies to your technical expertise – engineering skills and certifications. They need to be laid out clearly, featured prominently on your resume, and easy to skim.

The work experience section should be arranged in reverse chronological order, starting with your most recent engineering job. It also needs to be streamlined to the most important points, the ones that best reflect the results you have achieved. If you have more than 10 years of experience in the engineering field, you do not need to include every job you held more than a decade ago or go into much detail – a single bullet with a brief description of your accomplishments is a lot more effective.

To get a better idea of what an engineer's CV typically looks like, see the sample below.

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