After reviewing hundreds of resumes, It’s shocking to see that people don’t know what skills to list on engineering resume. For those that don’t list all of your skills, you’re missing out on valuable key words.

These following key words are what the job application algorithm picks up.

Make sure you put these on your resume.

February 29, 2024 by Kazu Fujimoto

CAD

As a mechanical engineer, you will have exposure to CAD. Whether it is through designing or interpreting designs, either way, you will be directly involved with CAD. You will need to know how to create designs, calculate whether those designs are feasible for your application, or validate said design.

Check out: Mechanical Engineering Resume Review

Common CAD software in engineering is:

SolidWorks

As an engineering student, you will very likely gain exposure to this engineering skill set. If presented with the opportunity, you should take as many CAD classes as you can. Doing a lot of CAD work will train you to become more adept with software, geometrically and mechanically inclined, and gets you in a productive state.

Siemens NX

You will run into this software if you work in Aerospace and Defense. Siemens NX is very closely used with Teamcenter Product Lifecycle Management.

ProEngineer / Creo

An engineering company that generates decent revenue and that is not too big or small, will likely use ProEngineer, now known as Creo. Creo is a very powerful modeling software, arguably the most powerful I’ve ran into in my experience. Creo allows for parametric modeling, which is a huge driver for automation in mechanical engineering.

Catia

The good thing about CAD is that once you have the skills and foundation in one software, it means that you can transfer those skills to another. CAD features are highly transferrable between softwares with features such as extrudes, revolves, component, and assembly modeling.

The biggest thing between knowing how to use multiple CAD software is learning where all the buttons you need to click are.

FEA

FEA or finite element analysis is utilizing numerical methods to analyze a system’s behavior under certain operating conditions. This is also an extremely important skill to learn in engineering. Learning FEA doesn’t only consist of learning about using software such as ANSYS or SolidWorks Simulator to perform analysis, but also consists of understanding how operating forces work on a component.

This is where your classes such as Statics, Dynamics, or Strength of Materials come handy. In the industry, you will deal with supported beams, cantilevers, friction, and other basic concepts. You don’t need to know how to do the complex calculations like in class, but understand the basics.

Know how to draw free body diagrams. A good exercise to being able to draw free body diagrams is to go for a walk. Take a look at your surroundings – desk, chair, sliding door are some examples of what I see in mine. Now take those objects and draw free body diagrams in your head. This should be a very simple task to do.

Understand concepts such as bending moments, shear force, normal force, friction, and you’ll be way ahead of your peers.

Common FEA software or features

ANSYS

The holy grail of analysis. ANSYS has incredible meshing capabilities and performs very complex numerical methods for the most complex of analysis. If you have an elective in school that offers this software, take it. If your employer has this software, take initiative and learn how to use this software, even if your role doesn’t involve analysis.

SolidWorks Simulator

As an engineering student, you will very likely gain exposure to this software in your Intro to CAD class. Make sure you put this skill into your resume and include key words such as Simulator, FEA, Analysis. Additionally add a statement in your resume that shows how you improved the performance of a product through your results.

Creo Simulate

The built in analysis tool in Creo. Although this may not be the best or in-depth tool to use for analysis, this software gets the job done. I have used Creo Simulate to verify simple bending stress or hydrostatic force calculations that I have made on paper.

Programming

What programming will allow for in a mechanical engineering environment is for scale and repeatability. There are many calculations to make such as static stress, geometrical, calculus, tolerance stack up, and many more in mechanical engineering.

In an industry setting, you will see that companies have various procedures and protocols with all of these calculations set up.

Common programming software in mechanical engineering

Excel VBA

Engineering companies love to use Excel spreadsheets for calculations. In school, you’re taught to solve complex calculations by hand, but in reality? You set up the Excel spreadsheets to do the complex calculations for you! What is important is knowing what boundary conditions you’re putting in and if your results make sense.

If the company you’re working for doesn’t utilize an efficient way to perform engineering calculations, introduce the idea of using Excel VBA. Using Excel VBA software for engineering calculations will save time, money, and headache.

A common example you may come across as an engineer is to run a goal seeking program to determine what the best operating conditions for your project is.

MATLAB

MATLAB is a very powerful programming tool catered towards disciplines such as mechanical and electrical engineering. Make sure to include MATLAB in the skills section in your resume. Ideally, you’ll have a project in your resume that demonstrates MATLAB understanding.

Note – for inexperienced students or engineers, projects using the skills you learned in school are how you are going to get the job. You need to specify said projects and keywords in your resume.

Data Acquisition

In engineering school, you have to take a few lab classes where you use data acquisition software.

LabView

A very common software that schools use for data acquisition in engineering is LabView. Labview takes data and can be paired with software such as MATLAB to process and plot data.

This is very common to what is done in the industry, when we need to do things like qualification testing. In qualification testing of parts, we will subject parts to all sorts of operating conditions. Conditions such as bending, shear, or torsion to those components and analyzing the behavior is very wide-spread in engineering. This is where skills such as FEA come into play.

Many of these skills all collide with each other, to ultimately ensure engineering product integrity.

Enterprise Resource Planning Software

An engineering company would not be an engineering company if it were not profitable. Enterprise Resource Planning Software provides companies the ability to do business transactions.

An efficient company will utilize enterprise resource planning software (ERP) in a clear manner such that it is easy to oversee inventory, purchase orders, deliveries and etc.

Unfortunately in my case, as an engineer working for a big company, tracking business activities in a clear and concise manner is almost impossible.

We believe that streamlining processes and capturing business conditions at a high level will make company operations EASIER.

SAP

Unfortunately, you’re not going to get SAP experience unless your company uses it for ERP.

However, it is good to understand and know how to use ERP software such as SAP for day to day tasks.

Microsoft Office

Sure stating “Microsoft Office” on your resume is like saying you know how to read and write, but still include it.

Why should you include Microsoft Office as skill in your resume?

Key Words.

The application tracking system software that job applications use will pick up on the key words in your resume. The more key words you have implemented the better. However, don’t just copy paste the job description and submit your application. The items in the job application should tailor to your specific accomplishments.

Manufacturing Methods

As a mechanical engineer, when you’re designing stuff, you need to understand design for manufacturability.

Understand various manufacturing methods such as CNC milling, lathe operations, welding, and newer technology like additive manufacturing.

From a resume standpoint, manufacturing methods shouldn’t be specified as a “Skill”, but more so be implemented in your bullets.

Example of implementing Manufacturing Methods in Resume

• Used Design for Manufacture principles to successfully determine additive manufacturing processes for flight components; resulting in revenue generation of $2M USD
• Streamlined pressure casing welding processes, resulting in time and cost savings of 10 hours/product and $80,000 USD annually
• Determined the optimal manufacturing process for CNC milling tie rod fastener locations for production volume of 100,000+ products