February 29, 2024 by Kazu Fujimoto

We were recently asked by an engineering student on how to tailor your resume for a job.

Along with answering their questions, we decided to give an overview of how to tailor your resume for a job.

We deal with engineering students that struggle getting jobs and internships because they don’t know how to write a resume.

How To Tailor Your Resume For A Specific Job – Engineering Student

We always advocate including The Big Three on your resume. There are no exceptions to this.

You must be able to say that your resume include all of the following:

The Big Three A Resume Need:

• To Be Clear and Concise
• Display Quantitative Results and Accomplishments
• Include Keywords from the Job Description

See: Best Resume Writing Service for Engineers

Clear and Concise

A recruiter will only spend about 10 seconds or so reviewing your resume.

Recruiters need to quickly scan through resumes as they have a huge stack to go through.

Make yours stand out and easy to read by being clear and concise.

Quantitative Results and Accomplishments

Displaying your quantitative results and accomplishments will demonstrate the business impact that you have on the company.

This shows that you’re making the company money and providing value – which is what companies want to see on your resume.

Keywords

Want to make sure that your resume gets passed the ATS (Applicant Tracking Software) Application?

Your resume needs to have keywords from the job description.

The Applicant Tracking Software is algorithm based and will pick up on how many keywords your resume has.

Placing keywords underneath the “PROJECT EXPERIENCE” is an easy way to include keywords, for those with no experience.

See the following section for more details on keywords in projects.

See how we review a job description and make sure the resume has key words.

We do a key word screening based on the job description provided by the client.

Project Experience

Project Experience is a great way to demonstrate your competence in a skill without the experience. Including a lot of info regarding specific keywords using bullets in a “PROJECT EXPERIENCE” section in your resume is how you get your foot in the door.

Projects will require the same set of hard skills that jobs require.

This can be for any field such as engineering, management, business, etc.

See below for an engineering example for one of our client’s resumes:

Awards

Do you have any awards such as Dean’s List or Scholarships? Put them into your resume.

You get bonus points if these awards are relevant for the position that you’re applying to.

Using an engineering internship as an example, you get bonus points if you specify Engineering Dean’s List or Engineering Scholarship.

You do not make up any of these under any circumstances, these have to be actual awards and accomplishments that you received.

Certifications

Bonus points for having relevant certifications to the position that you’re applying for.

Some examples include having a:

• PMP Certification for Project Managers
• HR Certificates for HR Associates
• FE (Fundamentals of Engineering) or PE (Professional Engineer) Licensure for Engineers

We always get asked if we should get certifications for our industry, and the answer depends.

We recommend certifications if your time can’t be better spent building your experience elsewhere or if you have long term goals with your specific industry.

Should you tailor your resume for a specific job?

If you have the time to read through every job description and tailor your resume, then do it.

Otherwise, it’s more time efficient to write a general resume, and use that to apply for jobs.

You can spend hours working on the perfect resume for a job, only to never hear back.

The job hunting game requires you to submit hundreds of applications, just to hear back from recruiters.

We recommend using a general resume to apply for jobs.

Be efficient with your time.