Resume Wiki

Welcome to ULTMECHE!

This website is dedicated to helping engineering students and working professionals build their resumes, setting the foundation of their careers. Note that the standard of these resumes align with those in the United States, Canada, and UK.

Disclaimer: There is no end all be all when it comes to resume writing, and this services as a basic guideline when crafting your resume. Take caution with what you read regarding resume practices very carefully. Resume writing practices does have an effect on the outlook of your career.

Introduction

What is a resume?

Your resume sets the benchmark for future success. It is the key that unlocks the gateway into a fat paying career. It’s your elevator pitch on paper, which consists of your experience, education, results, and accomplishments. The sole purpose of this important document is for the company to hire you and pay you fat.

You will need to understand best resume practices that are industry specific. It is not like picking fish from a barrel. Or even a one size fits all solution. This resume wiki serves as a guideline as to what your resume needs to look like, what the hiring process looks like, and how to best optimize your chances for success.

If you have the necessary background, but haven’t been getting many interviews, it’s because you are not writing your resume correctly.

Along with a solid resume, you need to make sure that you also are able to back it up. You’ll need to both talk the talk and walk the walk when it comes to applying for jobs.

If you are a student, thank your lucky shoulders that you came across this. Learn from my mistakes and hundreds of others as I cover what is stopping students or professionals from landing their dream jobs.

If you’re reading this, make sure you build up the right skill set, work on high impact projects, and be involved. Don’t be a lone wolf.

General Rules

Make your resume easy to read

  1. Use a simple format such as the Harvard Resume Template
  2. Don’t use colorful tables, graphs, infographics, or images
  3. Don’t get crazy with indentation
  4. Use bullet points and not paragraphs
  5. The bullet point text should be “concrete” and not like you’re “telling a story”
  6. Use fonts such as Arial
  7. Text should be size 10.5
  8. The resume should not be crammed and have ample amount of white space
  9. Resume margins should be approx ~0.5 inches
  10. Be strategic when using italics, bold text, or CAPS
  11. Separate your sections with a decent amount of line spacing
  12. One page resume unless you have 10+ years experience
  13. Use rule of thumb – 1 page per decade of experience
  14. Separate your skills using commas in an additional section of your resume

Frameworks to make your resume more effective

  1. Utilize results and accomplishments – see Mastering The XYZ Google Resume Format
  2. Quantify your impact on your resume
  3. Keep your resume relevant – no one cares about you working at Polly’s Pies as a high school student
  4. Recruiters and hiring managers scan using the “F method” – put important stuff there

Resumes need to be clear and concise. Specific things recruiters will be scanning for consist of WHERE you worked and WHERE you went to school. Think brand name designer type of stuff such as Gucci, Louis Vuitton, YSL, Dior, etc. but the corporate version. Employers want to see target schools and big name companies. Big tech, Big Pharma, Big aerospace, etc.

One Page

Keep your resume to one page. If you’re reading stuff about how to formulate a resume, you’re very likely relatively early on in your career. Or you’re really ambitious and in that case, I respect you even more.

Why do I not recommend having multiple pages on a resume?

  • Recruiters and hiring managers look through a ton of resumes, they need to be quick
  • Imagine having a huge stack of resumes to look over or a bunch of PDFs, it’s gonna be tiring if it’s a dense resume
  • Multiple pages will show that you lack clarity and conciseness
  • Recruiters and hiring managers are not going to be able to be focused on long, multiple page resumes

Make your resume as easy to read as possible. Ask yourself, would I hire myself? The answer better be yes or you shouldn’t apply.

Exceptions to the one page rule are, as we have discussed above, you have decades of experience. Maybe you’re looking to apply for a senior staff engineer role or an executive leadership type of role – then you’re playing by some different rules.

Resume Formatting

Regarding resume formatting, it should be – easy to skim and easy to parse by Applicant Tracking System (ATS).

The Recommended Resume Template to Use

Resume Accessibility

  • Use modern and easy to read formats such as Calibri, Arial, or Helvetica (Times New Roman is even fine)
  • Use black fonts and don’t use grey
  • Ensure that the color of the font has a decent contrast with the white background
  • Don’t justify text because it will cause inconsistent spacing
  • Don’t italicize text – it is ok to use sparingly in cases such as specifying degree
  • Use CAPS, italicization, and bolding independently of each other
  • Don’t indent sections
  • Don’t indent bullet points as they will already be indented

Resume Bullet Point Practices

General Rules

  • Should be 1-2 lines long
  • One sentence per bullet (you’re not telling a story)
  • Recruiters and hiring managers will read top down – impressive at top, least impressive at bottom
  • Don’t get personal (I or my)
  • Don’t end bullet points with periods (see how these bullets don’t)
  • Ensure the bullets don’t get past dates (clean formatting)
  • If the 2nd line has a few words, condense the bullet down such that it is one line
  • Don’t keyword stuff core competencies

Action Verbs

  • Use strong action verbs – delivered, led, oversaw
  • Ensure that your action verbs lead to a quantifiable positive impact
  • Your action verbs should be telling you how much money you’re making the company
  • Good action verbs – led, oversaw, designed, created, developed, reduced
  • Bad action word – collaborated, participated, gained experience
  • Note that good action verbs will lead to a tangible income, bad ones will leave that pretty fuzzy
  • Do not be “fluffy” with these
  • See 69 Action Words on Resume

Bulletpoint Frameworks

Use frameworks such as STAR, XYZ, or CAR

They’re all good frameworks to use

STAR

STAR – Situation, Task, Action, and Result

Reference: STAR Method for Interview Questions

XYZ

XYZ – Accomplished X, measured by Y, doing Z

CAR

CAR – Challenge, Action, Result

If you’re having trouble

  • Did anything you do make money?
  • What is the dollar value of the word docs, the excel sheets that you touch?
  • Did you solve any business problems?
  • How many people did you work with?
  • How many problems did you solve?
  • What are the macroeconomic sectors that your work has impacted
  • Did you use any industry standards (ASME, API, ASCII, etc.)
  • Did you use software?
  • Was budget met?
  • What type of troubleshooting did you do
  • Did you optimize or streamline anything
  • Did you reduce costs

Daily Task Log

Keep a daily task log of the things that you do at work.

This will give you ammo to fight for your next promotion or raise.

Use the things you do day to day at your job to come up with bullets on your resume.

See Daily Work Task Log Template

Resume Writer’s Block

  • Write down goals that you had to meet in projects or your position
  • Break projects into sub-goals and evaluate what you did
  • What software did you use, what action verbs, what was the impact?
  • Get a blank piece of paper and write everything out (maybe drink lots of coffee for this)

Sensitive Material on Resume

If you work on sensitive stuff such as military aircraft or proprietary items that are company intellectual property – just be high level about it.

Instead of saying specifics such as F-35 fighter jet or B-21 stealth bomber, say something such as “military aircraft”

Be vague and if they pry at the interview, just tell the interviews that all that stuff is proprietary. If they pry even deeper, that’s a red flag.

Dates on a Resume

  • If working on current job, specify “Present”
  • Don’t use “Current”, “Now”, or “Ongoing” – just use “Present”
  • Specify the exact month – March 2024 vs. Spring 2024
  • Don’t abbreviate year – ’24 vs 2024
  • Don’t abbreviate months using digits – 6 2024 vs. June 2024
  • Abbreviate months using the Yale Standard – Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, June, July, Aug, Sept, Oct, Nov, Dec
  • Don’t use periods for abbreviation, just use shortened form – Apr. vs Apr (see the difference?)
  • Use dashes (–) for date ranges as opposed to hyphens (-)
  • Ensure there is a space before and after dashes: Mar 2012 – Sep 2024 vs Mar 2012-Sep 2024
  • Dates should be aligned to right margin
  • Bullet points should not go past dates

Section Order

This is a very controversial topic, but I’ve broken down how to order different sections of your resume into the following:

Student / New Grads

  • Education -> Work Experience -> Skills
  • Education -> Project Experience -> Work Experience (if irrelevant) -> Skills

Internship

  • Education -> Work Experience -> Skills
  • Education -> Internship Experience (Treat as work experience) -> Skills
  • Education -> Project Experience -> Work Experience (if irrelevant) -> Skills

Entry Level Job

  • Education -> Work Experience -> Projects -> Skills
  • Education -> Work Experience (Internships) -> Project Experience -> Skills

At this point, you should have internship experience. If not, you did something wrong.

Read: How To Get An Engineering Internship With No Experience

Mid-level roles and beyond

  • Experience -> Education -> Skills

Do not include a professional summary (it is redundant as your resume is a summary) and do not include references (employers will ask for that)

Contact Info

  • Specify – City, ST / Phone Number / Email / LinkedIn
  • Don’t list physical address
  • Use spacers – City, ST | (310) 123-4567 | kazu@ultmeche.com | linkedin.com/in/ultmeche
  • Have as least text as possible (i.e – don’t preface your email with “Email: kazu@ultmeche.com” and instead use “kazu@ultmeche.com”
  • Don’t include https or www for any URLs you put
  • Specify clearance info in the “Skills / Certifications” in the additional part of resume

Reference: Harvard Resume Template

Work Experience

  • Specify Experience as “Work Experience” on resume
  • Only specify paid work experience
  • Treat internships as work experience, but specify that you were an intern
  • Use best bullet points first
  • Use the XYZ Resume for Job Seekers
  • Specify macroeconomic info – industries, products, trends, keywords, business impact
  • Quantify your results and accomplishments (most important)
  • Specify the software you’ve used to meet your deliverables
  • Bullets should be “concrete” and not “flow” like a narrative

Your work experience should consist of results, impact, accomplishments, software, macro keywords, and most importantly numbers.

Treat this as if you were presenting these bullet points to an executive.

Education

  • Specify coursework if you are lacking in experience and projects
  • Only include relevant coursework to the position
  • Note that coursework is very unimpressive as hiring managers and recruiters know what basic curriculum is
  • Don’t include high school
  • Do not include partial education
  • Just specify graduation date
  • Education should be reverse chronological – Master’s Degree, then Bachelor’s Degree
  • Specify GPA if above 3.5
  • On resume, degrees will be specified as “Bachelor of Science” or “Master of Science”

Skills

The skills section on your resume will be utilized to highlight technical hard skills you have that are relevant to the skills.

Do not specify soft skills such as “ability to work in a fast paced environment, ability to work in multidisciplinary teams, ability to problem solve effectively, to collaborate, etc” – these are “soft skills” such that anyone can put on their resumes and carry no weight.

Instead you will be specifying hard technical skills, and as discussed above, you will specify the numerical impact that occurred.

Dos

  • Specify hard technical skills
  • Treat software as keywords and add numerical impact along with the software and action verb
  • Show, not tell

Do Nots

  • Avoid soft skills such as collaboration, teamwork, and leadership
  • Forget to include numbers, results, impact

Formatting

Specify “Technical Skills” in an “Additional” section of your resume.

Separate your skills with commas:

Example:

Technical Skills: Machine Design, Analysis, FEA, Manufacturing, CAD, SolidWorks, NX, CATIA, ProEngineer

Keep technical skills to 1-2 lines max, any more will be hard for the recruiter or hiring manager to digest. It is very likely that there will need to be 3 lines of hard technical skills that are related to the job.

Additional Section

The additional section of your resume will include things such as:

  • Technical Skills
  • Languages
  • Certifications
  • Awards

Each of these sub-headers will be aligned to the left, and each item will be separated in commas (as outlined in Technical Skills above)

FAQ

Should I include hobbies in my resume?


No, keep your resume professional. The subject of hobbies may come up in a job interview and you can talk about it then, but in short, do not put hobbies in resume.

Should I include skills that I’m not too well versed in?


Yes, even if you’ve had minimal exposure, if it will help your case, include it. Note that you may get tested for competency in the software during the interview stage. Be prepared for such an event or be ready to tell your interviewer that you have minimal exposure.

Projects

Specify Projects as “Project Experience” on your resume.

This will be the money maker section if you are applying for jobs, yet have no experience.

  • Include projects such as school projects, design teams, competitions, extracurriculars, and personal projects that are relevant the the job you’re applying for
  • Do not specify project (UAV Design vs. UAV Design Project) – the added “Project” at the end is redundant
  • Add roles/positions in larger level projects – think Formula SAE or BAJA SAE
  • Items in projects on your resume should be specified in bulletpoint form
  • Best items first (preferrably higher level)
  • Reverse chronological order, same with work experience and education

Projects such as industry recognized team design competitions are great to add on your resume. They are recognized by those in the industry. You should generally be pretty well involved in design competitions anyways, especially if you want to set yourself up for success down the road.

Senior Engineers and Above (10 Years Experience and more)

  • Add brief summary if you see fit
  • Have separate resumes for management or technical roles
  • Don’t go over two pages (even going over one is overkill)
  • Mention impact
  • Be clear and concise
  • Move education towards the bottom as it is less relevant
  • Remove graduation date

Grammar Tips

  • At no circumstances are typos forgivable on your resume – they show lack of attention to detail
  • Do spell check and grammar check
  • Spell out abbreviations in the first time you use them to provide context to readers
  • Not everyone will be able to understand what industry abbreviations are on resume
  • Ask friends and family to review and even reference their resumes
  • Tools such as Grammarly or Hemingway are useful
  • See our Templates

How to Actually Land a Job

You’re going to take the award winning resume that you’ve written using this wiki as a guide and you’re going to apply to as many jobs as you can. Take advantage of Easy Apply and AI job search tools so you can automate your job search. The more job applications you send out, the more interviews you get. Job interviewing is another rabbit hole itself.

Additionally, network like your life depends on it. Reach out to family, friends, colleagues. Do not be a lone wolf, shy, or introverted type. As much as it pains you, finding a job requires heavy interaction with people. It’s like sales – you are the product and you are selling yourself to companies.

To give some perspective, job openings will have hundreds of applications within a day or two of being up on boards such as Indeed or LinkedIn. As much as we’re working to make your resume stand out, the competition is fierce. You will also need to take into consideration how the job market is doing – are there layoffs, interest rates, jobs reports.

Will there be any booming activity in any industries such as Tech, Energy, AI, Oil & Gas, Banking, etc.?

In short:

  • Apply to as many jobs as possible
  • Network
  • Build your skillset
  • Sharpen your interviewing skills
  • Pay attention to what is going on in the market

Additional Resources

About the author

Kazuyoshi Fujimoto, PE
Founder | Engineering Career Coach | Principal Mechanical Engineer

Kazu oversees all of ultmeche’s engineering services. He provides consulting such as resume reviews, rewrites, mock interviews, and all services career related. Additionally, Kazu performs consulting work regarding Oil & Gas, Automotive, and Aerospace & Defense. Kazu is licensed as a professional engineer in the state of California and has 9+ years of experience in Oil & Gas, Automotive, and Aerospace & Defense.

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