Top Tips for the Ultimate Engineering CV

Length of your CV

You may have had a wealth of experience over the years that you are desperate to include in your CV but keep it relevant and to the point. Do you know how long it takes for someone to review a CV and make up their mind? We do, 7 seconds! Many of the Engineering Managers that we speak to do not have time to read pages and pages of a CV and normally skim it and decide within the first 7 seconds whether to interview a candidate.

As a guide we recommend limiting your CV to 2 pages maximum but make sure all of the attention-grabbing details are at the top e.g. qualifications, achievements and key skills.

To help guide the Engineering Managers eye use bullet points to improve the readability of your CV especially when writing about your responsibilities to make it clear what your experience is.

Break down your skills

So, we have 7 seconds to impress, therefore we recommend that you breakdown your technical skills so that they can quickly see your technical ability. For example, you could use a format like this;

Mechanical: Gears, bearings, belts, chains, hydraulics, pneumatics……

Electrical: Single & Three phase, motors (star delta) , invertors, switchgear…..

Electronic: PCB (fault find, component level), soldering, resistors, capacitors….

PLC: Siemens S5/S7 – fault find, modifications, basic programming….

What does your company do?

As we specialise in Engineering Recruitment and know the market exceptionally well we can quickly understand what your company does, however Engineering Managers do not have the range of exposure that we do. Also why would they spend the time googling what your company does when they have a pile of applications to go through and an Engineering team to run.

If the company name does not give away what they do write the business function next to it in brackets e.g.  Smith Company (Milk Manufacturer). You would be surprised how many times we have had to intervene when a client has declined a CV for an Engineer that works in the same industry, so we make sure the sector is evident on every CV we send.

Include the machinery you work on

Following on from the previous tip your CV could be reviewed by an Engineering Manager who has never worked in your industry. Make it easy for them to spot that you would be an ideal applicant by detailing the machinery you work on so that they can see your transferable skills.

For example, you are applying for a job for an Automotive company where they produce car bumpers and the machinery you would be working on includes; injection moulding, conveyers, robotics however you are from the packaging industry. HOWEVER your company produces plastic containers so you work on; injection moulding, conveyers, robotic palletisers – see the match!

Make your achievements specific

You may be surprised to hear that it is not only you who is the “Top Engineer” in their business. This is a widely used statement on a CV and can come across as cliché and to be honest without any foundation it is. Ensure that you back your achievement up with facts and figures to make your CV stand out e.g. I was given the Top Engineer Award in 2017 for my outstanding contribution which resulted in……..

This will make it believable on your CV and show the Engineering Manager an insight into what you can do.

Include Hobbies that are relevant

Finally, a number of Engineers leave this off but you should include your hobbies, just nothing too extreme! We have had many Engineering Managers delve further into an Engineers background when deciding on who to interview and recruit. One that I remember particularly well was an Engineering Manager who held Engineers in high esteem who had hobbies that included volunteering whether that be for charity, coaching a junior football team or leading scouts. He felt that they would go the extra mile and were selfless, so in Engineering terms they would not shy away from getting the job done even if it meant going over their shift or putting their hand up to help.

Speak to one of our knowledgeable Engineering Recruitment Consultants today who are happy to help you with your CV and to find that dream job.

Call us on 020 8166 5252 or send us a message via our website https://www.pioneer-selection.co.uk/contact-us-engineering-and-technical-recruitment and we will get in contact asap.