Resume Writing
Overview
A resume is an organized summary of your qualifications, goals, accomplishments, and interests.
Resumes are used to screen applicants for interviews and determine which candidates have the background that most closely matches with the employer’s requirements.
Important: A well-crafted resume will tell the reader what you have accomplished and how these accomplishments have prepared you for what you want to do next. This is often overlooked by students writing their first resume. An effective resume shows that you are prepared and qualified for a specific position or career field. It’s important to tailor your resume to each specific employment opportunity.
Resume Tip 1:
Most successful professionals in engineering are continually working on updating and improving their resume.
Resume Sections
Resumes are always broken up into resume “sections.” These sections are mostly standard, but there are some optional elements (discussed below).
Typical resume sections:
Contact Information
Objective
Education
Honors
Coursework
Relevant Experience
Leadership Experience
Additional Experience
Specialized Skills
Interests
A description of each section is below. Some sections are required sections for an entry-level resume or for a resume for someone with 1- 5 years experience. Other sections are optional.
Resume Tip 2:
Resumes are like snowflakes. No two resumes are alike. They will often have different resume sections that reflect your experiences, skills, and job that you are targeting. Stylistically, they will also differ because of formatting, fonts and layout.
Contact Information (required)
This is the first section of the resume which goes at the top of the page. It does NOT need a heading. Some guidelines on this section:
Name includes first and last name
Address is current and located in the same region as employer
Phone number is the most direct possible
E-mail address is professional, including only minor variations of legal name. Consider using your Manhattan e-mail address. If you do not have a professional e-mail address, then get one!
Information is properly spaced and centered on page
Objective (optional)
This section consists of a single “objective statement” and is an optional section (some resumes have an objective section and others do not). This section is helpful particularly for the following reasons:
If you are an undergraduate student looking for part-time employment or an internship. Stating this in the Objective section is appropriate.
An objective statement can also be helpful if your resume education or experience does not clearly align with your career goals (for example if you were changing career fields).
Below are some sample objective statements:
To obtain an internship in process chemical engineering beginning summer 2020.
To obtain a full-time position in chemical engineering following graduation in May 2020.
To obtain a summer internship related to the development of systems for processing or managing bioresources.
Resume Tip 3:
There is no “right way” to write a resume. But, there are several “wrong ways” that can turn a potential employer off. There is room for creativity in preparing a resume, but you should stay within the norms established in this guide.
Education (required)
List your post-secondary (i.e. college) education in reverse chronological order. List the institution first, then the degree. If you are a graduate student, start with the Master’s of Science in Chemical Engineering Degree. You can abbreviate this as M.S. if you like. If you are an undergraduate, start with Bachelor’s of Science in Chemical Engineering or B.S. in Chemical Engineering. You will want to use your expected graduation date for degrees you are working toward.
For example:
Manhattan College, Riverdale, NY
B.S. in Chemical Engineering
Expected May 2020
Minors should be listed but should be subordinate to the B.S. or M.S. degree. For example:
B.S. in Chemical Engineering (Chemistry Minor) or
B.S. in Chemical Engineering / Chemistry Minor or
B.S. in Chemical Engineering with Chemistry Minor
GPA should always be included if it is above 3.00. Use 3 significant digits. For example 3.45/4.00.
Should you list a school you transferred from? Generally, no. While your coursework from the other schools contributed to your degree, you received your degree from only one school. You will however, need to include those school in your formal application (online or manual depending on the company), and on your background check forms. If you got an Associates (2-year degree) from one school and your Bachelors from another it is OK to include both of those.
Honors (or Honors and Awards, optional)
This section consists of a list of honors and/or awards you have received. This is an optional section. Examples of honors and awards that should be include (when appropriate):
Dean’s List (6 semesters)
Manhattan College Presidential Scholarship, 2017
J.W. Jones Construction Company Scholarship, 2017
Manhattan College, Prutton Medal for Chemical Engineering (awarded to an outstanding senior), 2018
Manhattan College, Omega Chi Epsilon Award (for service to Manhattan College and the Chemical Engineering department), 2018
If you do not have any significant honors yet, it is ok to omit this section.
Relevant Coursework (optional)
Use this section to list courses you have taken that are directly relevant to the job you are applying for. This is one of the sections here you will some variation in your resume. For example, if you are applying to a pharmaceutical company, highlight coursework relevant to that particular industry. Courses can be listed on one or two lines, separated by a comma or bullet.
If you are applying for an internship as an undergraduate, you will probably want to list relevant coursework. This is because potential employers know you have not finished your degree yet. It is helpful to see where you are in your academic career by looking at what courses you have taken.
This section is optional, and can be omitted when you build up a significant level of experience.
Resume Tip 4:
Over time as you advance in your career and complete your most advanced degree, the Relevant Coursework section usually gets dropped from a professional resume. But, as a student this is an important section.
Professional Experience (optional for internship, required for full-time)
This section is the place for detailing your previous professional employment information. This section can be called Work Experience, Work History, Employment History, Employment Experience, or Relevant Experience.
This section typically includes the following:
Name(s) of the companies you worked for
City and state for each company
Titles/positions you held
Your employment dates for each job
Duties you performed (important!)
This section can also include any promotions you might have gotten while on a job.
If you do not have any professional experience yet then leave this section off your resume for now. See Resume Tip 5.
Resume Tip 5:
The Chicken and the Egg Conundrum: How do you gain professional experience if you need professional experience to get your first job in engineering?
Remember that we all started with no experience! If you are applying for an internship, many potential employers understand you will not have experience. Apply for internships that are known to hire students without professional experience. Stay away from companies that don’t (until you gain some). Also, look for research opportunities within your department at school to gain some experience doing research.
Use “action statements” rather than using lengthy sentences or paragraphs to describe your experiences. Each bullet should begin with action verbs.
Short statements are easier and faster to read and understand. Also, be sure the grammatical structure of your statements is correct and consistent. Past tense should be used when describing experiences you have already had. Present tense should be used only to describe those activities you are involved in now.
Each experience begins with the employer’s name and location. For example:
Dow Chemical Corporation (Newark, DE)
Dow Chemical Corporation Newark, DE
Each experience includes your title and the period you worked there. For example:
Reliability Engineering Intern (May 2013 to August 2013)
Reliability Engineering Intern May 2018 to August 2018
Each experience includes concise descriptions of responsibilities and achievements. Experiences listed should be relatable, applicable or transferable in some way to position you are applying for. Each bullet should be succinct and begins with an action verb. Examples:
Collaborated with consulting firms and contractors to ensure sustainable design in projects
Interpreted structural and piping drawings and verified location of transfer line piping throughout the plant
Analyzed and documented equipment specification information for comparison of best alternatives
Collected air content samples from various environments and maintained sample traceability
Some additional items to consider for the professional experience section:
Experiences should be in reverse chronological order (i.e. newest comes first).
The detail for each experience should increases with recency and relevance of experience
Employer, location and date information should be differentiated from bullet points by bolding or text size increase (see example resume formatting)
Resume Tip 6:
Getting a full-time entry-level job usually requires at least one significant professional experience (i.e. internship). Some desirable jobs have so much competition that they require two different professional experiences. Use the summer break to gain these experiences!
Leadership Experience (optional)
This is another optional section that you should consider including if you have a significant example of leadership exeprience. What is a “signifcant example”? See below:
Engineers Without Borders
President or Vice-President of a professional society such as Tau Beta Pi, Omega Chi or student chapter of AICHE (membership in this societies would be in the Honors section, not Leadership)
Student Government
Additional Experience (optional)
As your work experience becomes more relevant to your field, you can drop this section until all of your listed work experience is relevant to your field. Use a similar approach to this section as described above for Professional Experience.
Volunteerism is sometime listed as a separate resume section, but this would be a logical place to put any volunteer work on your resume.
Specialized Skills (optional, but recommended)
This section allows you to show off what you can immediately “bring to the table” if you are hired. It is optional, but recommended. Skills can be generally broken up into different subgroups like Computer, Programming, Language, Laboratory and Safety.
Some example computer skills: Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Access, Mathcad
Some example programming skills: VBA, Fortran, C++, HTML, PHP, Python, Matlab
Some example language skills: Spanish, French, etc.
Some example laboratory skills: Gas chromatography, UV-Visible Spectrometry
Some example safety skills: Certified in first-aid, volunteer fire-fighter
Interests (optional, but recommended)
Potential employers want to see that you are well-rounded. This section could be an excellent way to show the employer you’re a good fit outside of the professional skills and abilities section. It also helps to separate you from the crowd. Interests on a resume fall into a “good”, “better”, “best” classification.
Best
The “best” interests to include on your resume show the employer why you’re a good fit for the job and have some level of professional relevance. Examples of the “best” interests:
Working on Chem-E Car
Mentoring
Better
The “better” interests to include on your resume show the employer you are hard-working and unique.
Long-distance running
American history
Theater
Chess
Traveling
Good
The “good” interests to include on your resume show the employer you are a well-rounded person and give them a sense that you will fit into their culture.
Archery
Gardening
Bike-riding
Hiking
Stay away from the following:
Listing irrelevant hobbies – (i.e. – sports, cooking, television, movies, video games, etc).
Anything political
Controversial issues
Dangerous activities
How many hobbies or interests should I list?
Keep this section small and towards the very end of your resume. You can put in 2-3 of the ones you feel are most relevant. Avoid too many words or overcrowding this section. This should be just a small piece that helps the overall message you’re conveying to the employer, that you’re a good fit.
Be Prepared to Answer Questions!
If you include an interests section, be prepared to answer questions on what you list as your interests!
Resume Tip 7:
Should you include an Interests section on your resume? Ask yourself the following question: “Would someone looking at your resume be impressed by what your hobbies or interests are? Is it relevant in anyway to the position you’re applying for?” If the answer to both of these are “no”, then leave this section off. Re-evaluate in six months when you re-visit your resume.
RESUME FORMATTING
Fonts
A prospective employer is looking at your resume for a short period of time. Therefore, a font that is aesthetically pleasing and grabs the employer’s attention is preferred over a hard to read font.
Serif versus sans-serif fonts: The small features on the ends of strokes in some fonts are known as “serifs.” Some common serif typefaces are Times New Roman, Georgia, Palatino and Garamond. In contrast, common sans-serif typefaces include Arial, Helvetica and Tahoma.
Some general guidelines:
Serif fonts are easily readable at small sizes
Sans Serif fonts really stand out in large titles.
Serifs can display on monitors poorly at small sizes. This is becoming less of an issue with improvements in technologies like retina displays, and 4k resolution, but the vast majority of displays are still low resolution when compared to print.
Stay away from the following:
Times New Roman – too common.
Calibri – the default Microsoft Word font. It shows you didn’t give much thought to fonts in your resume!
Futura – a “quirky” looking font. Best to avoid.
Courier – a typewriter font.
Comic sans (obviously!)
“Safe” resume fonts:
Arial. If you want to use a sans-serif font, Arial is a good option. But, it is very commonly used (a drawback).
Lato – a good alternative to Arial, a sans-serif font.
Gill Sans – a sans-serif font.
Garamond – timeless serif font, a good alternative to Times New Roman.
Constantia – a new serif font developed by Microsoft – part of their ClearType collection.
Georgia – a serif font that has letters with thicker strokes that make it easy to read even at small sizes; was created specifically for clarity on computer monitors.
For more information on fonts: https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/5331-best-resume-fonts.html
Additional questions about fonts:
Should you use more than one font on your resume? No. It can be distracting!
Should you use more than one size? Yes. It is appropriate to use a larger size for headings and a smaller size for the text.
Font size: try to stay between 14 pt (for headings) and 10 pt. Never drop below a font size of 9 pt. The text becomes too small to read.
Font color: use black. You can dress-up your resume with one additional color but don’t over do it.
Margins
Your resume margins serve two purposes:
Contributes to the visual appeal – margins that are too narrow can make your resume appear jumbled, and overly wide margins can project a perception of emptiness.
For print copies of your resume, provide your prospective employer with space to make notes.
Rule of thumb: set your margins at one inch on all sides to create a well-balanced design. If you desperately need more space, decrease the top and bottom margins slightly, but avoid decreasing the side margins.
Number of Pages
One Page vs. Multiple Pages – which to use?
Rule #1: Current college students looking for an internship or new college graduates and other entry-level job seekers should have a one-page resume. Why?
The applicant does not have enough relevant experience to fill more than one page
The situation requires the resume to focus on coursework and/or other leadership activities that connect you to the job you are seeking
The resume must meet the potential employer’s expectations of a one-page resume.
Rule #2: Expand your resume to multiple pages only when your work experience calls for it, but never before you gain at least 2 to 5 years of full-time experience.
More information can be found here.
Indenting
Ensure all text is all properly indented and the formatting retains continuity throughout entire document.
Resume Tip 8:
Be consistent! Make sure font size, spacing, bullets and capitalization are the same throughout your document. Did you notice this font was smaller than the previous tip?
Paper Selection & Printing
Resume Paper
When printing your resume, be sure to use a professional quality paper. A bond paper in a solid, conservative color, such as white, ivory or light gray, is ideal. Dark colored paper and patterned paper should be avoided because your resume may be photocopied for review by more than one person, and dark or patterned paper does not copy well.
Printer
A laser printer should be used to print your resume with the watermark of the stationary right-side up and face forward. If ink from a laser printer becomes damp, it will not smear as easily as that from an ink jet printer.
Electronic Version
File Type & Name
When preparing your resume to e-mail to a prospective employer, be sure you save it as a file type that is commonly used. The two options are Adobe PDF and Microsoft word docs. Adobe PDF is the best choice because saving your resume as a PDF file maintains its design and format. Adobe PDFs also open faster than Microsoft word documents.
Also, be sure to name the file appropriately. File names such as “Lastname, Firstname Resume.pdf” allow the recipient to easily save the file to his or her computer and quickly refer to a particular individual’s resume.
Resume Tip 7:
Don’t rely on spell check! Proofread your resume and have several others proofread it. Spell check will not catch spelling errors that result in actual words. Grammar checkers will not catch errors like their vs their.
A FINAL CHECKLIST
Below is a final resume “checklist”. Make sure you have checked your resume for the following:
Is your complete contact information at the top of the resume?
Is it completely, 100% free of spelling mistakes?
Is it completely, 100% grammatically correct?
For an entry level position, does it fit on a single page?
Is the font size within the acceptable range?
Is the font type one of the acceptable fonts?
Does the experience section use the appropriate action words?
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Examples of Action Verbs
Use “action statements” rather than using lengthy sentences or paragraphs to describe your experiences. Each bullet should begin with action verbs:
Administrative Skills
approved, arranged, cataloged, classified, collected, compiled, dispatched, executed, generated, implemented, inspected, monitored, operated, organized, prepared, processed, purchased, recorded, retrieved, screened, specified, systematized, tabulated, validated
Communication Skills
addressed, arbitrated, arranged, authored, corresponded, developed, directed, drafted, edited, enlisted, formulated, influenced, interpreted, lectured, mediated, moderated, motivated, negotiated, persuaded, promoted, publicized, reconciled, recruited, spoke, translated, wrote
Creative Skills
acted, conceptualized, created, designed, developed, directed, established, founded, illustrated, innovated, instituted, integrated, introduced, invented, originated, performed, planned, revitalized, shaped
Financial Skills
administered, allocated, analyzed, appraised, audited, balanced, budgeted, calculated, computed, developed , forecasted, managed, marketed, planned, projected, researched
Helping Skills
assessed, clarified, coached, counseled, demonstrated, diagnosed, educated, expedited, facilitated, familiarized, guided, referred, rehabilitated, represented
Management Skills
administered, analyzed, assigned, attained, chaired, contracted, consolidated, coordinated, delegated, developed, directed, evaluated, executed, improved, increased, produced, scheduled, organized, recommended, strengthened, oversaw, planned, prioritized, reviewed, supervised
Research Skills
clarified collected critiqued diagnosed evaluated examined extracted identified inspected interpreted interviewed investigated organized , reviewed, summarized, surveyed
Teaching Skills
adapted, communicated, encouraged, guided, persuaded, advised, clarified, coached, coordinated, developed, enabled, evaluated, explained, facilitated, informed, initiated, instructed, stimulated
Technical Skills
assembled, built, calculated, computed, designed, devised, engineered, fabricated, maintained, overhauled, operated, programmed, repaired, solved, remodeled, upgraded