If you’re hoping to secure an engineering role with a leading employer, you must start with an attractive CV.
Your CV is the foundation of your job hunt, and you should invest plenty of time and effort into it, if you want to secure the best interviews.
To help you do this I’ve complied this in-depth engineering CV guide complete with 5 engineer CV examples and downloadable template.
Contents
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Engineer CV example
Electrical engineer CV example
Mechanical engineer CV example
Engineer graduate CV example
Engineering director CV example
Engineering consultant CV example
Start by looking at these examples of good engineering CVs to get a good idea of the format and structure you should be using in your own CV.
Formatting and structuring your CV
To ensure that your CV looks professional and is easy for busy recruiters and hiring managers to read, you must get the format and structure right.
This infographic gives an overview of how to do this.
Format
To create an effective CV format, you need to consider the following elements
- Length – Ideally you should keep the CV at around 2 pages of A4 in length, this is enough to provide a good level of detail without boring readers
- Font – Use a clear crisp font that can be easily read. Don’t be tempted to use an elaborate one, it will just irritate readers who want to digest the info quickly
- Readability – Break text up as much as possible to make your CV more of an appealing read to recruiters and hiring managers. Use bullet points and short paragraphs
- Avoid distractions – Don’t add images, logos or wacky designs, just keep it simple. Recruiters are only interested in the content within the CV.
Structure
When structuring your CV, you need to consider how a recruiter will read your CV, and the order in which you want to get information across to them.
The structure I recommend using is designed to grab readers attention at the top of the CV, and then showcase more detailed examples of skills and knowledge as they progress through the document.
I will now give a quick outline of each section before delving into each one in the following chapters of this guide.
- Name and contact details
- CV profile – an introductory paragraph summarising your offering
- Your work experience – list your roles in reverse chronological order
- Education and qualifications
- Hobbies and interests – Only include if they are relevant or add any value to your CV
CV heading and contact details
Set the tone for your CV by heading with your name and an accompanying professional title that lets recruiters instantly know what you are about.
Something like;
- Aerospace engineering lead
- Graduate electrical engineer
Quick tip: Write your CV for the job you want, not the one you have. Tailor this title to reflect the jobs you are targeting.
Underneath this title, include your essential contact details so they aren’t missed:
- Email address
- Telephone number
- General location
You don’t need to include your DOB, Full address, or a photo – they are surplus to requirement and will waste valuable space.
Writing a punchy CV profile
Your CV profile (or personal statement for junior candidates) is the first proper content section of your CV, and is an introductory paragraph that summarises your offerings as a candidate.
The purpose of the profile is to hook readers when they open the CV, engage them, and encourage them to read on.
Aim to keep the information very high level (like an elevator pitch) and don’t go into granular detail.
As an engineer, the type of information you want to include in your CV profile is:
- Your discipline and sub-disciplines – Electrical, mechanical, civil etc.
- Types of projects you work on – Property builds, car manufacturing, road building
- Qualifications – Engineering degrees, industry standards
- Software knowledge – AutoCAD, Microsoft Project, Excel
- Engineering skills – Technical drawing, project management, risk assessment
Avoid generic cliché terms like “hard working team player”.
These phrases are meaningless without context and don’t tell recruiters the factual information about you that they need to know.
Take the example of a bad profile below as an example – it’s impossible to tell what the candidate does.
Quick tip: A poorly written CV will fail to impress recruiters and employers. Use our quick-and-easy CV Builder to create a winning CV in minutes with professional templates and pre-written content for every industry.
You can also add a core skills section below your profile to ensure that your most valuable skills jump off the page and aren’t missed by readers.
Detailing your work experience
Once recruiters have read your profile to get a feel for your background, they will be keen to dive into your work experience to find out how you’ve benefited previous and current employers.
List your work experience in reverse chronological order (oldest to newest) because employers are more interested in your recent work to judge your current capabilities. You should include plenty of detail in recent roles, and less in older ones.
Structuring your roles
Your roles should be well structured to provide an easy reading experience for recruiters to allow them to skim-read and pick out the info they need.
Use the structure below to achieve this.
Intro/outline
A sentence or two outlining the purpose of the role, nature of the employer’s business, and the particular area or project you work within.
For example;
“Leading the technical engineer team for X construction company on high profile multimillion pound residential build project”
Key responsibilities
List your responsibilities in short sharp bullet point to showcase your in-demand skills and show how you contribute to your employers.
For example;
- Creating technical warehouse drawings with AutoCAD as required by project manager
- Conducting site inspections alongside QA engineer team to ensure site safety
- Collaborating with field engineers to resolve technical issues swiftly
Key achievements
To prove how valuable your input has been during your roles, add key achievements which have had a big impact on employers or projects – and quantify them whenever you can.
For example;
- Successfully led the £3m civil engineering activities to completion 1 month ahead of schedule and within the approved budget
- Discovered faults in legacy technical drawings and corrected them, saving the project around 200 hours in resources and improving final delivery
- Submitted tenders for over 100 local government projects with a 75% win rate
Education and qualifications
Although there should be mentions of your highest and most relevant qualifications in your profile, save your exhaustive list of qualifications for the bottom of your CV.
If you’re an experienced candidate, only include the qualifications that are within the engineering space, or your particular industry.
Writing your own engineer CV
Now that you’ve seen how a good engineer CV looks, and the process of writing one, I hope you can create your own interview-winning CV.
Another key point to remember is that not everybody who reads your CV will be technically minded like yourself – think recruiters, non-technical project managers etc. So, remember to write your CV in a manner which can be understood by both technical and non-technical people.
If you write a well formatted document which explains how you apply your engineering skills to benefit the projects you work on, you should definitely be able to land interviews.
Good luck with your job search!
More engineer CV examples