Whether you have recently graduated with a degree in engineering or have been working in the field for some time, your resume is your first opportunity to attract the interest of employers. When it comes to crafting a resume that stands out from the crowd, it’s not only important to list your qualifications and other achievements but also your relevant engineering skills, which are going to be very important for impressing any hiring professional in the industry.
To highlight your relevant abilities and make sure that you stand out from the crowd as an engineering job candidate, it’s important to take advantage of the work experience and skills sections of your resume. This will help you present your best features to any relevant employer and give them a chance to get a clearer picture of what they could expect from you as a potential colleague.
So, what are the top skills to list on your engineering resume?
Computer Literacy:
Regardless of the field of engineering that you want to work in, it’s highly like that computer use is going to be a huge part of doing your job well. Programming skills, for example, are highly desirable across a wide range of engineering disciplines and can make you appear much more appealing to a prospective employer. In some cases, computer skills are going to be a key part of the job - particularly in IT or software engineering roles, for example. Go above and beyond the minimum computer skills that are expected of you from the roles in order to stand out and offer something more to a potential employer.
Problem-Solving Skills:
The ability to problem-solve quickly and efficiently is one of the most important skills that an engineer can possess. Assessing situations, identifying problems, and coming up with creative solutions are just some of the most important parts of an engineer’s job. Think of past examples where you have been able to successfully deal with and overcome obstacles in your work, whether that’s in a past engineering role or something else. Problem-solving is a key soft skill in engineering, and there are likely to be many ways that you have used this skill in various settings in the past, even if this is your first engineering role.
Teamwork:
There are very few engineering projects where the engineer is going to be working completely alone, making strong teamwork skills extremely desirable to employers in this field. Engineers often work closely with co-workers or outside professionals to get a project done, and good teamwork skills are essential for any engineer who needs to be able to succeed together and work well with other people to ensure that everybody can perform to their best ability. If you are applying for your first engineering role after graduation, consider times in the past where you are able to demonstrate your excellent team-working skills. This could be when working on group projects in class or when working as part of a team in a past non-engineering role.
Industry Skills:
The hiring manager should be able to clearly determine from your resume whether or not you have the capability to perform well as an engineer in the company’s industry. If you do not yet have any direct experience in the industry, however, this doesn’t mean that your chances of getting the job are slim. Assess which of the skills you have developed so far are most relevant to the role and highlight them in the previous experience section of your resume. If you’re applying for your first engineering role after graduation, it’s a wise idea to focus heavily on soft skills.
Soft skills like teamwork, problem-solving, communication, attention to detail, and computer literacy are often more important than engineering skills to many hiring managers, as the engineering side of things can easily be taught to a candidate with the right education and soft skills combination. Click here to learn more about the essential soft skills for an engineering position.
Communication:
Working as an engineer means that you will often be required to discuss and collaborate with others when working on plans and designs. In order to successfully work collaboratively with others, it’s crucial to be able to not only clearly communicate your ideas but also listen attentively to others. Communication skills are also extremely vital for those situations that you might find yourself in when working with people who are not engineers. In these situations, you need to be skilled at taking information that is often highly technical and putting it into words that are easy for somebody who is not familiar with the technical side of engineering to understand.
Creativity:
Often, one of the most essential skills for engineers is the ability to be creative and think outside of the box. You may often find yourself in a situation where there is an engineering problem to solve, but you have never had any direct experience with an identical problem in the past. When this type of situation arises, you will need to be able to think creatively and use your prior experiences to come up with a solution that fits the problem. Because of this, the ability to think in a creative manner and come up with new and different solutions is a key skill that many employers will be looking out for when they read your resume.
Attention to Detail:
As you know, engineering is a highly technical role where precision is extremely important. A tiny mistake could be the entire downfall of a project in the engineering field, which is why it’s so important for any engineer to possess strong attention to detail. Whether you are drafting or executing a technical plan, even a small error could result in catastrophic situations for the business or worse, the end-users. Because of this, it’s no surprise that engineering employers are looking out for applicants who can clearly demonstrate their ability to be precise and understand the importance of the finer details.
Structural Analysis:
The ability to perform structural analysis is a common requirement in a wide range of engineering fields. You will need to be skilled at determining any strains that would be placed on a certain structure or machine based on current designs and assessing whether or not the plan has the ability to withstand these strains. If you are entering the engineering field for the first time, it might be a wise idea to do some more work with structural analysis before applying if it is relevant to your field. This shows your potential employers that you have the ability to make the required calculations and assessments to ensure that the proposed plans are functional and safe before going ahead.
Leadership:
Strong leadership skills are absolutely essential for any engineer looking to get into an engineering management role, but the truth is that leadership skills can benefit engineers at any stage of the career ladder. Engineers are often placed in leadership positions, even when they are not formally employed as a manager. An employee who has the ability to motivate and inspire others is always going to be an especially valuable member of the team and will usually be more likely to be offered promotions. If you want to keep moving forwards in your engineering career and move up the ranks at your company, developing strong leadership skills is crucial.
Commitment to Education:
Engineering is not a field that you can learn about in college or university and then be done. Most engineering fields, particularly those that are heavily based on technology, are subject to constant change as old technologies are improved and replaced. Employers are looking for engineers who are not only able to but also committed to continuously learning more while they are in the workforce, as it’s important for today’s engineers to remain ahead of the curve and stay on the cutting edge of this constantly updating field. A commitment to continuous education and lifelong learning in your industry shows employers that you take it seriously and that mistakes in the future can be avoided since you will not be using outdated methods or tools.
Working Under Pressure:
Engineering can often be a challenging and high-pressure career, and some projects might be more challenging and stressful than others. Employers are looking for candidates who are able to demonstrate a strong ability to work well under pressure and channel any stress that they feel about the challenge into getting things done and coming up with creative solutions and ideas. Your resume will be more appealing to your potential employers if you are able to use it to highlight your ability to continue delivering the best results even when faced with a difficult or high-pressure situation. Working on projects that carry a lot of risks or working to tight deadlines are just some examples of high-pressure situations you could include on your resume to impress potential employers and show them that you have what it takes.
Whether you’re looking for a change of employer or entering engineering for the first time after graduation, these are the skills that employers will be looking out for on your resume.
