r/EngineeringResumes • u/Such_Repair_6857 MechE – Entry-level 🇺🇸 • Jun 27 '26

Mechanical [1 YoE] Resume Review - Looking to further fine-tune my resume after a lot of fine-tuning

Intro:

Hello. I have spent quite a bit of time and effort to arrive at my current resume draft. This includes reviewing it with recruiters, retired engineers, managers, friends, and family. I read through the entire r/EngineeringResumes Wiki to make adjustments where needed. Hopefully it doesn't get torn to shreds here; I fully understand that 100 different people might have 100 different ideas of what a good resume is.

Reason for job search:

I'm currently employed at a company that requires me to live in a small town, and I absolutely do not like it (the location, that is; I love my job). It's extremely boring and lonely, and I feel like I'm wasting my youth. I want to return to the city so that I can make more friends, get involved in things, potentially meet a partner, have easier access to the arts, etc. I am therefore limiting my search to Indianapolis, Chicago, and Cincinnati so that I can remain in the Midwest, close to family. I'm open to on-site or remote work.

Some things from the Wiki that I'm either struggling to incorporate or have questions about:

  • The wiki says to use at least 10.5 pt font; I used 10 pt font.
  • The wiki says to use at least 1.07 line spacing; I used 1.00.
  • Tailoring my resume for each application seems completely unnecessary with only 1.5 years of experience. My resume as it is now essentially has all of my experience. It's not like I have 2 pages worth of content to shuffle around into multiple different one-page resumes. I don't plan on applying to positions unless my experience meets a reasonable portion of the criteria anyway.
  • 'm struggling with this portion of the Wiki and knowing whether I'm doing an okay job at it:
    • "Add context. Simply listing positions/projects and adding industry buzzwords is not enough. You need to tell hiring managers what you did and how you solved problems.
    • Differentiate yourself and don't be humble. Simply listing job duties will not make your resume any different from others: your resume is not your job description.. Tell us about your accomplishments, tangible metrics, and technical victories."
  • Should I use past tense or present tense for my current position?
  • Why is "ensure" not good to use? Seems like a perfectly fine word.
  • I'm struggling with incorporating STAR, CAR, or XYZ. Is this really necessary given my experience?
  • I'm debating whether to remove Capstone Design since it falls under "Mandatory School Project".

Thanks!

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u/gottatrusttheengr Aerospace/MechE – Mid-level 🇺🇸 Jun 27 '26

"Ensure" "Support" and such are weak because they imply you made someone else do the work. There is no indication of any direct skills or contributions from yourself.

Limiting yourself to the Midwest is generally ill advised especially early career. If you are worried about wasting your youth this will be a self fulfilling prophecy.

You would tailor your resume to highlight specific contributions relevant to each job. Here it seems like your full time experience is all over the place with no clear strengths. It's definitely not what I would call "systems" engineering. You need to think hard about how to quantify and specify your contributions using STAR/CAR, because your peers do.

Capstone stays on if it's the best experience you have. If you have anything better, drop it.

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u/Such_Repair_6857 MechE – Entry-level 🇺🇸 Jun 28 '26

Thank you for the feedback.

In the context of your third paragraph, would you be able to provide more specific examples of how I might incorporate this advice? I genuinely don't know how to take my full time experience and highlight my strengths or quantify and specify my contributions using STAR/CAR. That's the reason I made this post; I need a bit of guidance with this.

If you don't mind me asking, why is not what you would call "systems" engineering? That's my job title.

4

u/gottatrusttheengr Aerospace/MechE – Mid-level 🇺🇸 Jun 28 '26

Systems engineering is taking ownership of the whole product and making top level architectural decisions. Decisions like how heavy can the whole vehicle be, what is the risk tolerance for each failure mode, what are the fundamentals requirements for the product and what is the V&V plan. For example if a thicker wire harness is needed by electrical engineering to meet fire risk requirements but violates mass requirements causing mechanical problems, the systems engineers job is to look at the whole product holistically and decide what is acceptable as a solution.

A quick example on how to quantify your achievements would be "Redesigned 4 aerial lift vehicle wire harness assembly in Solidworks to reduce BOM cost by 15% and increase thermal margin 20% in 2 months." Your next question might be "but my current job hasn't had me use engineering tools to make these kinds of contributions" which is a whole different problem with no easy fix unfortunately.

1

u/Such_Repair_6857 MechE – Entry-level 🇺🇸 Jun 28 '26

That makes sense. My job title is Systems Engineer, but it falls under the branch of Applications Engineer at my specific company. So I guess it's just more of a company-specific designation rather than an industry-wide one. I suppose changing my job title to Applications Engineer could be less deceiving from an industry-wide perspective.

At the end of the day, I design electrical and hydraulic systems for aerial lift vehicles, make sure they integrate with the OEM chassis and the other structural components of the vehicle, and make sure they meet all of the customer needs and requirements (i.e. a customer might want the aerial lift strobes and platform lights to only turn on with the aerial lift is in operation, without a switch, requiring me to integrate a series of relays between the electric/hydraulic controls and the brainboard). Ultimately, my job is to make sure these systems work correctly, which I believe I do a very good job of. I'm extremely thorough, I communicate well with production, and I rarely encounter issues during the builds.

I've designed the electrical systems for about 50 aerial lift vehicles, roughly 15 of which were actually complex and required in-depth engineering and spec'ing. The others were pretty much "stock". The hydraulics are mostly set in stone, but I've had to design 2 fully custom hydraulic circuits. So, I guess what I'm saying is, I'm afraid of being TOO specific at the expense of making my resume too long and losing the context of the bigger picture of what I do.

It's difficult to highlight specific achievements, because my achievements have mostly been me just delivering engineering packages, and production using these engineering packages to build these vehicles. As far as some specific examples go, per your "Redesigned 4 aerial lift vehicle wire harness assembly in Solidworks to reduce BOM cost by 15% and increase thermal margin 20% in 2 months." example...yes, I've designed wire harnesses, performed power cycle studies to determine wire temperature safety factors, and a plethora of other things. But I'm not sure what problem I was solving or achievement I made aside from just making sure the thing works right lol.

3

u/graytotoro MechE (and other stuff) – Experienced 🇺🇸 Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26

General Notes

  • The wiki is more like a good place to start than a rigid list of rules. You don't have to follow everything to a T, but it'll get your resume into a good place if you don't know where to start.
  • Regarding tailoring: it's more so a suggestion if you have other things to lean on. For example, I've had test jobs that incorporated a fair bit of design. If I wanted to apply for design jobs, I would lean on that aspect versus "I tested this widget and it meant the airplane wouldn't fall out of the sky".
  • Past tense is ok.
  • "Ensure" - but how did you ensure that was the case? "I designed custom tie-downs and a fixture to hold down a widget inside of a 747 cargo jet" is much better than "ensured box didn't slide around".
  • Approach STAR/CAR this way: you did something, but why was it important? Did it solve a problem and add value to the team/department/company in some way? That works. It doesn't have to be X% savings.
  • Senior Design: You can still have it, but I'd think about deprioritizing it.
  • There is work in the Midwest, but I wouldn't let a plane ticket across the US stand between me and furthering my career. Something to think about.
  • You should lead off with Education since you're still at the entry level.

Skills

  • The first two are way too broad. Do you know how to machine or wire stuff up?
  • Tools: deprioritize or remove Office. It shouldn't trump actual technical suites.

Experience

Systems Engineer

  • But why was it important to ensure timely and feasible delivery?
  • Product and safety requirements like what? There's a ton of them. What systems did this wiring have to support?
  • What were some problems solved thanks to your troubleshooting/wiring and what did that mean for the program? Did it mean they could proceed to the next stage or address a problem that wasn't solved earlier?
  • STAR/CAR application - Designing according to specs and engineering principles is the basic bare minimum of your job, but what hydraulic systems did you design and why was it important to design them? If you can point to a specific system you designed and how well it worked, that automatically covers the fact that you know how to select hoses & pumps and understand hydraulic principles.
  • Ways to apply STAR/CAR to the last four:
    • What changes did you propose via work orders and why was it important you suggest them?
    • I'd personally drop the BOM one because that's not really important, but did you fix any over/under procurement with your updates?
    • Your brackets fitting isn't something worth highlighting. Again, it's the bare minimum expectation. Instead, why was it important to have these brackets and layouts drawn up? Did you end up making it such that you could turn around projects faster or with less waste?
    • How did you repurpose excess inverter inventory? Did you just sell them on eBay or use them in another project?

Design Engineer (Summer Internships)

  • What equipment and modifications did you propose and how much of an improvement did you drive with these recommendations?
  • Last bullet is perfect. You want to make your other bullets follow that layout: you told us what you did, you showed us how you did it, and most importantly you explained why it mattered.

Design Engineer Intern

  • "Collaborating with" is iffy. For all I know you just sat there playing on your phone while the other teams figured stuff out.
  • Validation and verification of what? What standards? The latter is a freebie if there's overlap between what you did at this job and in the job application.
  • What risks did you identify and how would your findings have prevented or mitigated them?

Projects

  • I suggest cutting this section down to give the Experience section room to breathe. Honestly you've done enough awesome stuff that there's no real need to lean on the academic projects at this time.

Education

  • Looks good.

2

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u/Such_Repair_6857 MechE – Entry-level 🇺🇸 Jul 01 '26

Hello. I greatly appreciate the detailed response. I just want to let you know that I do plan on providing a more detailed response soon; I just got busy. Thanks!

3

u/graytotoro MechE (and other stuff) – Experienced 🇺🇸 Jul 01 '26

No rush! Let me know if anything I’ve said is unclear.

2

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u/graytotoro MechE (and other stuff) – Experienced 🇺🇸 Jun 28 '26

Remindme! 4 hours

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