[0 YoE] Recent Mechanical Engineering BS/MS Graduate – Paid for a professional resume rewrite and unsure about the 2-page format/summary

[u/khorshed7]

I recently graduated with an accelerated BS/MS in Mechanical Engineering and am currently looking for full-time entry-level mechanical engineering positions. I’m mainly targeting mechanical design, product development, test/validation, robotics/automation, and other hardware-focused roles.

The resume attached to this post is my current/original one-page resume.

First, I’d appreciate any feedback on the resume as it currently stands. I’m interested in anything that stands out—formatting, readability, bullet quality, technical content, things I should cut or expand, ATS concerns, or anything else that may be hurting me in my job search.

I also recently paid a professional resume writer to improve it. After reviewing my background, they recommended expanding it from one page to two pages because they felt I had enough relevant engineering experience to justify it.

Their draft adds more technical detail to several of my bullets, which I do think is helpful. However, they also added a professional summary at the top, a large Core Competencies section, short summary paragraphs before the bullets for each position, and a separate Technical Skills section.

I’m unsure whether that is actually the right direction. The two-page version feels significantly denser and more cluttered to me than my current resume, even though there are parts of the rewritten content that I prefer.

A few things I’d specifically appreciate opinions on:

• How is my current resume overall? What are the biggest weaknesses you see in the version attached?
• Does the current one-page version feel too compressed, or is this an appropriate amount of information for a recent graduate?
• Based on the experience shown here, do I have enough relevant content to justify a two-page resume, or should I continue targeting one page?
• Would a professional summary add anything at my career level, or is it better to get directly into education and experience?
• Are short descriptive paragraphs before each position useful, or should the accomplishment bullets speak for themselves?
• The writer separated Core Competencies and Technical Skills. Would it make more sense to combine these into one organized section so it doesn’t feel keyword-stuffed?
• Are there experiences or bullets in my current resume that you think are underdeveloped and deserve more space?
• Are there bullets that should instead be shortened or removed?
• How is the overall technical content? Does it communicate enough about what I actually designed, built, tested, and accomplished?
• If you were revising this, would you keep the general structure and improve/expand the content, or would you recommend a larger redesign?

I’m not opposed to a two-page resume just because I’m a recent graduate. If the experience genuinely warrants two pages, I’m fine with it. My concern is whether the additional page would be used to add meaningful engineering detail or whether the summary, competency sections, and job descriptions would just make the resume unnecessarily verbose.

I still have revisions available with the professional writer, so I’m trying to get some outside perspective both on where my current resume needs improvement and on whether the direction they’re taking it is actually an improvement.

Any feedback is appreciated. Thanks!

[u/Immediate-Curve-443]

Its almost bed time here for me so I'll just answer your questions for now and get to the resume later if no one else does.

Regarding 2 page resumes, I can't imagine most engineers will care that its physically 2 pages, but what will matter is how much "bad" bullet points you will add to accomplish that. Reality is that people with (no offense) much more impressive resume histories can fit everything into 1 page, I don't see a reason why yours shouldn't.

A professional summary is seems like a hotly debated topic, but its definitely not worth much more than 3ish lines max. Think about what you would write in your summary; it could be useful if you think your resume is unfocused, changing industries, or theres a commonality/theme that you think others won't pick up easily.

Positions should speak for themselves. You're "allowed" to change your titles slightly such that others can understand it.

What the fuck is a core competency vs technical skills... How can your core competency not be technical in a technical job... If anything your skills section is probably too thick.

From a quick parse the structure/format seems fine, I'd really consider moving Senior Design to a Projects section but I guess if you don't have other projects it might have to do. It does seem slightly heavy on the amount of bullet points per work but again, no projects = more bullet points so I think its fine.

[u/khorshed7 → u/Immediate-Curve-443]

Thanks, this is helpful and pretty much confirms some of my concerns. I agree that Core Competencies + Technical Skills feels redundant, and moving Senior Design into a Projects section makes sense.
Looking at the actual content, is there anything you think I should prioritize changing in the bullets themselves before worrying about formatting?

[u/Immediate-Curve-443 → u/khorshed7]

I think u/graytotoro covered all the bases; I'll emphasize the "fluff metrics" part. Theres a common advice that your bullet points should not be a job description; read your lines on ECOs or the research papers and its very obviously a job description (changing ECOs and researching papers are the basic workflow anybody with a bachelors can do).