The Best CV Advice for Engineers

Each year, more and more engineers operating across many different sectors are turning to agency and bank work as opposed to searching for full-time positions with certain companies. As a result, engineers are now required to maintain and update their CV so that is presentable to potential employers at any given time.

We’ve put together the following list of advice which will help you optimise your CV in the most effective way possible, and as a result, will help you secure greater amounts of work as an agency worker.

The art of a two page CV

For many other professions, we usually advise professionals to strip back their CV to a 1-2 page document – due to the short amount of time an employer tends to spend reading each CV put on their desk. However, when it comes to engineering, we strongly advise you to be more expansive – especially when it comes to your previous work experience.

It is certainly not uncommon for the best engineering CV to be at least 3 pages – and in some cases 4 or 5.

Unlike CVs for other professions, we would advise a comprehensively more in depth CV, especially when it comes to your experience as an engineer. With engineers working in a lot of contract based roles – it is normal for you to work a greater amount of roles compared to that of most other professions – therefore you will have a lot more to talk about.

Focus on skills

Whilst an employer will certainly be looking to ascertain your personality and work ethic through your CV, they will care a lot more about your what skills you have acquired during your training, and throughout your career.

Consider beginning your CV with a short personal statement – outlining your methods and processes, and most importantly – what you can do, and what an employer will gain with you on-board.

This provides you with an excellent opportunity to insert industry related buzzwords and terminology of which you believe an employer will be looking out for in your CV.

Remember the details

Due to the diverse nature of engineering, and the complex nature of the work involved, you will be able to go into greater about the projects that you have worked on throughout your career – giving background information about each of your employers, what your different entailed etc.

Employers looking for engineers are going to want to know exactly what you are capable of, so giving them a good idea of what you’ve achieved so far is the best way of communicating your eligibility to them.

The odds are that these employers will have a good working knowledge of the engineering trade, therefore will recognise what you’re capable of through your job titles alone. However, if you do find that one or maybe two of your job titles are unusual – make sure you find a more generalised term, or explain in more depth what the role(s) entailed.

Back everything up with evidence

And lastly, and potentially most importantly, when building a case for your employment, it is a good idea to back these up with specific citations of your achievements, and examples of where your employment has been of particular benefit to your previous employers. Like forming a coherent argument, or writing a good essay, proof of what you are saying is the most powerful way of proving a point – which in this case, is why an employer should offer you the job!

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