Finding a great job in the engineering and manufacturing industries is rarely easy, as the most highly-coveted positions always attract loads of talented candidates. If you want to stand out from the crowd, you have to pull out all the stops.
Your resume is the very first impression you’ll make on the company, so it needs to be engaging, impressive and extremely straightforward. Learn how to put together a perfectly polished document that always positions you as the best person for the job.
Customize It
Approximately 250 candidates apply for each corporate job opening, but only four to six people will be invited for an interview, according to Glassdoor for Employers. Generic resumes are quickly tossed aside when hiring managers are combing through hundreds of applications. If you want yours to stand out from the piles of others on their desk, you need to customize it to fit each specific opportunity. Make adjustments to the format, your work history, bullet points listed with each job and any other relevant details needed to tailor your resume to perfectly fit each job.
Quantify Statements
Any candidate can inventory an impressive list of skills on their resume, but talk is cheap until those assertions are backed up. For example, when applying for an environmental engineer job, instead of simply stating that you’ve worked on projects to help improve air quality, note that your efforts effectively reduced pollution levels in a specific area by 5% in 2015. Similarly, instead of just saying you coordinated efforts for local residents to dispose of hazardous materials in a safe manner, specifically highlight that 10,000 pounds of harmful materials were collected and properly removed thanks to your efforts.
Incorporate Keywords
When companies receive hundreds of resumes for each open position, there’s no way to review each one. Instead, many use keyword scanning software to search for words and phrases most applicable to the job — and if yours doesn’t contain a certain percentage, it will be cast aside. Determine which terms are most significant by carefully reading the job description, highlighting those that appear multiple times. Increase your chances of being selected for an interview by finding a way to work those words and phrases into the copy once or twice in a manner that sounds completely natural.
Link to Your Online Presence
If you have a career-oriented website, blog or social media presence, impress the hiring manager by linking to it in your resume. Dedicating part of your free time to your job shows your true passion for the work — a quality every company hopes to find in a candidate. Most candidates do not have supplemental information to display, so use this to gain a competitive advantage.
Making a career move is a huge decision that should never be taken lightly. Premium Staffing, Inc. has the client network needed to help you take your manufacturing or engineering career in the right direction. Contact us today to find a position that maximizes your skills!