I recently gave my Engineer Your Own Success seminar at a large engineering conference. In my seminar I have a short section on resumes and interviewing. During this portion of my presentation, an engineering executive who was in the audience shared some very powerful advice with us.
This executive worked for a large engineering company and one of his responsibilities was to review resumes of prospective candidates and decide which ones they should interview.
He told us that in one instance, in looking through a pile of resumes, he saw one on which the candidate mentioned one of the projects that the executive’s company was working on at the time. So for example, let’s say the executive worked for XYZ Company, the resume said, “I am currently managing the John Smith Memorial Hospital project which is very similar in nature to XYZ’s Bill Taylor project in that it has a budget of $X,XXX,XXX and the clients goal is to ABC.” The executive told us that as soon as he saw his company’s name on the resume, he decided to interview this candidate. Whether or not this candidate got the job is not important, getting the interview today can be more than half the battle.
In today's world where there are hundreds of applicants for engineering positions, following this executive’s advice could be the difference between you being considered for the interview, or getting passed over like most everyone else. Please consider customizing each resume to match up with the company whom you are applying to; I think you'll find it's worth the extra time.
This is a guest post by Anthony Fasano, PE, author of Engineer Your Own Success. Anthony found success as an engineer at a very early age and now writes and podcasts to help other engineers do the same. Visit Anthony’s website atEngineeringCareerCoach.com and subscribe to the top 3 resources Anthony has used to become a partner in a firm at the age of 27.