Civil Engineering Resume Example

Every resume is unique in its own way. Crafting one requires you not only to showcase some basic resume writing and formatting skills but, obviously, to make your value as an employee stand out.

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Employers don’t take fuzzy resumes lightly. A single unattractive feature of your resume will make them turn off your proposition. Or, they will put it away for the future.

Anyways, a poorly written resume diminishes your chances to make it to the next stage of candidate selection.

How do you write a good civil engineer resume then? Let us find out!

But before you go all-in , the first step might be to read about jobs of the future in civil engineer industry.

Сivil engineer resume sample

Each resume holds some common sections, no matter what the expertise of an applicant is. Such a unification allows recruiters to find the data they look for faster and digest it easier. Civil engineering resumes are not different in this regard.

To make it to the technical interview, you need to present a standard-looking yet catchy resume with sufficient description of personal qualities, motivation, and goals; education and professional experience, plus significant achievements relevant to the job in question. If it all fits the picture, they’ll hire you!

Civil engineer resume sample: structure

The actual structure of the job application you should choose depends, first and foremost, on the requirement of an employer. Aside from that, play to your strengths and stick to the generally adopted best practices in writing, relying on a civil engineer resume sample.

A common resume must include these sections:

• Header;
• Summary;
• Education;
• Experience;
• Skills.

As we will later show, alterations can be made in exceptional cases – and they can greatly accelerate your job search.

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Example of civil engineer resume

Applying everything we have suggested so far, here is a civil engineer resume sample. Remember: the best engineering resume format is the one that a potential employer suggested.

Header for your civil engineer resume

The golden rule is to keep it simple.

The header in a sample resume for civil engineer usually looks like this:

John Smith, Houston, TX

(123) 456 78 90

john.smith@samplemail.com

Note that there is no irrelevant data, only a name and work account contacts. If you have a full portfolio stored on a social media website, list it too.

Looking for desirable positions and jobs, remember to consider the format proposed by a given company itself, if any.

Main mistakes in header when you write your civil engineer resume

Some common mistakes job seekers commit in the header include:

• pasting an unnecessary photo, especially one that looks rather informal;
• listing personal social media account links (unless they are job-related);
• loading the resume with contrasting visual elements.

While writing resumes engineers may mix up information and include detailed qualification description in the header.

Leave the rest to the following sections.

Therefore, a rather questionable header is something like this:

John Smith

Houston, TX

(123) 456 78 90

john.smith@samplemail.com

Summary for civil engineer resume with examples

Summary is the essence of your civil engineering resume. It is meant to reflect your motivation, past experience and duties, the vision of further professional development, and other crucially important data. Three to four sentences at most.

It is a way for an employer to get to know you better.

I am a civil engineer with more than 5 years of professional experience, focused on designing multi-storey buildings in full legal compliance to safety and environment protection standards.

So, although the example above is a perfectly valid one, you could also go with a more personal variant:

Civil engineer with 3+ years of professional experience, passionate about building sustainable and durable infrastructure; best versed in plumbing systems and electric networks in suburban environments. Also a friendly and supportive team player.

Main mistakes in summary you can make

As always, one of the ways to spoil your resume is overdoing the best practices.

• bloated summary;
• data duplication;
• bald claims or, on the contrary, weak verbs.
  

Note how this one does everything wrong:

Took part in the Thames bridge construction from 2014 to 2016. Looking to apply vast experience in bridge design in a large-scale project in your company. [...]

This is not a Summary, rather a mix of details that belong to other sections. See how it manages to sound weak (“took part” how exactly?) and overconfident (“vast experience”) at the same time? At least it addresses the needs of that particular company!

The bottom line is to consider sample civil engineering resumes but not to get too creative “improving” them.

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Civil engineer resume sample education section?    

As the name suggests, the section lists the places of study and qualifications received. As you’ll see, this section does not bear any particular significance in a sample resume for civil engineer. Neither is it the lengthiest one: it usually contains a single two-line entry unless you acquired a second higher education or other certifications. Here is a passable example:

Longford Tech

Aug ‘02 - May ‘04

Master of Science in civil engineering

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Common mistakes for education section

For this highly specialized profession, a high school diploma is not relevant and therefore should not be included. Some other mistakes include:

• failure to use white spaces efficiently;
• vague dates;
• placing the Education section at the top.

Consider the following civil engineering examples:

1:

Longford Tech

2002 — 2014

Master of Science in civil engineering

2:

Longford Tech ◆ 2002 — 2014 ◆ Master of Science in civil engineering

Both do not specify the months of study, which may be taken as negligence. Both do not use basic formatting (font size, bold font, tables, etc.), making a section harder to perceive. The latter uses the free sheet space more efficiently (if you still need a lot of space to cram Job Experience and Skills in) but still looks cluttered.

Civil engineer resume sample experience part?

If it is hard to fit in all the engineering experience, leave only the three most recent places of work but also a link to a social media account with a full working experience description.

Bridge Building Corp., Senior Civil Engineer

May ‘16 - Jun ‘20

• Lead the Thames bridge construction project.
• Managed and mentored a team of 14 civil engineer experts and other experts.
• Communicated in person with municipal services and subcontractors.

[...]

Make sure that the style is consistent across this section: use only past tense (lead, managed) or imperative case (lead, manage) for verbs, do not mix them up (lead, managed, communicate).

Common mistakes for experience part

Although recruiters know better what they like and dislike about resumes civil engineers keep making some simple mistakes:

• Overextending the experience section;
• Indicating no measurable proof of their impact;
• Mentioning different dates across different open sources (a resume and a LinkedIn account).
  

The following example has the same content as the example above, but it is much less readable:

Bridge Building Corp., Senior Civil Engineer May ‘16 - Jun ‘20

Lead the Thames bridge construction project; managed and mentored a team of civil engineer experts and other experts; communicated in person with municipal services and subcontractors.

If the resume is structured like this, recruiters may frown at it and refuse to have any business with you.

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Civil engineer resume sample: skills

Including Soft Skills in a resume on par with civil engineering skills is a strong emerging trend. If you leave only technical, “hard” skills, recruiters may consider it as one of the factors to prefer another candidate: the one who is explicitly identified as easy-going, communicative, team-player, leader by reason, etc.

Correspondingly, break the Skills section in two:

Soft Skills

• Supportive
• Friendly
• Patient
• Perseverant

Hard Skills

• R
• AutoCAD Civil 3D
• MS Excel / Google Sheets
• Asana
  

It is also valid to list the skills in each subsection in one line, if it corresponds to the general style of the resume, using a small delimiter, like this:

R 🞄 AutoCAD Civil 3D 🞄 MS Excel / Google Sheets 🞄 Asana

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That, of course, is justified if you need more space for the Experience or another section. On the other hand, it is perfectly fine to have a full 2-page resume where you can describe your significant achievements without omissions. Include pagination in this case.

The soft skills subsection is also a good place to include certifications like Leadership or Speech and similar ones. They do not directly relate to your civil engineering skills, yet they increase your professional value.

Listing civil engineering skills (literally) as hard skills would be considered too obvious and therefore is not advised.

You don’t need to include it

Soft skills are not simply personal qualities. “Pet lover” is not a soft skill. A recruiter may ask how this particular quality was evident in work and what positive effect it had. Thus, here is a bad example of presenting skills in engineer sample resumes:

Soft Skills

• Supportive
• Pet Lover

[...]

Hard Skills

• Civil Engineering
• Asana

[...]

Asana is a management tool that can be used in any niche. Employers would expect to see an applicant possess specific skills they listed in the job description, so it is a good idea to cross this one out if you have something better up your sleeve.

To Sum Up

Always study multiple sources when you learn how to write an engineering resume. You’ll greatly expand your knowledge on the subject and collect a bunch of invaluable tips that will help to secure a future work position.

For example, did you know that the following ridiculous trivialities may doom your resume to be discarded instantly?

• informal email address (like pinkiebabe89@mail.com, or destroyer_of_worlds@mail.com);
• .DOC resume file format;
• a single typo.

When recruiters scan through your resume and notice “carrers” instead of “careers”, they may think, ‘Nah, this person is inattentive’ and drop your file in the trash.

So even if it is a kind of a no-brainer, we will say this anyway: double-check, proofread, and don’t let inconsistencies slip through.

And good luck with your job search!

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