Civil Engineering Resume Example

Civil engineering is a broad category, encompassing many different sub-disciplines, including:

• Materials science and engineering
• Coastal engineering
• Construction engineering
• Earthquake engineering
• Environmental engineering
• Geotechnical engineering
• Water resources engineering
• Structural engineering
• Surveying
• Transportation engineering
• Municipal or urban engineering
• Forensic engineering
• Control Engineering

For Higher Pay, Write an Effective Resume

Pay for different positions within the industry will vary depending on experience level, skill level and geographical location, however Civil Engineers can expect to make a healthy $80,000 per year.

Because the general practice of civil engineering requires you to be a “jack of all trades”, the resume tips on this page will be relevant regardless of what your specialization is.

In the above resume, the candidate has experience doing general civil engineering and survey technician work. Here’s why this engineering resume is especially effective:

Bullet Points are Quantified

You can improve your resume by quantifying your job responsibilities. Here are three aspects where the candidate used quantification to make their resume more clear and impactful (shown in bold):

Management/Supervision:

• Supervise 18 project employees, including in-house, external contractors, and sub-contractors

Training:

• Trained three new employees in a supervisory capacity to take over similar projects and aid company expansion

Budgeting:

• Inspect inventories and prepared orders for civil projects and refractory materials in line with budgeted figures averaging $2,000,000; coordinated and conducted section trials

Quantification is especially effective if you can prove how much money you stayed under budget through strong negotiation skills, intelligent use of resources, finding cheaper materials to use, or saving costs on unnecessary labor.

Bullet Points are Specific, Targeted, and Achievement Oriented

Your bullet points should be targeted at the job that you are applying for. Therefore, they should not be general, unspecific, and bland.

You can write the most successful resume possible by reading the job description the hiring manager wrote carefully. For instance, if the hiring manager emphasized attention to safety, then the following bullet point from the resume sample above would be highly effective.

Here’s what it says:

• Received several Safety Awards for attention and adherence to all safety procedures, resulting in an ongoing record of zero OSHA recordable accidents

As you can see, the sample also goes into detail about doing survey technician work, so the candidate heavily emphasized his/her skills in this area.

Skills Section is Targeted

Civil engineers need to have a lot of knowledge of math, science, and technical software to do their jobs well. Your familiarity with a host of different engineering software programs will make your resume far more convincing.

“Hard skills” like software, tools, and technical knowledge are far more important on a civil engineering resume than “soft skills” like teamwork, communication skills, and the ability to work under pressure.

If you do have those “soft skills”, try to emphasize them in the cover letter, or in your bullet points. “Show” that you have those skills by writing about your achievements, don’t just “tell” the hiring manager that you have them.

Remember to be honest, however. It would be embarrassing to claim that you know how to use a piece of software, only to fail on the job because you exaggerated.

Select Engineering Related Action Words

Think carefully about what verbs you are using to begin your professional experience bullet points. The first word is the most importance in the bullet point and thus should be selected specifically for the responsibility being described. Some words are decidedly more managerial, such as “challenged” or “delegated”, while others are more team working oriented like “adapted” and “recovered”. Using the appropriate verb for your appropriate career level is also an important consideration to take into account.

Below is a small sampling of the longest list of action verbs in the universe:

Acquired Acted Activated Actuated Adapted Broadened Challenged Chaired Charted Circulated Clarified Delegated Delivered

Demonstrated Depreciated Described Enabled Encouraged Endorsed Enforced Engaged Fit Focused Forecasted Formalized Governed

Granted Improved Improvised Inaugurated Indoctrinated Liquidated Litigated Mapped Marketed Operated Performed Perceived Recorded

Recovered Recruited Serviced Settled Shaped Shortened Tested Testified Tightened Upgraded Widened Witnessed Won