Industrial Engineer Resume

Industrial engineers play a vital role in running businesses and overseeing production processes. As a result, these professionals are in high demand, with a projected employment increase of 14% over the next decade.

If you’re looking for a job as an industrial engineer, you should create a resume highlighting your industry-specific skills, accomplishments, and experience to set you apart from other candidates.

Here are three tips for writing an outstanding industrial engineer resume that’ll impress hiring managers and land you more interviews:

1. Highlight your industrial engineer skills

When the production floor gets disorganized or chaotic, businesses look to industrial engineers to restore order. These professionals are problem solvers who use complex mathematical methods and models to reduce waste and increase the efficiency of manufacturing processes.

To achieve the best results in an industrial engineer role, you’ll be expected to have specific hard skills and soft skills — both of which should be highlighted on your resume.

Hard skills are abilities acquired through practice and training that you’ll use to excel in your target industrial engineering role.

For instance, your expertise in statistical software like MATLAB, Python, SPSS, and R will help improve linear optimization and data analysis so your team can create more efficient designs and models. These are other relevant hard skills to include on your industrial engineer resume:

• CAD software: AutoCAD, Revit, SolidWorks
• Spreadsheet software: Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, Zoho Sheet
• Database management software: SQL, Microsoft Access, Oracle
• Presentation software: Microsoft PowerPoint, Canva, Prezi
• Supply chain management
• Production planning

Also, you’ll need to highlight your soft skills as an industrial engineer to show your ability interact with others in the workplace.

For example, good written and oral communication skills will help you maintain contact with workers from multiple departments and convince them that your designs and methods are the best for improving industrial efficiency. Here are more industrial engineer–related soft skills to mention in your application:

• Problem-solving skills
• Project management
• Critical thinking
• Negotiation
• Resource and personnel management
• Creativity
• Judgment and decision making

2. Open with an attention-grabbing industrial engineer resume summary

A resume summary explains a candidate’s relevant expertise in 2 sentences at the top of their resume. If this section is well-written, hiring managers will be convinced to read your whole application.

In this paragraph, emphasize your experiences and accomplishments that are most relevant to the industrial engineer position you want.

Here’s a sample industrial engineer resume summary to guide you with writing yours:

Industrial engineer with 8 years of experience performing quality troubleshooting and implementing new system designs. Able to work with diverse client bases and manage active projects within short deadlines. Looking to leverage advanced technical skills, work methods, and technologies to facilitate rapid growth and high profitability.

And here’s how each sentence emphasizes job-relevant information to grab employers’ attention:

• Sentence 1: mentions how much industrial engineering experience the candidate has and what roles they’ve performed
• Sentence 2: showcases the candidate’s industrial engineering skills and abilities
• Sentence 3: highlights how the candidate plans to use their expertise to achieve results in their new position if hired

If you’re a recent industrial engineering graduate, you should write a resume objective — a short paragraph showcasing your abilities and educational background — instead of a resume summary. Because you have little or no work experience, focus on how your skills learned through college, volunteering, and internships will benefit the employer.

Follow these tips to write an impressive industrial engineer resume objective as a recent graduate:

• Begin with a job-specific personality trait (like “Driven” or “Passionate”)
• Don’t use personal pronouns (because they waste space and make your resume sound too conversational)
• Outline your professional objectives and state what you plan to achieve at the company
• Keep it short and to the point (2–3 sentences is long enough)
• Mention the name of the company and the position you’re applying for to show that you’re not submitting a generic resume that you use for every application

3. Include industrial engineer–related keywords in your resume

Often, hiring managers use an applicant tracking system (ATS) to scan applications to save time spent reviewing resumes from unqualified candidates. This software screens resumes, filtering out those without relevant keywords.

So include keywords from the job description to increase your chances of making it past the ATS and into a hiring manager’s inbox. Writing an ATS-friendly resume and using industry-specific keywords in your resume summary, skills, and work experience sections also shows you’ve paid close attention to a company’s job posting and have the exact qualifications hiring managers are looking for.

Here are industrial engineer–related keywords to mention on your resume:

• Lean manufacturing
• Six sigma
• Continuous improvement
• AutoCAD
• ISO standards
• SAP products
• Kaizen
• Microsoft project
• Industrial engineering