Writing an engineering CV that gets shortlisted

Engineering recruiters skim hundreds of near-identical CVs. The ones that get shortlisted share a habit: they show evidence, not adjectives.

Lead with projects

Your most persuasive material is what you've built. For each significant project — final-year project, placement, society build, hackathon — give:

• What it was and your specific role
• The technical challenge and how you approached it
• The outcome, quantified where possible ("reduced weight by 18%", "cut cycle time from 40s to 25s")

One well-described project beats a paragraph of "strong problem-solving skills".

Make the technical real

List tools, methods and standards you've genuinely used — CAD packages, MATLAB, FEA, specific manufacturing processes — but only ones you can discuss in an interview. A skills list you can't back up is a liability.

Tailor to the discipline

A CV for a mechanical design role and one for a controls role should foreground different projects. Read the job description, mirror its language where it's honest to, and put the most relevant evidence first.

The fundamentals still count

• One to two pages, clean and scannable.
• A 2:1 or relevant module grades visible if they're strong (some schemes accept a 2:2 with an accredited degree).
• No typos — in engineering, attention to detail is part of the assessment.

Treat the CV as a small engineering problem: known constraints, a clear objective, and evidence-led decisions. That mindset shows.