How to write a Mechanical CV

Called a resume in the US and a CV almost everywhere else — the same document, and these are the rules it gets judged by.

The conventions below are the ones this field actually uses. They are what the builder applies when you pick Mechanical / Civil / Electrical, and what the rating checks a finished CV against.

What it must contain

Leave any of these out and the CV reads as incomplete to someone who hires in this field:

Work experience — Project value, tolerances, standards followed, safety record, team size.
Education
Technical Skills

The order to put them in

Order is not cosmetic. What sits at the top is what gets read before someone decides whether to keep reading.

Professional summary
Technical Skills
Work experience
Key Projects
Education
Licences & registrations
Certifications
Achievements
Languages

Section by section

Licences & registrations — Chartered status or professional engineer registration, where you hold it.

What to put numbers on

The single most common reason a CV in this field reads as weak is that nothing in it is measured. These are the figures that mean something here:

project value · tonnage · downtime · yield · defect rate · team size

Verbs that carry weight

Openers like “responsible for” and “worked on” describe a job description rather than a person. In this field these do the work instead:

Designed · Commissioned · Inspected · Optimised · Supervised · Tested · Reduced

Length

1 to 2 pages is normal for this field.

Build a Mechanical CV See a worked example

Free, no account, and nothing is uploaded — the builder runs in your browser and the CV never leaves it.

Common questions

What should a mechanical CV include?

A mechanical CV has to carry work experience, education and technical skills. The order this field expects is professional summary, technical skills, work experience and key projects.

What goes first on a mechanical CV?

The professional summary. That is where this field's convention puts it, and it is what the builder applies when you pick Mechanical.

How long should a mechanical CV be?

1 to 2 pages is normal for this field. Going longer does not add weight; it moves the thing being looked for further down.

Is a mechanical CV the same as a mechanical resume?

For applying to a job, yes - the same document under two names. Resume is the usual word in North America and CV almost everywhere else. The one real exception is the academic CV, which is long-form and lists publications.

Is there a free mechanical CV template?

Yes. ihatejob builds one to this field’s convention for free, with no account and no upload: the section order, the section names and the rating all come from the mechanical pack described on this page. It exports to PDF, Word and plain text.

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