Submitted by BDillon33 on
in
Forums
I am refining (completely blowing up) my old resume and have a question regarding an super entry level position.
I am a plastics engineer and tool a summer job after my Freshman year as a machine operator (run a work cell or a machine in semi-automatic mode, do quality inspections, etc). I know the casts say not to include things like 'pizza boy' but in my opinion this is valuable experience. I worked on the floor in the summer heat, interacted with a variety of people, and the truth is it helped me get my engineering co-op and is a good speaking point in interviews. The issue is that there isn't much for accomplishments. I did not decrease defects, only informed the correct people.
Should I just leave out the accomplishment bullets? Strike it completely?
Need bullets
If you are going to have it on your resume, you need accomplishment bullets. If you remove the bullets, you should remove the job.
How well did you do the job? Is there a way to quantify how well you ran the work cell, the machine, did quality inspections? Any data on how well you did your job should be listed as an accomplishment.
Good Luck.
John
How far out of school?
How many years have you been in the workforce since college?
I too have highly relevant and great experience working as an intern in college...but it was a long time ago and do not show it on the resume.
10 Years
I started working in 2003, but list this experience in 1999 and 2000, a co-op from 2000-2003 and research assistant at school from 2002-2003
Include it if you can
Shop-floor experience is very valuable & relevant to a candidate for an engineering role.
As an engineering manager, I value real-world experience. Many younger engineers can produce a great design, but their design is very difficult to produce. Younger engineers also can be arrogant, looking down on the machine operators who have to make the parts.
The fact that you ran the machines and performed the quality inspections tells me that you have some experience in both sides of the job. That experience make you stand out from others. Far more than a pizza delivery person.
And as John said, find and list the accomplishments. Did you produce your parts at a low defective rate? Did your inspections identify defective parts prior to the batch reaching the customer? etc..
I might be talking through my hat
I am not a reference by any means, I graduated only last year.
What I used to do in my resume when there wasn't enough experience to fill a page and yet they weren't important enough to warrant a full paragraph was to simply put the bold part of the MT resume model without description. Usualy for the low-level entry jobs, the title is self-explanatory.
In my case, the point was to show that I was working since I was 15 and that I have an extensive experience considering my age and education.
The further my carrer goes, many of my jobs will become "one-liner" as i call them. At some point, they won't be useful anymore and will be gone from my resume altogether.
Hope this helps.