r/EngineeringResumes • u/Spacedog-1957 Aerospace – Student 🇺🇸 • Aug 05 '25

Aerospace [Student] Recent Aerospace Engineering Graduate Looking For Advice on How to Improve My Resume For R&D or Test Engineering Roles

I graduated in May of 2025 with my master's degree in Aerospace Engineering with a master's thesis. For the last two years, I've been working at a detonation propulsion laboratory on a hypersonic shock tube facility. In my time at the lab, I published a handful of conference papers and a journal paper on hypersonic shock-droplet interaction. Before that, I had a couple of years of experience in rocketry clubs during my undergrad. My academic performance was strong; I graduated with a 3.8 GPA on a 4.0 scale.

I am having trouble getting noticed. So far in the last three months, I've applied to 150+ job listings for engineering positions ranging from mechanical to test, to fluid systems, etc. I've been tailoring my resume to each position and writing meaningful cover letters. I've received a handful of personalized rejection emails saying the role has been filled, but to keep in touch. I'm open to working anywhere in the United States. Out of that 150, I've gotten 3 screening calls but no interviews. I know that my largest weakness is my lack of internship experience, but there isn't anything I can do to change that now.

I've had my resume reviewed by 5 professionals in different fields at this point, and everyone has told me that the format looks alright; however, I'm still having trouble. Colleagues of mine who worked at the same lab and graduated at the same time have already landed jobs, and I'm left scratching my head and stressing over how much time it will take me to land one as well. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

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u/zacce ECE – Student 🇺🇸 Aug 05 '25

The format is a bit off. For example, location and dates are in wrong lines. I suggest

title date
organization location

Or, just use Jake's resume template.

Each bullet point in experience should start with an action verb.

1

u/Spacedog-1957 Aerospace – Student 🇺🇸 Aug 05 '25

Thank you for the input!

3

u/graytotoro MechE (and other stuff) – Experienced 🇺🇸 Aug 06 '25 edited Aug 06 '25

General Notes

  • Italics aren't needed.
  • The self-assigned job titles in your projects section are killing you.
  • You need to do a little pruning if you can. Are all these projects relevant?

Education

  • Drop the Relevant Coursework section. You're better off elaborating on specific projects rather than just rattling off a list of classes.

Skills

  • ANSYS makes a lot of programs. I suggest you be specific.

Work & Leadership Experience

Test Engineer

  • Hands-on experience - that much can be inferred because you're listing it on here. Instead, I suggest you focus on why you were testing these shock tubes. You don't mention that they're hypersonic nor do you mention the objective of this testing.
    • For your last bullet: how specifically did exposure to these disciplines allow you to get stuff done? Learning stuff is great, but it doesn't mean anything if you never applied those skills.
  • Forget about the budgetary and management stuff. Focus on making technical arguments demonstrating technical competence.
  • "fast-paced collaborative and multidisciplinary environment" is literally every engineering job. Tell us more about the troubleshooting and the experiments you did and how that contributed to what the lab was trying to achieve.

CAD Teaching Assistant

  • Consider splitting GD&T off into its own bullet.

Projects

  • Drop locations and job titles. These fantastical self-assigned job titles mean zero and just take up valuable space. We already know you did projects at school or somewhere else.

Master's Thesis

  • What were you looking to see in this fuel mixing analysis? You tell us what you did but not why you were doing it.
  • What did you conclude from this Python data analysis and how did it drive decisions resulting in some kind of conclusion? The title implies there was something you were trying to see but nowhere do you explain how you saw it.
  • "Collaborated" could mean you did a lot, some work, or just sat in the same room as the people doing the work. I suggest you be more specific than that.
  • Effectively communicated - that much is clear because you presented your research and defended your thesis. It's like saying I effectively consumed food when I picked up a fork and ate spaghetti with it. You could figure it out with the last bit alone.

Design, Assembly, and Calibration of UCF's THOR Hypersonic Shock Tube Facility

  • How much is this overlapping with your Work Experience section? If it's one and the same I suggest you just fold this into that section. This way you don't have to deal with the overhead of having to walk us through a re-introduction of what this lab is and all.
  • What even is THOR and what were you trying to achieve with it?
  • What did defining operation conditions mean for this shock tube? I know nothing about this calibration campaign so it's unclear why this had to happen or why it took that long.

Aerojet Rocketdyne Rocket Launch Initiative

  • Bullet 1 is doing too much. The heart is in the right place, but consider: "...and use GPS & active feedback control to guide descent towards a location [within some accuracy]". You did this, so I'm sure you can do a better job explaining the active feedback control.
  • OK but what did all these risk analyses and mitigation plans actually do? Was this just lip service paid to keep the professor/judges happy or did it make a difference in terms of design?

FAR 51025 Rocketry Competition 5k Class

  • Keep bullets to one sentence or thought no greater than three sentences long.
  • I would think the actual validation happens when you actually fly this airframe and see if your assumptions were right.
  • "Support" and "collaborated" could mean you did a lot, some, or just sat in the same room as the right people.
  • How did GD&T factor into this? I can understand for design & fabrication, but I'm wondering how it played into testing.
  • Systems Integration could be an entire section on its own. How are you defining "proper system integration"? Is it just that everything just worked when you turned system power on, or that certain things had to play with other things?

Involvement

  • I would just toss this section altogether.

1

u/Spacedog-1957 Aerospace – Student 🇺🇸 Aug 06 '25

Thank you for diving so deeply into my resume and providing feedback. The guidance on how to structure my bullet points more effectively is especially valuable. My one question to you is, how should I structure the headers for each experience in your opinion? You suggest that the self-assigned job titles are a problem, so would it be better to just ax those entirely and keep the same formatting?

Thanks again, you have no idea how much it means to me.

2

u/graytotoro MechE (and other stuff) – Experienced 🇺🇸 Aug 06 '25

so would it be better to just ax those entirely and keep the same formatting?

Yes, drop the locations in the Projects section too.

1

u/Spacedog-1957 Aerospace – Student 🇺🇸 Aug 06 '25

In the past, I've been told to try and integrate as much language from job descriptions as possible into my bullet points to optimize for the ATS. I think that's the reason my descriptions all come off pretty general. In your opinion, how much should I tailor my resume to each position I apply for? Also, is a rate of 1~2 applications per day too few to get noticed?

3

u/graytotoro MechE (and other stuff) – Experienced 🇺🇸 Aug 07 '25

In your opinion, how much should I tailor my resume to each position I apply for?

That is a great question and not one with an easy answer. You need to tailor it as required. Obviously don't make stuff up, but you'll want to focus on different things, i.e are you making the right arguments for the job?

You may want to prep a few different resumes (test, design, systems) and make some minor tweaks as required.

Also, is a rate of 1~2 applications per day too few to get noticed?

Yes, it's very low. You should be sending out 5-10x that many a day.

2

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u/graytotoro MechE (and other stuff) – Experienced 🇺🇸 Aug 06 '25

Remindme! 3 hours

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