Civil Engineering Resume Examples

To start, all resumes should have these five main sections: contact information, professional summary, work history, skills and education.

The most important will be the work history and skills sections since it’s where you present your accomplishments as a professional.

To make these sections more attractive, we recommend you utilize numbers, statistics and dollar amounts to quantify your achievements.

For example, a civil engineer could have these metrics in their resume:

• Implemented design improvements that increased the safety rating of high-level project by 15%
• Decreased 35% of the cost of materials by negotiating with providers
• Supervised and rearranged work shifts of in-house team of 80 workers and contractors which increased productivity by 50%
• Prepared the orders for construction projects’ materials without going over budget of $3,000,000

This strategy ensures your information is backed up with hard data, making your claims ironclad.

Civil engineering requires incredibly prepared professionals that have invested in their education to perform essential duties for our society, and their compensation usually reflects that.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), a civil engineer has a median annual wage of $87,060, which is more than double the median wage for all occupations in the United States.

The highest-earning 10% of civil engineers made more than $144,560 per year, reports the BLS.

Civil engineering technicians work closely with civil engineers in the same projects and require only an associate degree and training in civil engineering technology.

The BLS states that the median annual wage for these technicians in May 2019 was $53,410.

The highest paying industries for civil engineering technicians are in local government with a median salary of $60,510, whereas the lowest paying industry is in state government with a median wage of $45,440, reported the BLS.

Civil engineering occupations will require some type of advanced education. Engineers should have completed a bachelor’s degree, and for higher-level positions, a master’s degree and licensure will be expected.

To list this education in your resume, you should first include your most recent degree. If you have postgraduate studies, list those first, followed by your bachelor’s degree.

You need to include the name of the institution you attended, the city and state of its location, and your major.

Go by this example:

University of Illinois—Urbana-Champaign

Master of Science, Civil Engineering

It’s advised not to include your high school education if you have graduated college.

Also, don’t list your graduation date. Although including those dates in your resume used to be standard, that’s no longer the case.

Only include dates if you have not graduated from university but want to show hiring managers how long you attended.

For civil engineering technicians, land surveyors, civil drafters and other professions that require an associate degree and sometimes a certificate, you can add another section called “Certifications.”

For example, some engineering technicians acquire the EIT, which is an Engineer in Training certificate.

The EIT validates your ability to perform most civil engineering tasks excluding offering services to the public, bidding government contracts, consulting and more. These can only be executed by licensed engineers.

Your work history should be centered around the civil engineering industry, such as roles in construction, consulting, civil drafting, design and some technician occupations.

Keep in mind that for civil engineering occupations it’s fundamental you have a degree, a certification or solid training at the very least. Make sure you’re professionally qualified before applying to any job.

Civil engineers fresh out of school and without a license can’t publicly offer their services, but they can be hired by companies for roles where, by law, they have no decision-making authority.

In these cases, having impactful and quantifiable achievements in your work history is vital, as well as any internships you might have done with a government agency or private firm.

In the case of how your work history should look, add three bullet points that display your most impressive achievements below each role.

There’s no need to include every single responsibility you have. Pair your accomplishments with what the employer is looking for in a candidate according to the job description.

If you have a lot of experiences you still want to highlight, you can use a cover letter to fully express your professional caliber.

Yes! Including a cover letter with your resume is the professional standard, and it’s an excellent way to improve your chances of getting a job interview.

In a cover letter you can expand upon any achievements you had to cut short in your resume and instead express a compelling overview of your experience.

Showing your career progression as a civil engineer can mean noting how you began as an intern that produced blueprints, used CAD softwares to create dimensional drawings, and assembled documents for contractors, which in turn prepared you to efficiently supervise these tasks as senior civil engineer.

To help you craft this stellar document, JobHero has a library of cover letter examples you can check out.