The world is engrossed in all AI has to offer.
There are many who fear being replaced by AI. But you set your sights on a newly-emerged profession - prompt engineer.
But how do you prepare for something that wasn’t even real just a few months ago? What kind of background do you need to have in order to apply?
More importantly, how do you write a prompt engineering resume?
Keep reading to learn how to:
- Tailor your resume to the job advertisement
- How to relate your experience and skills to the position
- Really stand out among other candidates
Pick the best format for your prompt engineering resume
You must keep one key aspect in mind at all times. Companies also struggle with identifying the type of professional they’re searching for.
In a sense, no two job descriptions are alike.
Yet, all available positions have two things in common. The candidate must be:
- Familiar with AI and automation tools
- A problem-solver at heart who has the patience to search for a solution to a specific problem
What does this mean for your resume?
As long as you have the skills and professional background required in the ad, you’re all set for your new career.
Let’s start with the resume format.
You may be tempted to ask ChatGPT to help you out. But you still need to pass the tests of ATS software recruiters use. So, you’ll still need to do some editing yourself.
Fortunately, we’ve done the research for you. We compared how various ATS tools evaluate different resumes. Everything from the file type to the fonts used.
The main conclusions in our research are:
- Fonts: Many guides point to particular fonts. The truth is that all the popular Google fonts are accepted by the ATS tools.
- Length/Columns: It’s preferable to fit everything in one page. But you’re still free to use double or single columns, so long it makes sense for your resume.
- Color and Design: Your choices here are as limitless as is your imagination. The ATS software won’t sanction you, but recruiters will appreciate a stylish resume.
- Section Headings: The tools keep track of certain keywords, such as “education” and “experience”. That’s why you need to name the sections appropriately.
- File Format: Both PDFs and MS Word files are valid. But we recommend saving your resume as a PDF, because it best preserves style and formatting.
Currently, almost all the available positions demand several years of related experience.
So, when it comes to resume layouts, it’s best to rely on the traditional reverse-chronological resume format.
But if you’re switching careers and have little to no experience, use the hybrid resume format.
This one provides enough space to share both any:
- Relevant experience you may have
- Transferable skills, courses and side gigs you’ve done
Pro tip
Regardless of your professional background, you must show you have the necessary:
- Drive for learning new things
- Patience
- The curiosity of a hacker
Add your most relevant business profile in the resume header
Given the novelty of the position, it’s vital you hint at your expertise as soon as possible. A good way to do it is to directly address the topic in the resume header.
There are two ways you can do this:
- By elaborating on your current job title
- By attaching a business-relevant social media account
The general outline of your resume header would look something like this:
- Your first and last name
- Your current job title or the one listed in the job ad
- Your location
- Your professional email address
- Your phone number
- Business social media accounts and relevant platform profiles - GitHub, Kaggle, PromptBase, StackOverflow, LinkedIn
What business profile you choose to add depends on the type of prompting you’ll be doing. If you have several, list no more than two.
In the end, your resume header should resemble the one below:
Build a strong prompt engineering resume summary
Once you've pointed at your expertise in the header, you’ll need to continue with a positioning statement.
The resume summary is the perfect section to explain what makes you the perfect candidate. For this purpose, make sure you cite:
- How many years of relevant experience you have. Even if it’s from side gigs or projects for large brands.
- Any transferable and technical skills, as well as supporting certificates
- Related professional achievements, prizes or published papers
We know it’s a lot of information to fit within one small paragraph. But there are two reasons for this name-dropping:
- It’s a quick way for hiring managers to get to know you at a glance
- The ATS software will pick-up job-related keywords faster because they’re closer to the top of your resume
A paragraph of 5-6 sentences is more than enough to make your case. Take a look at the resume summary samples below for some inspiration:
Tailor an outstanding prompt engineering experience section
Here is where you may struggle a bit. Especially if your professional background isn’t ML-related. Or, at least, tech-related.
As we mentioned in the beginning of this guide, some companies aren't certain of the job criteria themselves.
Why?
Because this isn’t a tech job, strictly speaking. As such, the KPIs are slightly different. You must be able to ask very accurate questions and understand nuance.
Concentrate on examples from your work history where you excelled at skills such as these.
For instance, if the job is focused on text-based prompting, your language skills and master of the English language will come in handy:
“Mentored more than 60 children on the autistic spectrum on how to recognize and express different emotions, based on the language cues.”
Soon other types of prompting, such as audio and video will be available. If you’re graphic designer, a composer or an actor, you can lean on your past projects:
“Developed 249 sounds and character voices through voice/speech synthesis for XYZ’s Path to the Future Game.”
Both examples:
- Lead with an action verb, specific data and challenge that had to be overcome
- An ability to work well with context, technical methods and human feedback
Тo write your own experience section entries, follow the sentence structure in the samples above. For each entry you include on your resume, don’t forget to add:
- The company name and location, along with a short description of your employer’s business operations. For freelance projects, state what the project was about.
- Your full job title
- The dates of your employment (or project involvement)
- 3-5 bullet points which highlight your most-relevant work accomplishments
Then, use the following sample to frame and format your experience section correctly:
01/2019 - 09/2021 
- •Reduced the costs of running ML solutions by $2.5 million in 2020 by optimizing the currently used software infrastructure.
- •Boosted revenue by $5 million by designing and introducing a low-tier membership plan for private users who wish to train on select skills.
- •Negotiated and signed over 40 corporate training contracts with various companies within the financial and banking sector, following the introduction of Eduai's automation and AI-related courses.
- •Written and published 6 white papers on the benefits of incorporating AI and automation tools in business.
Draw special attention to your education
You may not be a Computer Science graduate, but having an academic background is still important. It proves your:
- Ability to research, analyze and provide well thought-out feedback
- Knowledge of a particular niche, industry, science which may be relevant for the role
Imagine for a second a hospital experimenting with prompts for medical research. A technical person may be able to set up the tools needed for everything to run.
But the project also needs a medical expert to steer the research in the right direction.
So, when building the education section, remember to add the:
- Name of your degree
- Name of your college, university or issuing institution
- Duration of your course
- Location of your alma mater (if applicable)
- Relevant major or minors which directly relate to the role
Have a look at the example below to see the general outline of this section:
08/2018 - 06/2020 Feature your relevant prompt engineering skills
At this point, you may be wondering what would constitute prompt engineering skills?
It all depends on the specific job description and the type of prompting you’ll be doing. In any case, you should strive to create a balanced skill section.
Why?
Because most of the available positions require candidates to walk the fine communication line between humans and machines.
So, you’ll have to prove you are both tech-savvy and socially adept.
Hard skills are easy to scan for and because of that ATS tools are configured to check for them first. After you get vetted by the software, you’ll surely win over recruiters, too.
We’ve prepared a list with the most popular prompt engineering hard skills. But it’s by no means comprehensive because the industry is continuously developing.
Must-have 50 technical skills for prompt engineer
- Basic programming skills
- Python
- PyTorch
- TensorFlow
- R
- SQL
- MySQL
- Postgres
- Scala
- Java
- MongoDB
- C+/C++
- JavaScript
- APIs (including backend APIs)
- Cloud platforms
- Modern caching
- Load balancers
- GPT
- DALL-E
- Midjourney
- Stable Diffusion
- Bing AI
- BERT
- Discord
- NLP
- Knowledge of LLMs
- Ability to refine LLMs according to a specific business niche
- High familiarity of LLM architecture and operation
- Ability to work with multi-layered data sets, frameworks and existing ML libraries
- Data collection and analysis
- Machine learning models
- Unit testing
- End-to-end testing
- Ability to design, create and understand high technology documents
- UX
- Ability to build and lead teams
- Metaverse
- AR/VR
- Image synthesis
- Audio synthesis
- Voice synthesis
- Code synthesis
- Fine-tuning
- Research
- Troubleshooting
- Debugging
- Running and analyzing tests
- Statistical analysis
- Design, develop and implement custom prompts
- Project management
Soft skills, on the other hand, are trickier to evaluate. Yet, there is a way to quantify them.
By using the description technique listed in the experience section, you can link them to measurable results.
Take a look at the examples below to see how it works:
Luckily, social skills don’t vary too much between industries. But we’ve prepared another cheat sheet for you. This one is for the trendiest prompt engineering social talents:
Crucial 43 soft skills for a prompt engineer resume:
- Communication skills - reading & writing, soon listening and watching, too
- Ability to communicate with both technical and non-technical people
- Mentoring skills
- Creativity
- Responsible
- Trustworthy
- Accountable
- Transparent
- Accurate
- Attention to detail
- Customer service
- Ability to understand user needs
- Ability to understand and implement user feedback
- Presentation skills
- Hacker spirit
- Organizational mindset
- Ability to explain clearly
- Ability to keep up with trend and technology developments
- Resourcefulness
- Security conscious
- Socially responsible
- Risk assessment
- Ability to predict future technology developments
- Collaboration skills
- Interpersonal skills
- Personability
- Analytical skills
- Critical thinking
- Team work
- Drive to learn
- Adaptability
- Flexibility
- Problem-solving skills
- Negotiation skills
- Time management
- Organizational skills
- Patience
- Efficiency
- Focus
- Multitasking
- Dedication
- Proactivity
- Out-of-the-box thinking
Append your prompt engineering certificates
While there are already courses offering guidance on how to start your engineer prompting career, there are no job-related certificates yet.
At the same time, if you’re working in tech, there are some very useful certificates. We’ve compiled them in a list below for your convenience.
For each certificate you list, remember to mention:
- The name of your certificate
- The name of the issuing institution (college, university, association, company, etc.)
- Year of (estimated) obtainment
- Expiration date
Top 10 practical prompt engineering certificates for your resume
- Google Data Engineer Certification
- AWS Data Engineer Certification
- Azure Data Engineer Associate
- Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert (MCSE): Data Management and Analytics
- Cloudera Data Platform Certification
- Cloudera Certified Professional Data Engineer
- Data Science Associate (EMCDSA)
- IBM Certified Data Architect (Big Data)
- IBM Certified Data Engineer (Big Data)
- SAS Certified Big Data Professional
Include other relevant sections to get noticed by recruiters
Hiring managers want to see what makes you the exception when compared to other candidates. Adding extra sections to your resume is one such way.
You can stand out by sharing more about:
- Publications and white papers you’ve authored
- Memberships in industry-related associations
- Conferences you’ve organized or presentations you’ve given
- Relevant awards and prizes you’ve received
You may not have the right experience for the job. But your side gigs and active involvement in the industry will get you noticed.
Enhance your prompt engineering resume with a quality cover letter
The final way to impress recruiters is to complement your resume with an excellent cover letter.
Especially if you’re switching careers or you don’t have a professional tech background.
This is your chance to explain why you’re pursuing this new career path. And what you hope to achieve while working as a prompt engineering.
The cover letter can be divided roughly into three paragraphs:
- Address the hiring manager recruiting for the position. Then, start off with your biggest accomplishments.
- Display a wide array of transferable and tech skills in the second paragraph. Explain why these make you the best fit for the role.
- End the letter by thanking the recruiter for their patience and consideration.
Key takeaways
- Select the format which will best represent your work experience
- Link to your most relevant business profile in the resume header
- Name drop famous clients and past employers in the resume summary
- Tailor your experience section to the requirements in the job ad
- Balance out your social and technical skills
- Mention noteworthy and relevant projects, prizes and publications
- Supplement your resume with an outstanding cover letter
