Before you get to evaluate projects yourself, it’s you who will fall under the scrutiny of your employer.
Employers will judge your quality engineer resume for your inherent problem-solving abilities, discipline, and a talent for communicating with others.
- Are you an expert in ISO 9001:2015 and Six Sigma quality management?
- Do you have the perfectionist’s attention to detail that can drive everybody insane, but guarantees the reliability of your products?
- Can you rig a test in 15 minutes to illustrate the problem to your higher management?
- Are you a positive person eager to help others and improve the process?
A quartet of yeses indicates you have the right skills and mindset. But, how do you get this across to your employer?
Tag along! In this guide, we’ll teach you how to craft an effective quality engineer resume that can easily double the interviews you get invited to.
Here’s what you’ll read in our quality engineer resume guide
- Analyze and use 10+ quality engineering resumes without repeating the same mistakes
- Learn what recruiters are looking for when reviewing quality engineer resumes
- How to use targeted language and specific keywords from the job description in your resume
- What role does each resume section have - header, summary, experience - and what common errors you want to avoid
- How a skills section reinforces your resume and why it helps you get past HR automation
- Where to position your engineering education and what certificates will enhance your application
Looking for related engineering resumes? let’s help you out
Writing a comprehensive quality engineer resume - what you need to know
You already know how to write a proper quality engineering resume. You just don’t realize how much it relates to your profession.Start with a blank sheet.
A good resume is just one page long anyway.
Begin by analyzing the criteria in the job description.
Your resume will become instantly more relevant to the recruiter if you mimic the language or your employer.
- Which industry do they operate in? What terminology is commonly used in their field?
- What keywords are most frequently used on the page? Skills, technologies, quality control methodologies?
- Which responsibilities are listed first, or emphasized in any noticeable way?
Make this the core of your quality engineering resume, and at the very least, you should pass through the automated applicant tracking system.
Even if your resume has reached a recruiter’s desk and it’s relevant to the job offer, it doesn’t mean they’ll give it more than 6 seconds of their time.
Your application can get rejected for any objective or subjective reason:
- Resume is too long...or too short
- The sections are incorrectly formatted
- The font used is too small or hard to read
- Your professional summary is not detailed or specific enough
- The work experience is too generic
As a quality engineer, you should be able to recognize inefficiency and disorganization. Act accordingly - eliminate all unnecessary details and focus on the skills and experiences which are sought after by employers.
Below are some of the major points you want to mention in your quality engineering resume.
Here's what to accent on in your quality engineering resume
- Extended experience in the industry of your employer - manufacturing, oil & gas, pharmacology, software development, etc.
- Mastery of quality control standards such as ISO 9001:2015
- Practical use of strategies like Total Quality Control, Six Sigma, Lean manufacturing, Lean Six Sigma and others
- Great math, statistics and data analysis skills
- Quality management software - MasterControl, CAQ.net, IntraStage, ComplianceQuest, etc.
- Strong interpersonal skills and excellent communication skills - written and verbal
- Ability to work in a team and cooperate with other departments
Content is important, but if you make your evaluator work hard for it, they can easily discard your resume without reading a word.
You need a proper resume format. Break down your information into sections and give them enough white space, so your resume is readable and easy to scan.
A proper quality engineering resume will include the following resume sections.
Don't forget these important quality engineer resume sections
- Resume header with your name, title and contact information
- Career summary where you pitch your proposition - experience, skills, achievements.
- Work experience section - reinforce your pitch with facts and results from your previous employment
- Skills section - invaluable in modern day resumes due to automated scanning
- Education and certification section - engineers need diplomas and specific training depending on the industry
The sections above are absolutely mandatory if you don’t want your application trashed.
Depending on your case, you may want to include additional sections to your quality engineer resume:
- Seniors may hold a number of achievements which will go nicely into a dedicated achievements section;
- Juniors and students who lack a lot of real-world experience will benefit from a section dedicated to their personal and school projects.
Keep in mind that your quality engineering resume needs to fit into only one page.
If any section seems irrelevant or out of place, it’s best to remove it.
Choosing the best layout for a quality engineer resume
An optimized resume layout will help you fit the most information while remaining readable and scannable.
The chronological layout is the standard format accepted widely at every organization. List all work experience, projects, education and other notable information starting with the most recent items. If you’re part of several projects and have diverse interests and experiences, the hybrid, double-column, resume design is more favorable.
You can organize the information more efficiently putting all relevant items at the top of the page.
Whichever layout you choose, your quality engineering resume should always start with a header and summary section.
How to make an eye-catching quality engg resume header
The resume header may seem like an obvious thing. You can’t get it wrong…right?
It’s deceptively simple, but as a quality engineer, you know little things often have significant impact on the whole system.
Forgetting to include some of your contact details, like location, may leave a bad impression.
Outside of worst case scenarios, there are nuances which recruiters will notice and use to distinguish candidates.
For example: How relevant your professional title is to the job title offered?
Let’s review a few quality engineer resume examples and compare.
Quality engineer resume header samples
This applicant is using an incomplete title which will easily confuse your recruiter.
The Navy is a huge organization with more than 600,000 employees.
They can be an active diver, an accountant or a quality engineer at a navy manufacturing facility.
Recruiters won’t know if you don’t put it on your resume. It may be included somewhere else on the resume, but you can’t assume they will ever get to read it.
Don’t take chances! Make sure your professional title is as close as possible to the job offer you’re applying to.
Let’s see a better quality engineering resume example.
Now this is a proper professional title. There is absolutely no mistake what Mr. Morley does for a living.
Just this detail will make a difference to a recruiter who may have 50 resumes to review and needs to shed off the dead weight quickly.
This quality engineer has also added their Linkedin profile, which holds additional details about them and costs nothing to add.
What your quality engineer resume summary should include
The whole purpose of the summary section is to help recruiters decide if they want to look into your application further or move on.
A decent starting point is answering the questions below:
- How much quality engineering experience you have?
- Which industries have you worked in?
- Do you have professional certifications or education qualifying you for this position?
- What technologies and methods of quality control have you exercised in your previous positions?
- Anything truly notable about yourself?
Try to wrap this information in a couple of sentences and make it as relevant as possible to the job description.
Let’s analyze the next couple of quality engineering resume samples.
2 quality engineer resume summary examples
This is a job description, not a career summary.
This applicant has used their summary to write about their experience with a simple employer and at the same time not sharing anything particularly interesting.
Here we have an impactful message which demonstrates the applicant’s experience in the oil and gas industry.
They have worked with a high-profile project management software for pipeline projects.
It’s not mentioned, but you’d reasonably expect this quality engineer to have written reports regularly.
A recruiter will most definitely give this quality engineering resume a more detailed look.
Analogously, for student quality engineering resumes, applicants should focus on their education, making a connection between their degree and the job requirements.
The next quality engineer resume sample takes this into account. How different is it from your resume?
How should you frame your quality engineer experience on the resume
You’ve made a fair amount of claims in your professional summary.
Now that recruiters have reached your work experience section, they will expect to see strong arguments.
Quality engineers treat their work experience like a SOP - detailed descriptions of their responsibilities and daily work.
That’s not at all what recruiters want to see.
Your hiring manager knows very well what the inspection and testing process involves. They’ve seen quality reports before - probably more than you have.
Instead, you want to show them the results:
- What value did you bring to your last company?
- What quality improvements have you implemented?
Use facts and figures from your job:
- How did you solve a production bottleneck at the stamping press?
- Have you retrained operators to use a more effective production sequence?
- Were you able to cut down the total cost by reducing scrap?
Quality engineer resume experience examples
- •Quality control on the production floor
- •Inspected production after manufacturing to ensure standards are met
- •Collected quality and performance data and compiled reports for upper management
- •Helped machine operators resolve problems
- •Participated in quality review meetings by management to provide insight on the production process and the problems requiring immediate action
Hang on.
Are they a real engineer?
The work experience listes their title as a "quality assurance specialist". There’s nothing wrong if they moved up from an operator to a QC position.
However, an engineering position will most certainly require a bachelor’s degree as a minimum. Your recruiter might think you don’t have the necessary qualifications for the job.
The last thing you want is to confuse them and make it hard for them to understand your experience and skills.
- •Designed testing procedures and quality control processes for the petrochemical industry
- •Conducted lab tests to ascertain composition of products - Reformulyzer, DHA, Specific gravity, Octane number, Sulfur content, etc according to ASTM and ISO quality standards,
- •Used Six Sigma to identify and eliminate inefficiencies in the production process.
- •Reduced production time by 2% by suggesting the use of hoists in critical areas to operators lift heavy bags of materials into the hoppers.
- •Prepared full suite of documentation regarding quality assurance and control - quality plans, SOPs, test reports, using VelocityEHS.
- •Automated chemical analysis dashboard universally accessible by all higher managers. Real time status reports available every morning.
This candidate has done a great job writing their work experience. It’s structured well and packs a ton of information.
The title is relevant to the job offer.
The candidate opens with the industry they work in to remove all doubts.
Most importantly, they demonstrate commitment and passion to improve the process. They have created value for their employer.
That’s the kind of QA Engineers companies are looking for.
Get this right, and you can expect a phone call very soon.
How to describe your entry-level quality engineer experience on the resume
It’s difficult to write about your work experience when you’re still in school or just cleaned out your dorm room.
There’s just not a whole lot to add. Or is there?
Read the job posting carefully and make a note of all requirements - education, engineering aptitude, software use, hard skills, soft and interpersonal skills.
Try to analyze what expectations they have from successful candidates.
Now, work your way through your own skills and experiences and find items which will match the job description.
Focus on them and fill the gaps with additional skills and experience you think are valuable.
That alone, coupled with the tips below, should give you a competitive edge over the rest.
What skills should you include in your quality engineer resume
We already discussed how to position critical skills in every section of your resume.
However, a dedicated skills section helps tracking software scan and validate your resume.
Large organizations which receive thousands of applications frequently employ such tools to remove the ones that don’t match their desired profile.
We’ve added a couple of great quality engineering samples below to help you discover ideas for your own resume.
How to position your tech skills
The skills listed in your quality engineering resume will largely depend on your particular industry and job offer.
Below we’ve collected a small pool of technical skills you may find relevant to the job offer.
Top 10 technical skills for quality engineer resumes
- Quality control and project management strategies
- Six Sigma
- Lean manufacturing
- Lean Six Sigma
- ISO 9001:2015
- Total Quality Control
- Deming's 14-Point Philosophy
- Reliability engineering
- Quality control tools
- Pareto chart
- FMEA
- Fishbone diagram
- Six Sigma 5S
- 8D Methodology
- Quality management software
- BabtecQ
- CAQ.Net
- IntraStage BlackBelt
- ComplianceQuest
- The Lean Machine
- AssurX
- Manufacturing
- Welding
- Drilling
- Cutting tools and equipment
- Hot and cold forging
- Stamping
- Extrusion
- Injection moulding
- Mechanical engineering
- Statics
- Kinematics
- Dynamics
- Strength of materials and material science
- Fluid dynamics
- Thermodynamics
- Electrical engineering
- Electromagnetism
- Power generation
- Industrial automation
- Semiconductors
- Electronics
- Circuit design and analysis
- Printed circuit boards
- Programing and software development
- Networking
- Chemical engineering
- Nuclear engineering
- CAD software
- AutoCAD
- Inventor
- SolidWorks
- NX
- Creo
- Catia
- Rhino
- Data processing and analysis tools
- Excel
- Mathlab
- MathCAD
How to frame your soft skills
Excellent technical abilities are a prerequisite for becoming a quality engineer.
You need to understand beam loading scenarios and not be afraid to take out the calculator.
However, this is not what you’re expected to do on a daily basis.
Your work is with the people - the ones who do the math and push the buttons.
It’s your job to help them do their jobs better and yield a superior product.
So, when you talk about your soft skills, support them with actual examples from your work history.
This is a much better way of talking about them rather than just simply stating them.
Check out the table below and add all relevant soft skills to your quality engineering resume.
What soft skills should your quality engineer resume have?
- Analytical thinking
- Problem solving
- Practicality
- Time management
- Attention to details
- Communication skills
- Creativity
- Teamwork
- Organization
- Leadership
- Project management
- Motivation
- Proactivity
- Reliability
- Accuracy
- Patience
What’s the best way to frame education on your resume
Fewer quality engineers graduate with that exact title.
If you have one, make sure the emphasize it in early on in your quality engineering resume.
It’s a huge asset, giving you an edge over candidates who learned quality assurance while on the job.
Most quality engineers obtain a traditional engineering degree and start their professional life in other roles within their industry.
Whatever your diploma is, you should list it in a dedicated education section along with a few critical details:
- Engineering title
- Year of graduation
- GPA if great, skip if not
- Institution
- State
If you’re a student, you may want to expand a little bit on the courses that are relevant to the job offer.
In general, don’t focus too much on your degree - thousands of other people have it and it’s hardly the X factor recruiters are looking for.
What are the top quality engineer certificates for your resume
In case you don’t have formal QA/QC training, you want to think about professional certifications. They will close the gap and give your management and QA skills some backup.
Some of the certificates listed below are invaluable and may be worth more than an engineering degree from the perspective of your employer.
Consider obtaining one if you don’t have a lot of experience in quality assurance and control.
The following list includes the most wanted quality engineer certificates on resumes
- American Society of Quality Certification
- Lean Six Sigma Green Belt
- FMEA Certification Exam
- PMP Project Management Professional
- SAP Certification
- FE / PE Certification
So, what makes a great quality engineering resume?
- Focus on the skills, experience and knowledge most relevant to the job offer
- Emphasize them in every section of your resume and use the same language and keywords found in the job description
- Triple check your resume header - even a tiny mistake can send your application to the shredder
- Don’t mistake the career summary for a job description. Use impactful language to persuade recruiters to keep reading
- Use your work experience to demonstrate you have been a valuable asset to your employers
- Add a well organized skills section which is relevant to the job. Edit and reorder when applying to different job offers
- Don’t forget about your education and certifications. Add a dedicated section that’s easy to locate and read.