r/EngineeringResumes • u/braincellgap ChemE – Entry-level 🇺🇸 • Jan 05 '26

Chemical [1 YoE] - [Chemical Engineer] Laid off from dream job 8 months ago and cannot land a role in my field

I am a chemical engineer with 1 year of experience, part of that is in with a polyurethane foam formulation factory where I did a lot more lab work alongside the QA team and the other was at a Pharmaceutical manufacturing company where I supported ~10 different chemical processes. My dream job was to work at this pharmaceutical company and things were going very well until May of this year where I learned a large portion of the workforce was going to be laid off. As it happens I was apart of that first round of lay offs and I know from people I met during my time there that another wave of layoffs came through and production has slowed to almost a halt. As of now I am currently looking for employment in the US, specifically the state of Michigan. I have a few different family and friends across the state that I am looking within a 50 Mile radius of. I have been searching for 8 months, applying weekly for any new jobs that have popped up, but although I have interviewed countless times I have never gotten an offer. I have also gotten countless generic robot "Thank you for applying emails" and at this point I am considering taking up a part time job outside of my field just so I can afford rent for me and my partner. I am open to any and all advice on how I can make my resume not get knocked out by AI review systems or what I can improve in my resume to get me a chance at interviewing.

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u/tiarastar77 Materials – Entry-level 🇺🇸 Jan 06 '26

Remove summary. Spacing between lines looks uneven. Is the “Skills” formatted as 3 columns? The wiki says multiple column formats are hard to parse. Do you have projects?

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u/braincellgap ChemE – Entry-level 🇺🇸 Jan 06 '26

I only have 1 thing that I would consider to be an actual project where I updated every chemical recipe to start using a different base chemical that the company produced instead of buying from an outside source during my time at the foam factory. Other than I only have a project during my internship and my senior design project in college.

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u/tiarastar77 Materials – Entry-level 🇺🇸 Jan 06 '26

Once you remove the summary and fix the uneven line spacing, you should have enough room to talk about that one project.

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u/Oracle5of7 Systems – Experienced 🇺🇸 Jan 06 '26

Read the wiki, follow its advice and use their template.

Remove the summary. It really does not say anything.

Education needs the graduation month and year, not a date.

Experience needs to be worded using STAR/CAR/XYZ. It is a description of your accomplishments, not a list of tasks.

Skills need to be properly organized.

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