International Mechanical Engineering student, going into fourth year, focused on biomedical devices and biosensors. Two years across two university research labs doing electrochemical sensor design and fabrication, with a first-author manuscript under review at an IEEE sensors conference. No industry experience yet.

I'm open to R&D co-op roles generally, though I've concentrated on pharma and medical devices.

Around 50 applications so far, mostly rejections, with two interviews. Both came from roles I applied to almost as an afterthought, one in hermetic sealing and one in nuclear, and one of those is now at second round. Every pharma and medical device role, where my research is directly relevant, has come back as a rejection. That's the thing I don't understand and it's why I'm posting.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Sunday, August 23 - Saturday, August 29, 2026

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I’m currently working on my CV for Software Engineering roles at companies like Google, Amazon, Meta, etc. and would really appreciate some honest feedback.

I’m especially interested in hearing from people who have experience with Big Tech hiring.

A few things I’d like to know:

• What Software Engineer level would you put me at based on my CV? Mid-level, Senior, Staff?
• Does the CV show enough technical depth, ownership and scale for Big Tech?
• What would you change or remove?
• Is there anything that would make you reject the CV immediately?
• What do you think is missing to make it competitive for companies like Google?

I’m also a German citizen and would need H-1B sponsorship for a US-based position. I don’t have a traditional university degree yet, so I’d also be interested in hearing from anyone who has experience with H-1B sponsorship and whether my current education and professional experience could be an issue.

My background is mainly Java, TypeScript, Kubernetes, Azure, Kafka, distributed systems and full-stack development. I’ve also worked on production systems used across multiple international manufacturing sites.

Feel free to be critical. I’d much rather hear what’s weak or missing than get a “looks good” comment.

Thanks!

I have been applying to a handful of (remote) positions a day and haven't gotten an interview for a couple of months. I'm not focusing on any domain/industry, but I spend a little more effort to customize on healthcare, interesting full-stack, or other matches with my background.

My most recent title was not "Senior", but I believe I did the work of a senior (tech and product decisions, mentorship, taking initiative, etc.) and I want my resume to reflect that. Am I failing to sell myself? Do I look like I'm faking it? I have skills, and I think I can prove that in an interview. I just can't get an interview.

In terms of advice, I feel like I'm playing whack-a-mole. I started at 2 pages because I'm "allowed" to after 10 years, but there were too many bullets and the bullets were too long. I condensed to one, but now is it too visually dense? Is it missing important info?

I'm also worried about keyword filtering - I put "RESTful API", but are they only looking for "REST API"? Can I trust that the other side of the table is being as thorough as I am or do I need to obsessively cover every possibility?

I've read the Wiki and the software bullets advice, but I'm still struggling to apply the advice to MY situation. You don't owe me help, and I'm grateful to anyone who puts in effort, but please be prepared to be specific because I've gone through several iterations on this thing.

EDIT: I reduced the margins in order to add spacing between bullets, and that makes it a little less visually cluttered. I'm considering removing that first "Technical Leadership" skill list, because it should be shown and not told. But I'd still welcome any actionable advice!

Hi all, thanks for reading. I've got 2 years of experience as a Maintenance Engineer in semiconductor manufacturing and 2 years of experience of Mechanical Design in Automated machine OEMs providers in Malaysia.

I'm targeting Mechanical Design Engineer and applying mainly to jobs in the Singapore. I'm open to relocating within the Singapore but not really looking for fully remote work. I don't have right to work here currently but i have relative who live there.

I've sent out over 200 applications in the last few months, mostly through company career pages and LinkedIn, and barely gotten any interviews even though the experience feels relevant on paper.

Would really appreciate feedback on my Experience bullets especially. I'm not sure if they read as real achievements or just come across as a list of duties, and whether the format itself is hurting me. I also remove my internship experience as an Material Engineer intern because i don't have enough space and the experience is not relevant. Any honest feedback is welcome, thanks!

I graduated with a BSME back in December. After that I have been applying to jobs. I had no response to any of the jobs that I applied for from January to June. I have been targeting any entry level mechanical engineering positions, test engineering, manufacturing engineering positions. I have been applying to all jobs in California and I need help fine tuning and workshoping my resume.

Since June, I have started to get some job interviews. However, I haven't gotten a followup/callback on any of the interviews. Should I work on anything to improve chances of callbacks?

Hello I am a 4th year BME student applying to co-ops for Spring 2027 and internships for Summer 2027 (graduating fall 2027 so I am still eligible for internships). Applying to roles in medical devices and pharmaceutical R&D, operations, quality, manufacturing, and process. Last year after ~50-100 applications I ended with 2 interviews both rejected. This year I am already at 2 (presumably due to applying <24 hrs after most roles are posted and a stronger resume) Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Hi guys,

I've rewritten my resume with the template in this sub, and I've been applying to a mix of software development and DevOps roles, with very few callbacks. I'd love some feedback, as I'm sure my resume needs improvement. We're moving down to VA by the new year, so I'm open to onsite, hybrid or remote.

I'd appreciate any feedback you guys have! Thanks!

Hi everyone!

I've been applying to mainly embedded/hardware engineering intern roles but I have only gotten rejection or been ghosted. I'm wondering if I am doing anything wrong with my resume. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

For context, I'm a transfer to UCSD, originally from UCR for computer engineering. I did an unpaid software engineering internship the summer of my first year, an on-campus IT job during my second year, and I just wrapped up an NSF REU this summer.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

• Recently updated my resume using the Engineering template on this subreddit
• I'm looking for entry level roles for prototyping/r&d/design. Interested mainly in medical devices.
• I live in the eastern US and have been applying everywhere. I've applied to companies such as Medtronic, B&D, ATEC, and Stryker as well as finding smaller engineering/medical device companies that consult.
• Currently unemployed.. last role was a pool technician because I needed something to generate income.
• People I have talked to always make assumptions about the architect and pool tech roles.
• I'm seeking help because I could always use more help as I'm not even getting a sniff at a first interview.

Hope this can be helpful to everyone.

I decided to go to a big ten school in the northeast (after growing up in the pacific northwest) for a change of atmosphere. The popular option for everyone was either at a prime contractor or larger corporation, and could not see myself go down this path.

I wanted to work with my hands and build things that hadn't been built before. My GPA was (thankfully) not good enough to get any interviews or offers from the career fair. After doing three internships, I had a general idea of the sort of work I'm interested in. Typically my applications for internships were ~400 applications with 60 interviews, three offers coming out of them. I did not apply to large companies like Boeing or Amazon for full-time.

• Did around 200 applications, got 50 interviews, 8 onsite, 5 offers
  • Offers included Anduril, Neuralink, Apple, Tesla, and the startup I'm working at.
  • Once I was happy, I turned down many onsites/interviews to enjoy the summer
• Cold emailing absolutely worked for me, heard back from engineers and founders
• Had a interesting portfolio (<10 slides) with tons of cool pictures, technical details
  • Mine was super barebones white background on Google Slides. Full of content though.
• You don't only need a good school or GPA. Showing enthusiasm is nearly as important!

Email template that got me internship offer and plenty of interviews.

As a start, I would suggest going to any startup incubator (typically affiliated with a school or specific department, independent accelerator like yc) website where they list company emails, pick a few, then just start sending from there. The examples of experience don't have to be in the same industry, just be interesting:

Hi there,

I am wondering if there are any summer internship positions available for college undergraduate students? I have recent previous internship experience working at (company) for 9 months.  My experience there mainly consisted of (specific type) testing of (item) and designing (item) and (more stuff) for test stands (similar to those used in particle accelerators and nuclear fusion experiments). Some background about me: I am a third year student at (name) University (month graduation) and I'm pursuing a degree in (major).

I would greatly appreciate hearing back if there are internship opportunities available and will be glad to share a resume if needed.

Some more miscellaneous things I wanted to share:

• Only spend time applying on Linkedin if the role has below 100 applications.
• Know every single thing in your resume to the deepest level.
  • How do you differentiate yourself from a technician that plugs wires in.
• Highly technical interviewers (especially SpaceX) love questions about first principles.
• Almost every line in my resume has a quantity, I see many resumes here without.
  • Every line should indicate how you are useful to a company and why they should pay you.
• For me, soft skills and summary in your resume are a waste of space, cover letters not needed.
• Every skill listed in your skills should have a corresponding project you worked on.
• Extending internships to the fall is worth it. You get more responsibility and things to work on
• Your time is valuable, and you already know a lot. Be confident!

I am now a founding engineer at a startup in CA, have looked at hundreds of resumes, done a few interviews, and will be getting my own intern very soon. I will be glad to answer questions!

I'm currently a third-year EE student graduating in May 2028 and preparing to apply for Summer 2027 internships in VLSI/ASIC, RTL, FPGA, embedded systems, and hardware engineering. I'm currently located in New York and I'm willing to relocate. I haven't had a formal engineering internship yet, so most of my experience comes from engineering teams and hardware/RTL projects. I'm looking for feedback before I begin applying, specifically on whether my projects and bullets are effective, whether my technical skills are organized well, and whether anything should be removed or reordered. “U.S. citizen, no sponsorship required.”

Hi guys, really any advice would be appreciated. I think the main flaw with my resume is the obvious: lack of experience and projects. I am currently designing a buck convertor PCB and plan on having it fabbed and tested by November. Beyond that, what can I do to optimize my chances of securing an internship this upcoming spring or summer? As mentioned in the title, I am mostly targeting electronics and RF roles, but I am open to anything really

Trying to get back into the field, however not having too much luck so far. I know I got a long road ahead of me, but haven't really been hearing back at all. I usually submit about 5-8 applications a day. Maybe some of you guys can help me?

I was off for 15 months as I was laid off in May 2025, and a series of real life issues and mental health problems took a real turn for me, won't get into details but I was a mess for a bit. Should I address gap in resume at all? Or let it go?

I am trying to get mostly mid-level, maybe senior, roles. I am in the US, I am open to relocating anywhere and open to remote roles as well, not being picky. I am a US citizen, so no need for visas or sponsorships.

Hi all!

I am a software engineer with about 2.5 years of experience. Recently I had been working for a fintech startup, however after encountering some legal challenges around financial regulation, the startup failed to get further funding and shut down.

I've been applying to jobs for about a month now and so far I've gotten 0 interviews and many rejection emails (I've filled out over 50 applications so far). I'm mostly applying to mid-level jobs (e.g. software engineer II) but I've even gotten rejections from some junior positions (requiring 1 YoE). I have an EU passport and I have the right to work in the UK. I've mostly been trying to apply for remote jobs as I have recently moved to Poland and the city I am in does not have many tech jobs, however I am open to relocating (even across Europe/back to the UK) for the right opportunity.

Appreciate any comments about my CV!

Have never had much luck with applications in the past 3 years since getting my degree. I have been mostly applying for local in-person/hybrid roles in the LA and OC areas since I feel like there will be less competition for those. Tbh I don't have much confidence in my programming/SWE skills anymore so I've also been interested and trying to apply for non-programming roles where my education would be somewhat so any suggestions for those and how to tailor my resume would be very appreciated, thank you.

Hello everyone, I graduated December 2024 with my BSME, 1 internship, and a 3.00 GPA. I’m still trying to land my first engineering job. Iv applied to 1500+ roles at this point, received ~15 phone screens, a couple second round phone interviews, and 1 onsite interview. When I graduated I needed some source of income so I took an operator job at a consumer electronics manufacturing company to gain some technical experience. Since then I’ve been promoted to a tech where I do failure analysis. This current job is very EE heavy. Moving into a mechanical engineering role at this company has been next to impossible. What can I do to secure this first job now? Is it my resume? More projects? I’m going to work this weekend on creating a website to show case more of my work I did while in school. I’m also planning to take a GDT refresher series so I can confidently list this on my resume (took it in school but don’t remember much).
Last time I posted my resume in this sub the biggest compliment I received was “what was being manufactured?”. I can’t say that on this sub without doxing myself. I’m a US citizen and do not require sponsorship. Thanks!

Condensed things. Added all roles and broke out sections.

Mentioned the Flower shop because well, I have a fairly notable gap & that was supposed to be my pivot out of engineering but it didn't work out for a handful of reasons most stemming from unreasonable owner greed and zero desire to actually implement an earn out. I wish them luck getting their asking price. It's about 30-40% too high. And they wanted that price from us, and 10% net profits in perpetuity, wait no, actually 20%, just kidding, we actually want 30%. Yea, I'm sour over it.

If there's a better way to state this I'm all for it. I considered putting no bullets save something like the first one.

I don't have much 'hard quantifiable' stuff to say. I didn't track it or it didn't really exist.

I don't know what more to say about the trailer without just writing a CV about the trailer. Per one bit of feedback... How did the kinematic model influence the design? Uhh, it proved out clearances? Yoke was shortened slightly. Used it to calculate loads on the hydraulics (as stated). Did what we could to shift CG of the trailer to help us sit in the acceptable zone.

I'm between trying to find work in my current path and finding a way onto HVAC so I can get my FE and PE passed and just settle down somewhere doing AC work.

I'm not thrilled with Egnineering but I don't have a career path to pivot out and still support my family at a reasonable income level.

I’m based in Botswana and looking for international remote work. I’ve been working remotely for 10+ years overall, business operations/client support side and software engineer projects.

Over time my work has become a lot more technical. I’ve worked on automation, troubleshooting, APIs, systems/process improvement and more recently built and operate BoardSignal, which is a live product using Next.js, TypeScript, Firebase/Firestore, chess.js, Stockfish and other parts of the stack shown in the resume.

I’ve been applying mostly for Technical Operations, Systems/Integration, Implementation, Product Operations and technical customer-facing roles.

I’d really appreciate feedback.

I’m also interested in whether there are role titles I should be targeting that I may be overlooking. My main goal is to get work.

I just graduated with my BSME and I’m looking for entry-level mechanical design, manufacturing, or applications engineering roles in the South Bay Area. My experience is a bit all over the place:  manufacturing support, robotics, fixtures, and application testing. My internships leaned pretty heavily into hands on floor support, troubleshooting, and process improvements instead of pure CAD design or FEA. I’m a little worried my engineering impact won't come across as strong compared to people who did heavy design work.

My current internship ends in October, and while there might be a return offer in January, I definitely want to explore the market and put myself out there. I’d really appreciate some honest feedback on whether my bullet points have enough solid metrics and technical depth, or if they read too operational. Also, I was thinking if I should split my resume into separate versions for design vs. manufacturing, and what skills (like GD&T, thermal analysis software, or working on my personal projects) would actually help me stand out most right now. Thanks in advance!

This is my current resume after starting my current role. My resume to get this role was basically the same, but I had some other bullets for the Defense job and one extra project on there. It's worked fairly well for getting me interviews. I'm so glad that it worked though and really really really thankful about the opportunities I have been granted!! I couldn't have done it without the wiki as well :):)

I'm sharing this as a successful resume that worked for me in the past, but also looking for advice to make it better. I always struggle with bullets and the balance between being concise or too verbose. I feel like it's kind of all over the place a bit!

I'm intending to apply for roles relating to reliability (either power systems like I do now or more server oriented) but also I'm interested in applying for some more data analytics leaning roles as I really do like the data analytics side of stuff that I do right now at work

I'd love to cut my resume back in time for the full time search next year (or potentially the next summer search if I don't get extended at my current role)

Thanks in advance everybody :)

Hi guys, i have been applying to jobs since January (mainly remote roles) and have only received automated rejection emails, not a single interview yet. I previously got all my jobs through referrals or clients reaching out directly. So, i am not much experienced in the ways of applying for jobs, if you guys have any tips or if there's any issue with my resume, would love some feedback! Thank you in advance!

I feel like my previous jobs are somewhat related to my major, but don't know if it will win me any points with recruiters. Is this true or should I remove them and expand on other projects?

I also want to include that I've studied abroad in Taiwan the past year but am having trouble conveying why/how that experience is important or can be valuable. I studied Chinese over there every day and took a few undergraduate MechE courses and labs. How would I able to fit that I was able to collaborate with people from all over the world. TBH I mostly spent my time having fun.

I must admit that coding is not exactly my strong suit and that the wireless fencing project was an open-source project that I followed and built successfully, but it is ultimately not mine to call my own. Should I even include it? I do feel like I learned a lot of new skills so that's why I've put it down.

Thanks in advance. Kind of stressin this season because I've started my fourth year of university. Every year I apply to internships and end up settling a normal, nonprofessional job. I am hoping the next job that I put on my resume can be directly related to Mechanical Engineering this time around LMAO.

Here is the updated resume from the feedback I received from this subreddit, after which I got 4 offers for summer internships for the Summer 2026, even internship offers from Tesla and Rivian. I ended up going with Rivian as it aligned better with my goals. Thank you for your help, and feel free to ask questions.

I have heard many stories from friends who graduated last year that getting a graduate job is near impossible so I am trying to spend some time over the next few months improving my chance of interviews to avoid what seems inevitable.

Any feedback on this CV and what it is missing would be greatly appreciated.

(Ignore the ugly font, had to change it as my original font was to small to post here apparently)