Resume Guidelines for Civil & Construction Candidates

1. Constructing a Job Duties Section

Civil & Construction candidates may be responsible for a wide range of duties such as construction site setup, maintenance of machinery, planning, and designing of infrastructure and building facilities projects.

Explain the type of building work that you for example pipelines, dams, railroads, harbors, bridges, airports, bridges, harbors, tunnels, mass transit systems, channels, water systems, roads, power plants or irrigation sewage systems.

List your top five duties for each role that you have held during the last decade, for example, site preparation and cleaning, digging trenches, preparing materials like mixing cement or paint, setting braces/scaffolding to support construction work, directing traffic, operating heavy machinery or removing hazardous materials from a building site.

2. Education & Training Requirements

The Civil and Construction industries are strictly regulated, which means your certifications and licensing credentials carry significant weight in your resume. Engineers would typically require a Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) Examination to become an Engineer in Training (EIT) and then a CE (Civil Engineer).

Other construction qualifications include CET (Civil Engineering Technician), Certified Master Builder, Construction Technician Certificate, Certified Construction Manager (CCM), Certificate in Concrete Finishing, Licensed Safety Professional (LSP) and LEED Green Associate.

3. Skills to Highlight on Civil and Construction Resumes

Divide your skills section into two parts:

Part 1 – Technical Skills

Pipe Fitting, Rigging, Able to lift 150lbs, Welding, Cement Mixing, Laying Foundations, Brick Laying, Drilling, Hazmat Materials, Drawings & Schematics, Masonry, Plumbing, Roof Erecting, Electrical Wiring, Carpentry, High-Rise Construction, Building Codes, Safety Procedures

Part 2 – Computer Skills

Distance Meters, Rhodes Arcs, Hydraulic Modeling Software, Minitab, MathWorks MATLAB; Trimble Geomatics Office, Cartography, ESRI ArcView, ArcGIS, Intergraph MGE, C, Microsoft Visual, LabVIEW, Verilog, AutoCAD, Bentley MicroStation, PTC Creo Parametric, STAAD.Pro Autodesk, Bentley, CATIA, Parametric

4. Quantify Accomplishment Statements

Divide your accomplishments into four specific areas to showcase your ‘’value add” to potential employment companies:

  • Number of constructions sites worked
  • Size of teams and scope of responsibility
  • Size of location, site, floor area maintained
  • The dollar value of construction projects

5. Why should you follow up on your application

Never assume that no feedback means you have been unsuccessful. The person hiring for the position is probably a Site Manager, Plant Manager, or Civil Engineering Director, and the nature of their jobs do not afford them lots of time in the office reading emails and responding to candidates. The justification for following up is threefold:

  • To gain closure, about the role so may stop checking your inbox every 5 seconds
  • To retrieve constructive feedback that you can learn from and improve upon to assist you during the next application process
  • To build a report and credibility with the company in case you would want to apply to other roles they advertise in the future