Welder Resume Guide & Samples

Are you seeking a new job as a Welder? Why don’t you take a look at our Welder resume samples, explaining every aspect to consider, when building your own unique resume or CV document.

Welders fabricate and assemble metal parts by using a variety of machinery, creating intense heat that will mold metals and steel. Now you may think that you don’t need a resume if 90% of your job consists of physical labor, but these days ‘’showing what you can do’’ only comes after ‘’writing what you can do’’.

Now that’s where we come in: Our Welder Resume & CV Guideline is designed to smooth over the challenges of thinking about what you need to include in your application and help you present a polished document that will immediately grab the attention of a hiring manager.

18 Professional Welder Resume Examples

The Welder Resume Guide (with samples):

Resume Sections:

1. Contact Information: 

• Name
• Address
• Phone
• Email
• You need to be contactable via social media, too, therefore include Messenger, Whatsapp, Facebook or Twitter details.

2. Career Summary: 

Share your career synopsis at the top of the first page succinctly, highlighting the most important elements of your experience, skills, and qualifications. Stick to 3-6 sentences and make sure you highlight your summary in a different font to make it stand out.

3. Qualifications/Licenses/Certifications:

Welders will typically complete a High School Diploma or GED Diploma and earn a professional certification before starting their careers. Give accurate details about the type of certifications or training you have completed at community colleges, vocation institutions, or technical schools. During the process of getting certified you would often get the opportunity to do an apprenticeship or in-service training as part of the curriculum, Remember to provide details regarding these training programs too and indicate how many hours you have taken to complete the certification as well as the date that you became certified. Also mention the courses you took, such as mechanical drawings, reading blueprints, basic chemistry, and metallurgy, for example. The American Welding Society (AWS) is the leading industry body for welders in the USA, and any type of certification obtained from here is definitely an advantage.

4. Relevant Welding Experience: 

Define your working knowledge of machinery and tools liberally throughout your resume in the career summary, job description, and skills sections. Define your experience liberally, if necessary. You may also include informal working history such as volunteering, internships, or temporary gigs to beef up your resume if you do not have a lot of experience. Should you be a more seasoned welder, pick the five main duties at each place of employment, and present your career history in a reverse-chronological format.

6. Skills Summary/Key Skills: 

List key skills in a separate section of your resume and use a skills matrix to show the recruiter what your specialist competencies, personality traits as well as knowledge of tools and machinery entails. Make sure to weave the skills mentioned in the job advertisement through your skills section, too, for the screening bots to pick up on your application.

7. Languages: 

This is optional, but if you want to work internationally or in a region with many foreign workers, being proficient in a second or even a third language would definitely be to your advantage.

What to Highlight in Your Welding Resume

A welder’s primary purpose is to fixate metal parts together. You would also be involved in repair activities like fixing hols in metal objects.

Considering that welders can work in almost any industry and that there are more than 100 different welding processes a welder can use, there are specific points to highlight on your resume to gain the attention of recruiters.

First, provide context about your work setting. Welders can work full-time or part-time and often work overtime. It would be good for recruiters to know upfront regarding your availability. In terms of your actual working environment, detail whether most of your welding activities are performed indoors, outdoors, on scaffolding, in a confined space, or involve hazardous environments. Also, indicate whether you are willing to relocate as that will place you in the best situation to get higher-paying jobs.

Next, outline the scope of your role, which could be focussed on welding, soldering, cutting or brazing, and even combinations of each. Hiring managers would need to read about your physical activities that take up most of your day, for example, cutting metal parts, smoothing surfaces, analyzing schematics or molding, and softening steal with high-end machinery. Below is some verbiage for the main welding activities which may help you to define the scope of your role clearly:

Pure Welding: Join materials such as metal and steel together with machinery that creates intense heat to soften the materials used.

Cutting: Involves large scale or micro-cutting with high-end machinery to either trip materials or dismantle large objects.

Soldering: Included precision forming to join materials in small scale components like electronic circuit boards.

Brazing: Utilizes heated metals to apply coatings to other parts for protection against wear and corrosion.

Then it is time to explain the industry categories that you have experience in. Although most of the welding jobs are taken up in the manufacturing sector, you can also work in robotics, engineering, education, inspections, project management, or sales environments if you have progressed far enough with your career and completed a few additional qualifications in specialists fields. With a necessary certification and sufficient welding experience, you may also be employed by construction, industrial shutdowns, marine and shipping, military, and motorsport.

Construction: Your specialist experience to highlight would include the size and type of construction projects and the structures you have to weld, for example, steel beams for bridges or utility plants or joining dam wall slabs together.

Industrial Showdowns: Your expertise in maintenance and repair of metal structures within a short period during a shutdown would be of interest here. Welders performing these roles regularly travel to sites usually in a 1000 mile radius and will be based on-site for a period from a few days to a few months, depending on the size of the shutdown project.

Shipping: In marine and shipping whether you are on-site at the docks, traveling by a cruise ship or stationed on an aircraft carrier, hiring managers would want to know what type of vessels how have worked on and the extent of your welding duties focussing on either building, maintaining or repairing ships.

Military: The defense forces are always in need of welders to accompany the troops to various destinations and be responsible for building infrastructure, and repairing military equipment, or vehicles. Your all-round exposure in a variety of welding processes would serve you well in this case.

Motorsports: Think, Formula 1, NASCAR, and high pay rates. There is a whole lot of welding and fabrication going on just outside those racetracks by highly specialized welders.

The Welder Resume Objective

The resume objective is fulfilling a dual purpose in your welding resume. Firstly, it provides a clear outline of what to expect in the rest of the resume content in regard to your qualifications, experience, and specialist skills. Secondly, it is a helpful tool for inpatient hiring managers who only have to skim through resume objectives before making shortlisting decisions. The crux of the matter, it has to be remarkable.

Try to write your objective profile after finishing the rest of your resume, because by then your thoughts would be more structured on issues such as most important skills, specialist experience, and prominent personality traits.

Stick to one paragraph and highlight three aspects: industry experience, specialist skills, and certifications

Example Welder Resume Objectives:

Objective Example 1:

“Well-tenured Arc Welder with five years experience in fabricating quality metal components for the shipping and marine sector. Expert at reading vessel schematics and blueprints, holding a perfect record in assembling structures to exact specifications. Holds a Certified Welder’s status via the AWS.“

Objective Example 2:

“Certified Precision Welder with 8+ years of experience in underwater welding and a Commercial Diving Certificate coupled with an Underwater Welding Certification. Skilled in over 30 welding processes and including SMAW, MIG, FCAW, and TIG. Member of American Welding Society since 2012.“

Objective Example 3:

“Recently certified, but exceptionally sharp welder with two years of expertise in all latest welding techniques and software applications such as SmartDraw, MITCalc-Welded Connections, and Weldshop. Welding certificate course graduate of 2019. Fluent in Spanish, English, and German.“

Welder Job Descriptions, Responsibilities and Duties

As we mentioned earlier, there are over 100 different welding processes used in the industry; therefore, your job description section should clearly define what your primary type of experience entails and the supporting activities that you do to fulfill the primary purpose of your job. In the article below, we offer you a comprehensive, but generic list of welding job duties to get you started in customizing your own unique job duty section.

Examples

Generic Welder Job Description:

• Interpret designs, monitor machinery, and pre-assess components to be welded
• Identify, locate and prepare fixtures and tools before performing welding operations
• Repair standard and non-standard flaws in sheet metal components
• Use gauges and drawings to ensure compliance with quality and safety specifications
• Perform welding with close tolerance to finishing requirements of standardized parts
• Do pre-assessments and post-inspections on all welded parts
• Cutting of new tools and fixtures with high specialized welding and cutting machinery
• Interpret schematic CAD drawings and blueprints for mega steel structures in the construction industry
• Conduct appropriate fabrication and layout of items to ensure proper structuring of activities for each welding connection
• Use FCAW and MIG welding machines to fuse together aluminum and stainless steel pieces
• Test all welds to ensure stability and dexterity
• Repair weakened steel structures and beams with an Arc Welding machine
• Solder and braze stainless steel piping structures
• Make minor adjustments to finished parts to conform to the safety and regulatory specifications
• Carefully inspected all finished parts to ensure compliance with all regulations, making adjustments and repairs as needed with SMAW welder
• Maintain, repair and sanitize all welding machinery and cutting tools
• Weld and join components in vertical, horizontal and overhead positions

Highlight Your Accomplishments

Under your accomplishment section, you may think that you may get away with merely including achievements as part of your job duties. However, to make sure that your previous efforts are recognized, it is best to have a separate accomplishment section in your welding resume.

If no accomplishments come to mind straight away, don’t panic, its just a matter of pinning them down first. Take a large sheet of paper and divide it into blocks; each block represented a job you have held before.

Now answer these questions:

1. Did you receive praise, recognition, or pats on the back from your supervisor or colleagues?
2. What were those relating to, for example, saving time, saving money, improving safety perhaps?
3. Did you receive formal recognition like a promotion, award, or commendation from a customer?

Add numerical values to your answers above, such as rankings, safety scores, project durations, for example, to quantify your resume and give proof of your competencies.

View your accomplishments statements as broadcasting your wins so that recruiters and hiring managers are enticed to take a chance on you.

Examples of Welder accomplishment statements

• Awarded the 2019 Welding Excellence award for the entire group of companies
• Worked on an Industrial Shutdown project and finished all cutting, welding and brazing tasks six weeks ahead of schedule
• Passed the certified welding examination with a near-perfect score of 98%
• Achieved a record of zero defects in all pipe-welding and ductwork jobs in the last 18 months

Welder Education Section

To land a job as a welder, you do not need a college degree. However, post-school certifications, learning programs, and training courses completed throughout your career show recruiters and hiring managers that you are an avid learner of your trade. It also provided credibility in terms of your technical knowledge.

The more credentials you can offer prospective employers, the better your chances of securing higher-paying positions. In short, list the What, Where, and When regarding your qualifications and certifications: date completed, hours accumulated (if applicable), level attained, institution attended, and location.

Examples:

2017 – CNC Machine Tool Operator Certificate Lincoln Tech, Denver, CO

2016 – Associate of Applied Science in Welding Technology, Coral Springs University, CO

Course Curriculum:

Metallurgy, Design, Schematics, Materials Science, Materials Processing

2016 – Certified Welder, American Welding Society, Doral, FL

2015 – Certified Underwater Welder, American Welding Society, Doral, FL

2014 – Certified Commercial Diver, American Red Cross, Washington DC

2014 – Advanced First Aid Certificate, American Red Cross, Orlando, FL

What to Write in a Welder Resume Skills Section

Technical adeptness, physical traits and interpersonal skills are equally crucial for Welders to perform their jobs successfully. Therefore, ensure that you include examples of all three in your Welder Resume Skills Section.

Presenting your competencies in a Skills Matrix format will reinforce your message that you would be an excellent fit for the role that you applied to.

Skills & Competencies

Technology and Tools

Qualifications/Certifications associated with Welders

Professional Information on Welders

Sectors: Various

Career Type: Fabrication, Metallurgy, Repairman, Coder, Welding, Soldering, Cutting, Brazing

Person type:  Worker, Operator, Machinist, Joiner, Assembler, Repairer, Welder, Cutter, Solderer, Brazer

Education levels: High School Diploma to Post-School Qualifications

Salary indication: Here are some examples of Welder salaries:

Traveling industrial pipe welders $50,000.00 and $185,000.00 a year.

Underwater welders $100,000.00 to $200.000.00 a year.

Military support welders $160,000.00 to $200,000.00 a year

General Welder Median Pay $42 490 per year or $20.43 per hour

Labor market: Increase of 3% between 2018 and 2028

Organizations: Plants, Factories, Production Facilities, Manufacturing Operations, Mining, Cargo, Shipping, Utilities, Construction, Commercial, Corporate, Agriculture, Retail, Wholesale,