5 Ways to Highlight Your STEM Experience on Your Resume
The resume is your chance to express your expertise and skillset. It is the first step towards getting the job you want. Therefore, if you want to present yourself as a STEM professional, the resume needs to reflect that.
The resume must read well for both hiring managers and ATS. Whether the first point of contact is with a human or machine, your resume needs to impress and get you to move forward.
Highlighting your STEM experience can help you stand out. It can also make you a better match with a job role according to ATS.
If you want to create a winning CV, here are a way ways to highlight your STEM experience and background.
1. Present Only Relevant Technical Skills
A simple and clean list of technical skills can give you an advantage. Look into the technical requirements for a specific job position and only include technical skills that are relevant to that role.
Both ATS and hiring managers favor the candidates who highlight relevant skills they are highly knowledgeable in. List only the skills that you are proficient in and that display your experience. That’s how you’ll show that you are suitable for the position.
2. Skip the Common Knowledge
You want the focus to be on your STEM experience. Thus, you can freely skip the expected skillset.
Listing skills that are considered to be common knowledge (e.g., Windows, Microsoft Office) will only take valuable space. They won’t help you by any means to distinguish yourself from the competition. That’s why you should direct your attention solely to relevant and specific skills.
However, if a job description mentions a certain expected technical skill as a requirement (for example, Microsoft Excel), then you should include it in the skillset.
3. Be Clear about Your Proficiencies
Show the level of your abilities. Give a clear idea of how experienced you are in specific areas.
To showcase your proficiencies, you can use wording such as experienced, expert, proficient, or master. For example:
Skills
- Experienced: Microservices, SOAP
- Proficient: Git, Java Performance Tuning, Subversion
The categorization of the skills will provide an insight into your experience. It can also help you highlight your ability level. With a clear indication of your capabilities, the hiring managers will better assess your experience.
4. Provide the Context
Simply stating the experiences won’t do you justice. Explain your past roles and how you contributed to the projects.
Give hiring managers proof of your experience. Provide a short description of your accomplishments in STEM projects.
Highlight the technologies you’ve used, your responsibilities, and your achievements. Use quantifiable data to illustrate your efficiency. State your STEM experience, and next to it, share information on your contribution. For example:
- App development group project: – Improved user experienced by 40% by debugging and optimizing the application.
5. Look for STEM Experience in Different Disciplines
Science, technology, engineering, and math intertwine in many areas. For example, nowadays, technology is mixed in almost every discipline.
Most STEM experiences tend to include experience in different subjects. Look for experiences and skills from different STEM roles that are relevant for the role you are applying for. For example, if you had some experience in fintech and you are applying for a computing teacher job position, you can highlight your skills in technology and math.
The goal is to put the spotlight on your familiarity with different disciplines whenever this is possible.
Final Thoughts
Writing a resume can be a stressful process. However, when you have valuable tips on your hands, the process can get much easier. The above-mentioned tips will give you some guidance on how to present yourself as the right candidate. Remember that proper highlighting and pulling out the right information can put your name at the top of the list.
5 Ways to Highlight Your STEM Experience on Your Resume Written by : Dorian Martin is a writer, editor, and proofreader with years of experience as an article, research paper, and case study writer. He works as an educational expert and tutor (check out this review) and loves to contribute to his personal blog in his spare time. Dorian aims to expand his knowledge constantly to become a more reliable copywriting and academic expert.
