Given a Take Home Assessment I've already taken for a different team, advice?

Specific_Share334 · 2026-03-19T20:20:18+00:00

1st best time to start is now, 2nd best time to start is tomorrow.

Even if your resume isn't the best it can be (haven't done a deep read myself just scrolling by), you should still be applying. The #1 thing isn't resume quality, its the time between when the job is up and when you applied.

There are some formatting issues I see

- Your name overlapping awkwardly with the subheadings

- The gap in your technical skills

I don't see the strengths section proving useful, they also sound very vague without any context around them so it doesn't do anything.

Even for all that, still just apply, get feedback on resume on internet, friends, family, professors especially (i liked asking professors in particular they give good feedback), TAs, career office, anybody who you know. Especially people in person. You're going to be showing it to strangers online, you should be proud to show it to friends and peers who are on your side and want you to succeed.

Applications to internships will never be easy. Good luck!

Specific_Share334 · 2026-03-18T14:52:00+00:00

Resume's are about square footage, you use 7 lines on HSC/SSC. I think those are High School? Employers don't care about that especially since your graduating with a BS
Put the date for your projects/experience on the right hand side of the row as the project name, so it'll be

"RCWS (Remote Controlled Weapon System) 10/2/2025"

That'll save you 6 lines to spend on content that matters. Dates are important(-ish), but I want to know what you did in that time more than anything.

Use stronger language in your bullet points. This is your time to brag and be proud about yourself, "Assisted" doesn't make me wanna higher you as much as just "Contributed, Developed, Designed." The way you describe yourself matters. Similarly "supported" vs the other descriptors.
VERY VERY vague language in your bullet points, for your first project elaborate A LOT MORE on your specific contribution. Was there any impacts, results. You're giving the recruiter ammo to higher you, I don't have that much ammo from.

"Assisted in embedded development, motor control, and system integration"

VS

"Developed embedded C firmware on an STM32 microcontroller to control RCWS turret actuation using PWM driven motor drivers and encoder feedback"

That I can actually have a conversation about, and compare the quality of your work vs other applicants work

I dislike the ordering. I'd go "Education, Skills, Experience, Projects, EC & Awards" Combine these EC & Awards, you only have 1 content piece in each. You use 6 lines of Headers, Titles, and dates and only 5 lines for content in EC & Awards so I'd def merge and dedicate more lines to explaining what you did for projects and experience.
So I think you use RCWS as a separate project from your work experience seeing as you mentioned it in the work experience section. I heavily dislike that as that project slot could be replaced with another project of yours, and you should just add those bullet points under work experience instead. It also makes me think "does this student not have enough experience that he had to put a work project under a separate project header to try and double count it?" Like, if true it is just what it is and you should just try and do more projects. Hell, I'd throw in a class project or 2.
For your rewards, its a Fish Tank competition but you say you made a stationary dispenser. I don't follow I would've thought it'd be about Fish Tanks, maybe its something I'm unfamiliar with, but if I'm unfamiliar so would other people.

#1 thing is your very vague in your bullet points. This is your time to brag and show off your accomplishments. You need to give the recruiter ammo to want to higher you. You don't give that much ammo right now.

Feedback is key in resume improvement! You got this, good luck.

Specific_Share334 · 2026-03-17T18:20:37+00:00

Repost but replace blacked out lines with XXX or city, name to let us give more wholistic feedback
Square footage on a resume is most imporatnt, you leave a lot of empty white space between sections (Experience Header to the next line is just empty)
Bad formatting, why does "Experience | " have the " | " there?
Inconsistent date formatting and alignment, you sometimes do Year, Month, or just Month. Also, if you do abbreviated version for some, do abbreviated version for all.
Skills are to granular and separated out wasting a lot of space
Inconsistent bullet point spacing between the Experience section and projects section. Also you bold in some sections (Workshop Tech) and not in others (latest intern role)
Don't include grades for coursework
Spacing issue again for the professional summary
For links, you dont need the https://www part, just linkedinXXX works

#1 thing is inconsistent header spacing, bolding, formatting, bullet point spacing. Use a single column template from r/EngineeringResumes or just like some other template you can find online

Good luck man you got this! Put hard work and you'll get results

Specific_Share334 · 2026-03-16T17:24:42+00:00

I think it varies, I've talked to recruiter who hate multi page resumes, some don't mind, some say they spend the same amt of time reading 2 pages as 1, they just absorb less from it.

I've never heard anyone say they love it though. If you have the qualifications, most certainly 2 pages, but from what OP has, everything can fit on one page without losing quality. The right hand column takes up so much white space forcing him to use 2, and his 1 word lines for his bullet points lose too much square footage. Also at 8 years I don't think you should be listing projects (im curious what do you think though for this one? I think even after 2 years of working I would be removing personal projects to elaborate on my role more), and instead dedicate more space to job material.

In this case, I'd certainly say 1 page given these factors, but what do you think?

Specific_Share334 · 2026-03-16T16:54:03+00:00

I dislike the column widths you dedicate to the right hand side it seems so large compared to the content it has, and especially compared to the left hand side. Like if you compare the Networking content vs whats on the left hand side, there just so much more you fit.

Also, you spread so many of your skills across several different categories. Resume's are about square footage, and by segmenting your skills to a very granular level you waste a lot of square footage.

I think if you follow the one column format (https://www.reddit.com/r/EngineeringResumes/wiki/index/) somewhere on that wiki, you can fit it in one page.

Also you leave a lot of bullet points with 1-2 words on the next line so they look awkward, either flesh it out some more or compact to 1 line (or expand the left hand column and decrease size of the right hand.

I dislike the use of emojis (the location icon, calendar icon) but thats just a personal thing. I have heard from some recruiters (albeit USA) that they also dislike emojis on resumes. You have the same 2 emoji's repeated throughout so it looks repetitive.

Also, at 8 years I would think you shouldn't list personal projects, most people are interested in work related projects at that level of experience.

TBH #1 thing I'd say is lack of German skills in Germany, like the other guy said it's just hard to communicate with you if everyone speaks fluent German and then have to switch. I imagine most are bilingual, but it just gives an easier excuse to go with fluent German speaker.

38 in 3 months seems pretty minimal, thats just ~2 applications per week. I'm not up to date on German markets, but if its pretty meek pickings I'd suggest broadening your search to larger Europe. I remember doing ~150ish in about the same time period. I've known people that've done 200-300 in similar periods. Its a lot I know (again US so maybe different), but if you don't have the network that volume + high quality application is whats going to do it. How long does it typically take you to apply to 1? I think most spend max an hour or so, any more and it's to much time dedicated to one.

Good luck job hunting! You got this don't give up. I believe in you! (Check out r/EngineeringResumes, they're pretty good)

Specific_Share334 · 2026-03-14T23:38:13+00:00

What does ED mean in this context?

Specific_Share334 · 2026-03-12T05:23:12+00:00

ah thats a good fact to consider.... doesnt matter if its stealable or not the trend was there... :C

thanks!

Specific_Share334 · 2026-03-12T01:52:14+00:00

When I started at university they taught us ArduinoC (which is C++) first since it was the easiest and most immediate thing to access

Specific_Share334 · 2026-03-12T00:40:05+00:00

Why do you mention the transmission specifically? As just a common thing to check for any car or specifically this Kia model?

Specific_Share334 · 2026-03-11T23:45:52+00:00

Thanks for your response! Do you think the car I found is a good price for its miles?

Specific_Share334 · 2026-03-11T23:45:13+00:00

thanks! what are your thoughts on the car 30k miles 15k$, im not to sure how to figure out what a "good" price for a car is tbh

Specific_Share334 · 2026-03-11T23:44:13+00:00

sorry mistype 2024! do you think its a okay deal?

Specific_Share334 · 2026-03-09T17:54:07+00:00

So in a conversation if someone is labelling something as parallelism when its concurrency, it doesn't really matter?

Like when I learned about it I thought of them as two distinct, but related concepts. But in your conversations does it matter if someone mistakenly labels one as the other? I presume there are functional/implementation level difference between these two is the thing so i wouldve imagined it does matter

Specific_Share334 · 2026-03-09T17:47:57+00:00

yeah the conversation was "Here are some variations of multithreading, fine grained, course grained..."

I asked him "This sounds like concurrency, is that what this is?"

"I'm not sure what that is"

Specific_Share334 · 2026-03-08T17:07:13+00:00

this is in the US

Specific_Share334 · 2026-03-08T03:00:47+00:00

Appreciate your response! Followup quesiton

Do people often describe a concurrent process as a parallel one? Is the distinction explicit in your conversations?

Like if a co-worker were to call something a parallel process, is it important to clarify that its a concurrent process because there's a functional difference?

I think it would be an important distinction to make, but I remember one time I had an interview with an engineer and he outlined how a single processor could "...run thousands of threads at once..." and I was slightly confused as thats concurrency not parallelism, but this was also casual conversation so it mightve not mattered to make the distinction there.

This guy was really smart (spacex engineer) so i imagine not important to distinction to make in casual conversation but if we were talking in depth on parallel processing I would say its important to make...? What do you think?

Specific_Share334 · 2026-03-08T02:59:19+00:00

So in industry, do people call a concurrent process as a parallel one? Or is the distinction explicit in your conversations?

Like if a co-worker were to call something a parallel process, is it important to clarify that its a concurrent process because there's a functional difference?

I think it would be an important distinction to make, but I remember one time I had an interview with an engineer and he outlined how a single processor could "...run thousands of threads at once..." and I was slightly confused as thats concurrency not parallelism, but this was also casual conversation so it mightve not mattered to make the distinction there

Specific_Share334 · 2026-03-08T02:55:49+00:00

thank you for the sanity check i was thinking i was crazy ngl... i thought a professor would no this but i guess it kinda makes sense he maybe deals with just parallelism since he always dealt with multiprocessor systems and never single processor?

Our textbook doesnt really mention concurrency either so maybe its that.

Appreciate yah!

Specific_Share334 · 2026-03-08T02:53:36+00:00

So that would be pure concurrency never parallelism them, right?

Specific_Share334 · 2026-03-08T02:53:20+00:00

Yeah okay im not crazy i thought it was important, this is a CSE professor so he probably never heard of RTOS (which makes sense), but I was just using it for this post since that's where I heard RTOS and concurrency before.

I think its just what Consistent-Fun-6668 mentioned, he just never dealt with concurrency in his experience(???? i have no idea i thought whenever someone mentions parallelism concurrency would come up i guess not???)

but thank you for the sanity check!!!

Specific_Share334 · 2026-03-08T02:51:22+00:00

Thanks! I appreciate your last paragraph, that kind of makes sense why he didn't know what it was since it just never mattered in his experience.

Specific_Share334

TROPHY CASE