Professional Electrician Resume Guide and Tips

Why do highly experienced professional electricians lose out on job openings to lesser-qualified candidates?

If recruiters can’t immediately pick out your qualifications and how they fit in the job description, they’ll throw out your application. After all, they spend all but 7 seconds scanning resumes.

Having a list of qualifications and achievements is only half of the trick required to construct an effective electrician resume. The other half involves knowing how to outline your resume contents to catch the recruiters’ attention and stand out.

This article covers tips and guides on how to write a killer electrician resume that attracts recruiters.

Electrician Job Description

The average salary for an electrician is estimated at $62,060 per year in the United States area — according to Salary.com.

A good electrician resume requires a detailed understanding of the obligations of the job, its relevance in society, and what employers are willing to pay for it. Having this information will not only allow you to construct a convincing cover letter but also ace the interviews that come later.

The job description of an electrician is broad. Typically, electricians manage electrical systems and make sure that electrical components such as fuses and wiring are running as they should. They are also in charge of inspecting these systems and components for faults and modifying them to different specifications. Additionally, electricians have to keep track of the rate at which electrical components run. They also have to calibrate these component characteristics per neighborhood/city standards and blueprints. Meanwhile, the electrician is also expected to have bookkeeping skills, enough to make notes about needed component supplies, repairs, and service information.

Subsequently, we will show the different tips for effective electrician resumes.

Use an Effective Resume Structure

Your resume structure determines how the recruiter will glance through your qualifications and what they’ll pick up.

You should use a resume structure that follows the specifications of the job description. For example, if the recruiter’s advert emphasizes years of experience, you must mention your experience in your resume summary and start with the work experience section.

This way, you’re creating a map that points the HR manager in the right direction.

Generally, it would be a great idea to use a structure that lists your experience and work history first, then your skills and achievements. That’s because your job as an electrician is technical and recruiters want to know what you can handle.

Organizing Your Resume Sections

Once your structure takes the recruiter to the right section, those sections must contain the information they want to see.

Since you’re managing your space and making the resume readable, it’s important to be concise and add only relevant information to each section. But how do you do that?

Let’s walk you through what should be added to each section.

Name and Contact Information Section

All modern resumes begin with a section that introduces the hiring manager to the job applicant. This section contains personal information about the applicant and nothing else.

The same principle holds for electrician resumes. Nevertheless, there is an organized structure to how this information is presented, and it generally revolves around the name of the electrician, what professional qualifications they have, the postcode and street name of their residence, and other related locational information.

Even though the information you need to provide in this section is brief, there are many ways you can express it.

However, there is a way to captivate the hiring manager and hint to them that you have a systematic method of doing things. The following tips will guide you in developing this section on the applicant’s name and contact information to impress hiring managers.

1. Write your full name. Don’t include nicknames or shorten your first name (from John to Johnny, for example). Instead, write your full name as it appears on your ID card.
2. Add a comma after your full name and abbreviated titles of related certifications after this comma. A good example is Alex Harvey, EETC, EPA, EMTC.
3. Write your current location under your full name and certification titles. Your address should only include details required by the recruiter. However, the name of your City and country should suffice.
4. Write your phone number and email address under your home address.
5. Include a link to your account on a relevant social media service like LinkedIn. This is optional but can ease the burden on you to defend your credentials and endorsements. But recruiters nowadays prefer to glance over LinkedIn profiles to get a feel for the applicant’s professional life.

Resume Summary Section

The resume summary section is almost as short as the name and contact information section. However, it is not very easy to write. The reason for this is that the section contains an abridged version of the entire resume, particularly your career history, achievements, certifications, and education.

Thus, if you want to impress hiring managers and get them to approve you for interviews and the job, you have to be precise and methodical with this section. Otherwise, the recruiter that picks up your resume may just read the first lines and score you zero.

So, to craft a convincing summary for your resume, the first thing you must note is that it cannot be more than 5 sentences. As a result, the resume summary section contains the most precise information about an applicant, even though the total words may be as few as 150. A good format for this section can include:

1. Name of occupation with certification titles and years of active experience.
2. Citations of two or more prominent places where the applicant has worked.
3. Applicant’s skills, abilities, and advantages that are most related to the requirements of the advertised position.

If age is one of the requirements of the position, make sure to include it in the first sentence. In other words, take note of keyword requirements in the job description (such as ‘experienced,’ ‘resilient,’ or ‘observant’) and use them in this section.

Professional Experience Section

Every resume section is important, but the professional experience section is generally considered to be either the most important or the one that comes in second place.

The duties of an electrician are technical, so the work history of a candidate is considered to be critical to their employment and service.

Knowing this, you have to craft the professional experience section of your electrician resume so that hiring managers can look at it and nod in satisfaction. And the only way to get them to do that is to show evidence of your value and relevance.

If you are like most electricians, you have worked for tons of people. However, to stand out among hundreds (possibly thousands) of other job applicants, you have to cite only the most relevant and remarkable roles. That means prioritizing previous roles and jobs similar to the position you’re applying for.

As a result, it is important that you make a note of achievements and contributions in past engagements and align them with the different service requirements expected of electricians and the current job posting.

Here is a practical framework for the professional section:

1. Mention the title of the role and the location of the company of employment.
2. Include the time frame of engagement. This will also help you better organize the section so that it is in a chronological order, citing the most recent employment first.
3. Give details about your accomplishments while engaged in that service. Emphasize your accomplishments and the effects on the job.
4. Mention the keywords (if any) included in the job description. Build your accomplishments under each past employment around these words.

Certifications Section

The certifications section in your electrician resume is important and should immediately follow the Professional Experience section. This is so that your certifications can strengthen the good impression that the hiring manager has of you based on your work history. So, make sure the certifications you cite are relevant to the job requirements.

Some jobs include certain certifications as criteria for applicant selection, but others don’t. Whenever jobs use electrician certifications as qualifying standards, make sure to include such certifications if you have them. But even when there is nothing about certifications and licenses, still include them.

There are different electrician certifications that are generally mentioned as job requirements. These include the Electrical Technician Certification (ETC), the Electrical Maintenance Technician Certificate (EMTC), the Certified Electrical Inspector - Residential (CEI-R), etc. These are traditionally electrician certifications. There are other indirect but similarly important certifications about work environment and safety. The most common of these are the Delaware Technical Community College OSHA Safety Certificate (OSHA) and the Event Planner Association’s EPA Amusement Operators Safety Certification (EPA).

Education Section

For an electrician position, the Education section doesn’t include a lot of information.

Hiring managers only pay serious attention to this section when it is included in the criteria for applicant selection. Otherwise, they just skim through educational qualifications since their focus is your field knowledge and experience.

So, you don’t have to sweat the details here. Just make sure to include the most relevant educational attainments you have. You don’t have to add your high school details as long as you have a higher degree.

You can also include educational certifications that are not directly related to the job but show that you can offer your employer more value. Certificates for classes and seminars on effective communication, for example, can show you in a better light compared to other applicants who cited only their high school and college diploma certificates.

Additional Information

True to its name, the Additional Information section contains information that is not directly related to the job at hand. Nevertheless, like every other section, the information you include here can help you land the job, especially if you know exactly what the hiring managers are after.

Typically, even for electrician resumes, the section about additional information includes everything from awards and recognitions to personal projects.

These recommendations have a decorative function that doubles as evidence of your confidence in what you can do.

In such cases, you may include information that supplement your work, such as managerial skills, conceptual skills, and other skills that indicate to HR that you can be a valuable asset to the hiring company in more ways than one.

Showing personal projects you’ve handled such as community initiatives, show that you can hold your own and provide and execute independent ideas. It shows hiring managers that you can provide value to contribute in moving the company forward.

Resume Formatting and Layout

There is no one way of constructing an effective resume. Some job applicants focus on the layout of the content while others reverse this dynamic. Make sure to strike a balance. One way to amplify the effects of the resume layout is to use bullets. A resume layout with bullet points is more readable than one without, even if both resumes have the sections we listed earlier.

So, here are a few tips for your resume formatting and layout.

1. Use bullets to list activities and accomplishments (in your Professional Experience section, for example).
2. Use the same font for everything. That said, you can use different font styles to distinguish specific info. For example, bold and italic texts can be used to differentiate segments of a resume section.
3. Use single-line spacing with space after every paragraph and section.
4. Make section names slightly bigger or bolder than the rest of the text.
5. Use good resume papers (white background) if you are handing in a physical copy instead of a digital copy.
6. Focus on keywords for each section, especially the Resume Summary, Professional Experience, Certifications, and Educational sections. Many hiring managers use applicant tracking systems (ATS) to sift through resumes. You stand a greater selection chance when you draft your resume around the keywords of the advertised electrician role.

Overall, an effective electrician role is well thought-out and robust. It includes only the most relevant information with reference to the requirements of the advertised position.