21 Industrial Design Resume Examples

You’re about to write a great industrial design resume.

First, consider what recruiters want to learn from it. An industrial designer resume should answer questions like these:

• Can you give an example of how your creativity and critical thinking helped solve a problem?
• Did you participate in new product planning or market research?
• Have you modified designs to meet customer specifications?

If recruiters can’t get a sense of these answers in advance, you likely won’t get a callback. That’s why your resume is a focal point of your application. Get it right, and you improve your chances of landing an interview. Get it wrong, and it may end up in the reject pile.

Fortunately, in less than 15 minutes, you can learn how to write your job-winning resume.

What you’ll learn from this industrial design resume guide

• What makes a strong resume header that grabs a recruiter’s attention right away.
• How to write a career summary with real impact.
• How to compare and analyze right and wrong real-life industrial designer resume samples.
• How to highlight notable results from your job history instead of listing tasks.
• How to choose and showcase skills that match your experience.

How to write an industrial design resume

What separates a concept artist from an industrial designer is the ability to turn a drawing into a real product that solves a problem.

If you’re applying for a senior industrial design position, the products you’ve brought to market are essential.

However, don’t spend too much space describing the project itself while failing to show your accomplishments and the ideas you contributed. Here is a list of common resume mistakes and how to avoid them.

Otherwise, you risk coming across as a participant rather than a resource.

What if you are an Entry-Level industrial designer and your products have not yet made it to store shelves?

You may be tempted to add fancy skill bars covering everything from CAD software to client relationships, but they make little sense unless you can prove those skills.

Let’s start by choosing the right resume layout.

How to select an impactful industrial designer resume layout?

Resumes typically follow three layout types:

• Functional layout – focuses on your skills and traits. It is brief and to the point, but usually lacks creativity or storytelling.
• Reverse chronological – focuses on your experience, starting with your most recent job or project and going back in time.
• Hybrid – combines the two above and emphasizes the aspects most relevant to the specific application.

For a Senior industrial designer resume, the reverse-chronological layout lets you place the most relevant information for the role at the top.

For an industrial design Student resume, the hybrid layout gives you more room to expand on limited experience.

Writing the perfect industrial design resume header

Don’t be offended if a recruiter doesn’t remember your name.

Ideally, they should remember your portfolio, since that’s what defines you as an industrial designer.

2 industrial design resume header examples

The header above does not make a strong first impression. The contact information is inconsistent, and the portfolio link is missing.

It’s a header that reveals just enough about your background to catch a recruiter’s attention.

Keep your resume header simple. Include your name, title, address, and phone and email, and remove other distractions.

How to make your industrial design summary stand out

Industrial designer job ads can attract thousands of resumes, and hiring managers do not have time to read every one. They often look first at the career summary to decide whether a resume is worth their attention.

Your summary should be a strong introduction paragraph packed with the facts employers want to see.

They usually look for:

• Years of experience
• Industry expertise and work projects, including experience with CAD and 3D design
• Job accomplishments that show your value proposition, for example, increased product checkout RPV by 40%

Let’s see how this works in practice.

2 industrial design resume summary examples

Unfortunately, this summary lacks focus and suggests the applicant does not fully understand what they are doing.

This summary means business.

The designer highlights total experience across different niches they’ve worked in.

Award-winning product design offers concrete proof of the applicant’s skills.

Awards on Resume: How to List Them on Your Resume

Here’s what hiring managers look for in an industrial design resume experience

The biggest mistake you can make on an industrial design resume is describing previous job duties too vaguely.

You should also list accomplishments and quantify the results.

• Did you minimize material waste by modifying product geometry?
• Did you decrease material use by adding a support structure?
• How many products did you manage in your production line?
• Did your products lead to company revenue growth?

These are just a few of the questions recruiters may have about your previous experience.

Let’s look at how to ace the resume experience section in practice.

Industrial design resume experience examples

These bullets may look good at first glance, but they say nothing about the candidate’s personal contribution.

Recruiters want to hire someone who stands out through results.

Let’s look at the second example.

These bullet points should show the improvements you made for the company during your time there.

Recruiters look for proactive, motivated industrial designers. A "not my job" attitude is rarely welcomed, and you do not want your resume to create the wrong impression.

Emphasizing skills on industrial design resume

Industrial design combines art and engineering.

Recruiters want to see your sense of color, balance, and proportion, as well as how you apply engineering to create sustainable, usable products.

Experience with marketing, project management, and quality assurance can also signal to headhunters that your designs may help attract more clients to the company.

That said, some industrial design skills are more in demand than others, so be sure to include them in your resume skills section.

These skills are essential to the job and are required in most industrial design positions.

You can list them directly, or include a certificate or relevant work experience to show that you have mastered them.

These skills are critical. Getting a design approved requires solid reasoning and a well-crafted presentation.

However, don’t just list them. Show real-life situations where they helped you perform a task more effectively. Here’s a simple way to do that.

What’s more, automated systems may reject your application if they don’t detect the skills they’re programmed to look for.