INDUSTRY STATS
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Scientist positions are at a 6% growth rate, which is as fast as average. With that said, there are currently 92,400 jobs in the market right now. The total number of jobs is expected to increase by 6,000 to 98,400 in the period of 2020-30.
What’s more, the median annual wage for the Scientist jobs was $80,680 in May 2020. The lowest 10% earned less than $54,810, and the highest 10% more than $165,290.
Our conclusion? The Scientist job market is wide open for candidates.
Top Scientist sections that make the best resume
- Header
- Professional summary
- Experience (with numbers and results)
- Relevant skills
- Education
- Certifications
How to write a Scientist resume experience section
Scientist Resume’s Job Experience Checklist:
- Use 4-6 bullet points per job title;
- Don’t go further than a decade behind when describing your job history, unless you’re applying for an executive position;
- Combine job responsibilities as well as achievements with numbers in results when you describe your past work;
- Start each sentence with a power verb and avoid overused buzzwords;
- Use either C-A-R or S-T-A-R methodology, when describing your experience.
The work experience samples below come from real Scientist resumes that got people hired at top companies. You can use them as an inspiration to build your own resume:
- 15+ years of agrochemical R&D leading to patented commercial products and technologies (including synergistic combinations, chiral enantiomers and advanced microcapsule formulations).
- Responsible for the overall scientific conduct of in-house Crop Protection: Agrochemicals and microbial BioSolutions R&D.
- Regulatory and IP support, including Biological Assessment Dossier input and Reasoned Opinions; co-publication of 4 patents.
- Project manager for two major (1MUSD+) projects which lead to commercial product launches (the safener-based agricultural herbicides Foxtrot® and Castrate®).
- Management and development of a motivated R&D team (7+ laboratory staff).
- 15+ years of agrochemical R&D leading to patented commercial products and technologies (including synergistic combinations, chiral enantiomers and advanced microcapsule formulations).
- Project manager for two major (1MUSD+) projects which lead to commercial product launches (the safener-based agricultural herbicides Foxtrot® and Castrate®).
- Management and development of a motivated R&D team (7+ laboratory staff).
- Publication of 10+ international scientific articles and 3 patents.
- Developed different data science and machine learning algorithm to analyze and process seismic data,
- Worked as a part of the team specialized in multicomponent towed marine streamers: an innovative technology that has direct consequence in the technical and economic components of Oil & Gas projects from the earliest stages of their development,
- Invented and developed novel techniques in seismic data processing. Examples include interpolation, noise attenuation, velocity analysis and vector acoustic imaging.
- My primary health care experience on maternal and child health in my previous job inspired me to lead a team of 5 and re-engineer a fetoscope with the aim of reducing maternal morbidity and mortality in low resource setting economies.
- Field tested a pay as you go technology embedded on Philips solar lanterns and recommended leveraging onto existing pay as you go concepts for effective scale up.
- Initiated a community breast feeding solution for working mothers in base of the pyramid market segment.
- Build predictive models from start-to-finish (i.e. extract data, manipulate data, build model and validate model) and then deploy model on real data and track model performance/model accuracy
- Developed predictive models to identify the most significant behavioral patterns that lead to customer and employee churn
- Scheduling score model using big data platforms including Hadoop with R-Streaming, R on H2O, Autosys & Oozie
- Developing Crowd Estimation system for bus stop in Transjakarta case using Convolutional Neural Network
- Utilizing training data for custom object detection using YOLO framework
- Developing heatmap generation and people flow tracking from video camera from people detection using YOLO framework
- Developing text sentiment analysis using Keras
- Developing Gender Classification and Age Estimation from human face using Dlib and Keras-Tensorflow
- Research, Development and Consultancy in the fields of mineral exploration.
- Beneficiation and mine planning for cement raw materials.
- Development of mineral deposit evaluation and mine planning softwares.
- Develop methods to reclaim tungsten from various secondary or scrap sources
- Provide chemical cost estimates for alternative processing methods
- Aid the implementation of continuous improvement efforts to production
- Represent R&D on several collaborative efforts on strategic projects
- Evaluate secondary sources for target metal content and processing ability
- Provide laboratory support to tungsten and cobalt production chemical processes
- Assist the Environmental and Safety departments in maintaining a safe, environmentally friendly work place
- Supervise a small research group
- AAMI qualified and Green Belt trained with vast experience of working in compliance with quality system regulations and regulatory requirements. Working with Lean Sigma principles in a GMP and GLP environment.
- Planning, developing and executing Development trials on a pilot and production scale with product and process improvements and new material selection ideas within manufacturing.
- Appointed EHS representative for the Development department, developing skills in COSHH, Risk Assessments, and communication with a site-wide team to aid in increasing awareness and minimising risks/accidents.
- Developing machine learning classifiers for sentiment analysis, natural language processing for both Arabic and English languages for research purposes
- Developing hierarchical classifier for diabetes community social media interactions, identifying diabetes type, sentiment detection, emotion detection, and purpose detection
- Combining regression models with machine learning to develop sports prediction for NFL games results, for both winner identification and score predictions
- Developing machine learning model for financial stock market analysis and automating investment strategies, integrating with stock market APIs for automated order placement based on investment descision
- Deploying a multi-organization Blockchain network using Hyperledger Fabric and Composer including authentication system and REST API server, for secure private data transactions
- Research and development in Federated Learning algorithms and the newest methods in application
- Integration for federated learning methods in distributed systems, and testing on decision trees, deep learning image recognition and object detection
- Successfully optimizing communication cost in Federated averaging up to 90% saving without minimal impact on convergence target
- Successfully improving privacy against probing attacks in distributed learning systems through differential privacy
- Successfully developing a machine learning model based on time-series analysis for Vodafone's backhaul capacity per region, and providing predictions based on each region's behavior in the past years
- Correlating both transport and radio KPIs, and providing insights for deep performance analytics
- Clustering of transport network performance KPIs using various data science techniques to provide a customized performance assessment for radio sites behavior
- Correlating data from different sources of the network to develop a smart planning AI model optimizing performance and cost
- Researching new technologies in IP back haul routing and developing blueprints for planning teams to follow
- Working for a large Australian Insurance in an agile way to develop BI reports in Tableau which captures several metrics in Home Insurance
- Helped Client architect an analytics roadmap in Property Insurance prioritizing their business outcomes
- Worked in an Advanced Analytics team to carry out several high impact analyses in Banking and Insurance Sector
- Experience in working in different verticals
- Released six open source projects, and the leading one, SocialAuth downloaded over 50k+ times.
- Achieved major business wins by solving complex technology problems as proof of concepts
- Release two proprietary frameworks a) cloud based performance testing and b) trigger and action framework like Zapier
PRO TIP
Show off real numbers that display your accomplishments in past roles. Instead of listing out your responsibilities as Scientist, talk about the measurable impact you made to their business. Did you boost their revenue? Increase customer retention? Mention your proudest points on your resume.
Action Verbs for your Scientist Resume
Recommended reads:
Scientist Resume Skills’ Tips & Tricks to Impress Recruiters
Resume Skills Section Checklist:
- Ensure your hard skills section (including technologies) are exactly matching the job description.
- Don’t simply list your soft skills. Apply the “show, don’t tell” principle - let your job achievements speak for themselves.
- Find a way to showcase your skills beyond the skills section.
- Your resume’s skill section is important to ATS systems - so don’t skip it.
Top Skills for your Scientist resume
- Data Science
- Soarian Scheduling (Cerner)
- UDSmr (CMS Reimbursement)
- Cadence Scheduling (EPIC)
- Allscripts (Clinical Documentation)
- SPSS
- SAS/WPS
- Critical thinking
- Problem Solving
- Creativity
- Innovation
- Organisation
- Attention to details
- Caution
PRO TIP
Add a Talent Section to your resume, where you can pick your top 3 soft skills and describe how you used them to complete a project or balance departmental communication.
Scientist Resume Header: Tips, Red Flags, and Best Practices
CHECKLIST For Your Scientist Resume Header
- Your name and surname in a legible and larger resume font
- The job title you’re applying for or your current job title as a subheading to your name
- Link to your portfolio or online profile, such as LinkedIn
- Address (City and State for the US; just your city for rest of the world)
- Email address
- Headshot (required or welcomed in the EU; not required and sometimes frowned upon in the US)
Stick to popular email providers such as Gmail or Outlook. And use these professional formats to create your username:
- first.last@gmail.com
- last.first@gmail.com
- firstlast@gmail.com
- f.last@gmail.com
- first.l@gmail.com
Recommended reads:
PRO TIP
Include a link to your portfolio in your Scientist resume header. Most companies will require that you include one in your resume, and even if they don’t, it’s an excellent opportunity to directly show them your proudest projects.
Scientist Resume Summary Best Practices
Checklist: What to include in your Scientist resume summary:
- Years of experience;
- Highlight top 3 skills and proficiencies;
- One big professional accomplishment you’re most proud of, that you can tie with the aforementioned skills;
- Use short, direct sentences - but no more than three - to keep the HRs interested.
Resume Summary Formula:
PRO TIP
Highlight specific past projects that you’re most proud of in your summary. It sets an excellent tone for the rest of your resume. You can talk about all of your former jobs in your work experience section later on.
Recommended reads:
Listing Your Education, Certifications and Courses
Resume Education Section Checklist:
- Ensure your hard skills section (including technologies) are exactly matching the job description.
- Don’t simply list your soft skills. Apply the “show, don’t tell” principle - let your job achievements speak for themselves.
- Find a way to showcase your skills beyond the skills section.
- Your resume’s skill section is important to ATS systems - so don’t skip it.
Top Certifications for your Scientist resume
Recommended reads:
PRO TIP
There are dozens of certifications that you can claim as a Scientist. But, some are more effective than others. That’s why you mustn’t include every certificate other applicants might have. Try instead to earn and list a few of the difficult ones.
Scientist Resume: Additional Writing & Formatting Tips
There are three basic resume formats you can choose from:
- Reverse-chronological resume format;
- Functional resume format;
- Hybrid (or Combination) resume format;
The most optimal format for your particular case will depend on your years of experience, as well as whether you’re switching industries or not.
Reverse chronological resumes are best suited for experienced individuals who are sticking to their industry. The experience section takes a central place, and its bullets contain your responsibilities and achievements, coupled with numbers and results.
Functional resumes are used by less experienced jobseekers or career changers. Note that it’s not a format that recruiters prefer, as most are used to the classic chronological alignment. Instead of a list of job titles, functional resumes focus on your skills, and through what experiences you gained them.
Hybrid resumes are great for both experienced and entry-level candidates, as well as career changers. They combine the best of both worlds - most often in a double column format, where one side of the content is focused on your experience, whereas the other - on your skills, strengths, and proudest moments.
Scientist Resume Summary best practices
Here are more resume tips regarding your layout and style:
- Clear and legible 12p resume font size;
- Use 10’’ resume margins - that’s default for a great resume design;
- Use a one-page template resume length if you’ve got less than 10 years of experience; otherwise, opt for a two-page resume;
- Save your resume as PDF before sending it to the recruiter.
To take it a step further, check out how your resume can stand out without leaning too much on the creative side.
Recommended reads:
PRO TIP
Sometimes you’ll want to go after a job which requires more experience than you have. Instead of using a typical Scientist resume layout, you can use a creative layout. Getting noticed is the most important challenge and a creative resume layout might help you get invited for an interview as most of other accountants have boring resume designs.
Other sections to include in your resume
Depending on the type of company (corporation or start-up; innovative or traditional), job seniority level and your location, you may want to include more sections to your Scientist resume:
Scientist Resume: How to Make Yours More Creative & Stand Out
When you send your resume to a potential employer, chances are it's the fiftieth one they've seen that day. That's why you need to make your Scientist resume stand out for the right reasons. That means showing your personality, not just your professional experience. Employers are far more likely to remember a candidate who seems like a genuine person and not a robot. Do this by including your passions (which is also a great place to demonstrate skills on a resume), share your favorite books, or even what your usual day looks like.
What Makes a Great Scientist Resume: Key Takeaways
- Choose a resume layout that sends the right message across and fits your current career situation;
- Create a resume header that shows your desired job title, and easy to find contact numbers;
- Be specific about your experience, accomplishments and future goals in your summary;
- Feature detailed metrics and specific examples that show the impact you made in your previous roles when describing your experience;
- List soft skills backed by examples;
- Add all of your technical skills and certifications that you have and match the job description;
- Show off a dash of personality in your resume that will demonstrate your culture fit and the right mix of hard and soft skills.
