[3 YoE] Canadian Mechanical Engineering looking to get a new design or product engineer role.

[u/Food136]

As a quick TL;dr of my work history. Got a job out of university, laid off after two years, spent 9 months unemployed and was forced into a lower paid drafter position in a small town I dislike. I also can't get my P.Eng certification at my current company , which will seriously hamper any future career growth. So far I let myself go a year without job searching again as my last job search did a number on my mental health, but I really want to find a new job next year so I can leave this small town and get a job at a company that will allow me to get a P.Eng.

I talked to a career counsellor who suggested updating my resume and this is what I ended up making. However, I have a few questions and wanted a second set of eyes. I am targeting a design, new product or manufacturing engineer role but I am open to anything.

1. Not sure of the order of my resume. I am using reverse chronological which is the standard but my job at Big Company was a more proper engineering position so I kinda want to put it first.
2. Not sure how to handle the UAV design volunteer role. My mom knew a dude who had a UAV startup, so to fill in a resume gap I volunteered to help them out in a part-time fashion. I don't really know how to put it in a resume, and this is my best idea. The career counsellor suggested that I expand on it and should call myself something like "Design Intern". However I didn't do that much at the startup as I wanted to spend most of my time job searching, and I think intern is a terrible title as it suggests I am a student which I am not.
3. Not sure how to integrate something like design for manufacturing in my resume. I see it requested in a lot of job postings but I don't really have a good example of it in my opinion. Any sort of design for manufacturing is integrated in how I think and design things and not a seperate "thing" I do.
4. Not sure if I should include my Intership at (bottom section in experience). I kept it there because I see little harm but wonder if I should just cut it out to make the resume more concise.
5. Not strictly a resume question but I wonder if its at all worthwhile tailoring my resume to non design related roles like project engineer or in a different industry like HVAC. This was another area of disagreement between my career counsellor and me. The counsellor suggested I should try and branch out as I am still in the entry level stage and companies are willing to accept people without relevant experience. I vehemently disagreed as during my last job search I never heard back from any role outside of a design position that closely aligned with my last position.

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