My Resume A Worked Example

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My Resume — A Worked Example

This page shows a good 1-page resume for me that covers all the Leadership, Business, Interpersonal, Technical (LBIT), "Team", and "I" points the screener is looking for. A second example is presented: a lazy multipage resume covering my full career timeline in detail that will leave the screener rolling their eyes and my resume in the trash can. If I can distill my 27-year career down to one page that hits all the points the screener is looking for, so can you.

I hadn't written a resume since 1998. Twenty-seven years at one company will do that — there was never a reason to. But telling students to write Leadership, Business, Interpersonal, and Technical (LBIT) narrative bullets while never having applied that formula to my own career felt like exactly the kind of gap worth closing before handing out more advice on it. So this page is that exercise: my own career, run through the same LBIT framework and the what-you-did / why-it-mattered / who-you-worked-with / how-you-owned-it bullet formula from Resumes, the way I'd coach a student to write it.

My resume also illustrates a challenge long-career resumes face that a student's won't: deciding how much of nine different positions over 27 years actually deserves a bullet, versus a single trimmed line. An experienced hire resume should still fit on one page, showing that you can get to the point. A second page is fine for a list of publications to show your academic track record, but not for detailing roles decades ago.

Housekeeping note before you read these: [X] below are placeholders where I am not at liberty to share specifics. Where a real, already-public figure or industry standard aggregate exists (a patent, a sustained fleet-wide value-capture number, a documented achievement), that's the one used. The short version of the resume has no [X] - if you can't discuss an item in detail during an interview as you stated it on the resume, you need to drop it or reword so it can be discussed without breaching your confidentiality obligations.

The Condensed Version — What I'd Actually Submit

This is the version I'd coach a student to write, applied to my own career as the extreme test case: 27 years and nine positions compressed to one page. If the trimming principle holds up at this scale — recent and relevant roles get the full narrative treatment, everything else earns exactly the line it deserves and no more — it should hold up for anyone with a shorter career too.

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William "Bill" Docter, Ph.D.
Beaumont, TX | email: name@example.com | phone: 555-555-5555 | linkedin.com/in/william-d-753bb1163

Summary: Real Time Optimization (RTO) and process control engineer with 27 years at ExxonMobil, driving fleet-wide margin improvement and people development. Now sharing and institutionalizing career learnings in engineering-education outreach.

Education

• Ph.D., Chemical Engineering — Lehigh University, 1998
• B.S., Chemical Engineering — University of Cincinnati, 1993

Experience

Second-Hand Tigers — Founder (volunteer) (2026–present)

• Founded a volunteer initiative building career-development material for engineering students; authored 40+ wiki pages and volunteer with Lamar University's Chemical Engineering Senior Design class to integrate the material into the program.

ExxonMobil Technology and Engineering Company — RTO Project Lead (2025–2026)

• Led Real Time Optimization project delivery through the final stretch of a 27-year career, treating knowledge handoff as part of the deliverable.

ExxonMobil Beaumont Complex — RTO Engineer → Principal Process Control Engineer, Beaumont Area (2020–2025)

• Volunteered to lead site training for the Microsoft Copilot rollout; sessions grew to 800+ participants worldwide.
• Led fleet-wide value capture and improvement across the Beaumont Complex's RTO and Dynamic Matrix Control (DMC) portfolio delivering $100MM/yr (recurring).
• Established the succession pipeline for the next generation of Beaumont RTO/DMC Principal Engineers, coaching engineers through Individual Development Plans, one of whom took my position as I moved to my next assignment in central engineering.
• Championed use of GitHub to streamline collaboration, workflow, and knowledge retention in RTO projects and sustainment at Beaumont, with the approach adopted as the company standard for managing the global RTO fleet the following year.

ExxonMobil Beaumont Complex — Process Control Application Engineering Group Lead (2017–2020)

• First-line supervisory role: led Individual Development Planning for the group and served as Management of Change reviewer/approver — process-safety-adjacent governance work, reviewing whether proposed control changes were actually safe to make before they went live.
• Mentored next-up Group Leads in people development, risk management, recruiting, and leadership skill sets through shadow-to-solo progression.
• Redefined Applications Engineering technical-leadership roles and responsibilities with an explicit focus on succession planning, institutionalizing in procedure what had previously depended on who happened to be mentoring whom.

ExxonMobil Refining & Supply — Real Time Optimization Engineer (2004–2017, three assignments: Antwerp Belgium, Fawley UK, Beaumont TX)

• Site RTO Lead at Antwerp, Fawley, and Beaumont refineries. Piloted ExxonMobil Research & Engineering (EMRE) solution analysis prototype at manufacturing site and co-led global rollout — issued U.S. patent, Hydrocarbon Processing Analysis (US 10,353,353 B2).
• Operationalized Fawley's diesel desulfurization transition from 50ppm to 10ppm sulfur — an environmental-compliance project with a hard regulatory deadline, delivered through the RTO/DMC work underneath it.

ExxonMobil Research & Engineering — Real Time Optimization Engineer, Florham Park NJ / Fairfax VA (1998–2004)

• First role out of grad school. Fluid Catalytic Cracking (FCC) kinetic modeling, project development, and solution analysis to commercialize first RTOs of the corporation — 10 applications across North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific.

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Nine positions, twenty-seven years — three site assignments share two bullets, and two early research roles share one. That's the trimming principle at work, not an oversight — an interviewer deciding whether to talk to me today doesn't need a line per role from 25 years ago; they need to see that I can lead now, that I've delivered measurable value, and that I've built the people who came after me.

The Full Career Version — For Comparison

This is what happens if you don't trim: a multi-page reverse-chronological version with every position given roughly equal narrative weight. It misses the mark and needlessly overloads the screener. Nobody scanning a resume for the first time is getting through all of this, and putting the Florham Park bullets from 25 years ago on equal footing with the Principal Engineer bullets completed last year buries the role that matters most — the screener is looking to hire an experienced technical leader, not a novice technical contributor. A screener working through a pile of 400+ resumes submitted for a job req is going to cringe the moment they see a resume longer than one page and have a negative anchoring bias before they read even a single word. That bias is also functionally reasonable — an experienced technical leader should reflexively summarize and get to the point since many important stakeholder engagements have less than 2 minutes to land.

William "Bill" Docter, Ph.D.
Beaumont, TX | email: name@example.com | phone: 555-555-5555 | linkedin.com/in/william-d-753bb1163

Summary: Real Time Optimization (RTO) and process control engineer with 27 years at ExxonMobil, spanning technical leadership, people development, RTO and Dynamic Matrix Control (DMC) deployment across refineries and chemical plants in the United States, United Kingdom, and Belgium. Co-inventor on a U.S. patent; sustained RTO/DMC fleet value capture exceeding $100MM/yr; built and led technical succession-planning programs. Now applying that people-development experience to engineering-education outreach as Founder of Second-Hand Tigers.

Education

• Ph.D., Chemical Engineering — Lehigh University, 1998. Chemical Process Modeling & Control Research Center; research focus: model order reduction / subspace identification; advisor: Christos Georgakis; teaching assistant for William Luyben and William Schiesser.
• B.S., Chemical Engineering — University of Cincinnati, 1993.

Professional Experience

Second-Hand Tigers — Founder (volunteer) (2026–present)

• Founded a volunteer initiative building career-development material for engineering students; authored 40+ wiki pages and volunteer with Lamar University's Chemical Engineering Senior Design class to integrate the material into the program.

ExxonMobil Technology and Engineering Company — Real Time Optimization Project Lead | Aug 2025 – Apr 2026 | United States

• Led Real Time Optimization (RTO) project delivery through the closing stretch of a 27-year technical career, treating knowledge handoff as part of the deliverable rather than an afterthought to it.
• Continued driving optimization technology and work-process innovation across the RTO portfolio.

ExxonMobil — Principal Process Control Engineer, Beaumont Area | Jan 2023 – Aug 2025 | Beaumont, TX

• Volunteered to lead site training for the Microsoft Copilot rollout; sessions grew to 800+ participants worldwide.
• Led fleet-wide value capture and improvement across the Beaumont Complex's RTO/DMC portfolio spanning [X] process units, with the team contributing to a sustained RTO/DMC fleet value capture exceeding $100MM/yr — a figure built and defended over multiple years.
• Directed the innovation and rollout of new optimization technology and work processes across the site, extending [X] beyond where it started and institutionalizing it as the site standard.
• Championed use of GitHub to streamline collaboration, workflow, and knowledge retention across RTO projects and sustainment at Beaumont, with the approach adopted as the company standard for managing the global RTO fleet the following year.
• Established the succession pipeline for the next generation of Beaumont RTO/DMC Principal Engineers, coaching engineers through Individual Development Plans — one of whom took over this role directly as I moved to my next assignment in central engineering.
• Provided strategic and tactical resourcing across the asset base, balancing priorities across [X] concurrent units and projects.

ExxonMobil — Real Time Optimization Engineer | Aug 2020 – Jan 2023 | Beaumont Complex, TX

• Led existing RTO revamps and sustainment across the Olefins and Aromatics units.
• Led new RTO project deployment and closed-loop commissioning.
• Served as technical and professional development mentor and Individual Development Plan coach/reviewer for site engineers.

ExxonMobil — Process Control Application Engineering Group Lead | Apr 2017 – Aug 2020 | Beaumont Refinery, TX

• First-line supervisory (management-ladder) role: led Individual Development Planning for the group and served as Process Control Management of Change reviewer/approver — process-safety-adjacent governance, reviewing whether proposed control changes were safe to implement before they went live.
• Led the site's RTO/DMC element (prioritization, resourcing, delivery, stewardship) and served as Utilities Engineering Lead.
• Took the corporate interviewer-training course and shadowed a senior Principal Engineer before running interviews solo.
• Mentored next-up Group Leads in people development, risk management, recruiting, and leadership skill sets through shadow-to-solo progression.
• Redefined Applications Engineering technical-leadership roles and responsibilities with an explicit focus on succession planning, institutionalizing a practice that had previously depended on who happened to be mentoring whom.

ExxonMobil — Real Time Optimization Engineer | Aug 2009 – Apr 2017 | Beaumont Refinery, TX

• Served as Site RTO Lead for the expanded fleet, including new Sat Gas Plant RTO deployment and closed-loop commissioning.
• Led existing RTO revamps (Crude & FCC units) and sustainment, plus Crude and Light Ends Distillation DMC sustainment.
• Led an internal company network action team for global RTO initiatives and best-practice development.
• Led cold-eyes reviews at other manufacturing locations, and guest-lectured at Lamar University's Chemical Engineering Department.

ExxonMobil — Real Time Optimization Engineer | Jan 2007 – Aug 2009 | Fawley Refinery, England, United Kingdom

• Served as Site RTO Lead; led Crude Unit/Diesel Hydrotreating Complex RTO deployment and closed-loop commissioning.
• Operationalized Fawley's diesel desulfurization transition from 50ppm to 10ppm sulfur — a hard-deadline environmental-compliance project delivered through the RTO/DMC work underneath it.
• Served as Basic Controls Engineer Training course instructor and trained a new RTO engineer to succeed me as Fawley RTO lead.

ExxonMobil — Real Time Optimization Engineer | Jun 2004 – Jan 2007 | Antwerp Refinery, Flemish Region, Belgium

• Served as Site RTO Lead; led Crude Unit and FCC RTO sustainment and Reforming RTO deployment.
• Extended a technology I'd helped test years earlier at Fairfax — with no clear use case visible from that vantage point — into a working prototype once I could see the actual manufacturing-side need, becoming site champion for its pilot and presenting the results jointly with the technology's original developer. The pilot's success led to a global rollout the following year, and the technology later became a 12-inventor, issued U.S. patent, Hydrocarbon Processing Analysis (US 10,353,353 B2).
• Served as site representative to the internal Advanced Control Application and RTO Network, and led a global network action team on RTO solution analysis.

ExxonMobil Research & Engineering — Real Time Optimization Engineer | Jun 2000 – Jun 2004 | Fairfax, VA

• Led RTO project delivery and onsite commissioning (Gravenchon FCC); served as onsite RTO commissioning second (Altona FCC, Chiba FCC).
• Co-developed and instructed the RTO basic course.
• Provided remote support for FCC and Crude Unit RTO applications across multiple sites in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific.

Exxon Research and Engineering — Real Time Optimization Engineer | Sep 1998 – Jun 2000 | Florham Park, NJ

• First role out of grad school, under the pre-merger "Exxon" name — Exxon and Mobil merged in late 1999, partway through this assignment.
• Led Crude Unit and FCC RTO project model development and validation; served as FCC reactor/regenerator kinetic modeler.
• Provided RTO remote manufacturing site support.

Before ExxonMobil

Graduate Research and Teaching Assistant | Sep 1993 – Sep 1998 | Chemical Process Modeling & Control Research Center, Lehigh University

• Concurrent with the Ph.D. Researched reduced-order dynamic modeling for separation processes: dynamic simulation, subspace identification, stepwise regression, factor analysis.

Chemical Engineering Intern | Summer 1995 | Air Products and Chemicals, Inc., Trexlertown, PA

• Applied reduced-order dynamic modeling techniques from ongoing Ph.D. thesis research to one of Air Products' cryogenic air separation unit simulations, as one of the companies funding my Lehigh research.

Chemical Engineering Intern | 1989–1993 | Quantum Chemical Corporation, Allen Research Center

• Polyethylene catalysis research; pneumatic-to-Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) system migration project, concurrent with undergraduate study at Cincinnati.

Selected Achievements (as part of teams, not individually)

• Patent: Hydrocarbon Processing Analysis, US 10,353,353 B2 (12 inventors)
• Process control risk assessment/analysis contributions to process safety
• Operationalized Fawley's diesel transition from 50ppm to 10ppm sulfur
• Sustained RTO/DMC fleet value capture exceeding $100MM/yr
• Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) mentoring, both in-company and external
• Redefined Applications Engineering technical-leadership roles and responsibilities with a focus on succession planning

What This Comparison Is Really Testing

The full version above is close to transcription — taking what's already documented on Career Timeline and turning duty statements into outcome statements, role by role, mostly. Notice the older roles stayed closer to duty lists; even writing the full version, the conversion effort went to recent roles first and the older ones got left as duty lists because I knew the older ones would get cut during the trim. The long version also has the bloat of some repeated items since a career timeline itself usually has a highlight summary — a resume shouldn't need a separate highlights section — the whole page is the highlights. Condensing that multi-page monstrosity to a single page version ready for release is a test: it forces a judgment call on every remaining line — does this role still matter to the reader in front of me, or does it stay because it's part of the story I'd tell about my own career?

• In the one page version, the oldest item covers 6 years and two locations (Florham Park & Fairfax) with a single bullet. The weight that bullet carries is to highlight capability to bridge organizations (solution analysis R&D) from that period to commercial deployment and patent when I rotated to manufacturing site assignments. A list of work items proportional to the time spent 20+ years ago is not relevant to current employment screening since it is obvious I would be stale on the current state of technology and work process for those items, so only the best single item from that period is worth including.

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Related: Resumes · Career Timeline · LinkedIn · Interview Prep · From "Sliced Bread" to Patent

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License: © 2026 William Docter. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). You may copy, redistribute, remix, and build upon this material, including for commercial purposes, provided you give appropriate credit to William Docter and indicate if changes were made. The Second-Hand Tigers logo is not covered by this license. All rights in it are reserved.