moving to chicago...job opps in engineering? (Washington, Madison: tech jobs, construction)

[chitown82]

hey,
im posting on behalf of a friend who is looking to move to chicago. he's from a top engineering college (caltech) with both bachelors/masters and is looking for engineering/tech jobs in the area. could anyone give me some names of solid engineering companies in the area. i only know of motorola and thats in the burbs.
thanks!

[chet everett]

Anybody who earned a Master's in any engineering discipline really ought to use the college placement office. If he went to CalTech there is no better conduit to a good paying job. He'd be insane not to use the school's resources.

[GoCUBS1]

What type of engineering? Besides the placement office, I'd recommend joining an engineering association in Chicago to start building a network.

[lincolnparker]

sargent and lundy is a solid one.

[chitown82]

thanks for the information. yea, he will be pursuing jobs through the career office but just wanted to get a sense if there are many opportunities in chicago. obviously its not as strong of a market as cali, boston, etc...

[chet everett]

There are more engineering jobs in the Chicago region than Boston -- our population is much lorger, but California is MUCH larger state. Further, without knowing what KIND of engineer the OP is it rather silly to speculate on employment.

The region DOES produce a large number of engineering grads -- U of Illinois is a top tier school, as is Northwestern, and in some specialties, IIT & UIC. Further the broad region has good "spread of opportunity" drawing engineers from neighboring states: Top Ranked Engineering Colleges/Universities, Best Colleges Engineering It is pretty common for engineering grads from Purdue, Notre Dame, Washington U, UW Madison, either of Michigan's, both of Iowa's programs, and even Ohioians to look to Chicago's diverse employment.

There are many majoring engineering intensive firms. From Boeing and Motorala to Andrew Corp, the various petroleum and chemical firms (BP & Nalco are well known, but there are others ), food processors (CPC, Kraft, Sara Lee), healthcare (Abbott, Takeda, Baxter) and a long list of packaging, construction and design firms there are LOTS of opportunities for engineers. Don't forget about the number of Federal agencies that have engineers based in the region either.

[Jesse69]

You gotta tell us what specific type of engineer he is! - And what he want to do!

I'm a Mechanical Engineer who only works an mfg / product design / CAD / technical writing related jobs; been in Chicago from 1992 to 2005 working at many mfg companies here. Chicago is a broad diverse manufacturing mecca with many companies in various industries. Houston is mostly Oil & Gas and Nasa, - and that's going down so I gotta move back to Chicago.

[chitown82]

Sorry - forgot to mention he's an electrical engineer! Specializes in communications but skill set is pretty broad I'd imagine. Has worked for Boeing (in LA), Qualcomm in the past as an intern. Does the Chicago Boeing office have engineering positions or is it mostly upper level management?

[chet everett]

Boeing has some engineers, but the Chicago office is primarily executive and finance. In addition to Motorola and Andrew there are significant numbers of electrical/ comminications engineers at Lucent, Tellabs, Northup, RIM and US Cellular.

How many of these firms are hiring recent college grads is mystery to me...