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Just an update: After exhausting on available job interviews, I received an engineering job offer today! So, don't lose hope folks!
I received another job offer today! I hope that you'll find my post as encouragement about available jobs out there! I believe that an engineer should try and avoid HR people when looking for a job. If HR people are inevitable, try your best to put the engineering hiring manager on the table with you.
I received another job offer today! I hope that you'll find my post as encouragement about available jobs out there! I believe that an engineer should try and avoid HR people when looking for a job. If HR people are inevitable, try your best to put the engineering hiring manager on the table with you.
Good advice for technical types. If you are quite knowledgeable and can get to the manager you will be working for, talk technical talk, they easy going from there.
HR types think the only knowledge you have is from a diploma or work experience. No other types of knowledge allowed to exist!
I've met some computer types, with no degree in that field, who can run rings around those with a CS degree.
Scaled Composites is holding its open house/career fair from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. this Saturday, April 21, at its headquarters on the Mojave Airport in California. The company is looking to bolster its recruiting efforts to work on numerous large-scale projects looming like Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo and the Stratolaunch Carrier. “If you’re interested in working in the private space industry, there’s no better place than Mojave right now,” said project and flight test engineer Elliot Seguin, who says EAAers represent the company’s premier hiring pool. More than two-thirds of current employees are also pilots, and most of them are EAA members as well. Those interested in attending are asked to RSVP via e-mail to resume@scaled.com, with an attached resume and using the subject line “Career Day.”
Exactly. This happens in my former career/field as well. "Pilot shortage" has been written about in industry publications and bandied about by colleges for 20 years now, all over to draw students into their programs. The field is flooded, wages and working conditions have nosedived and there is no end in sight. But this supposed shortage still looms, never to become a reality, and more suckers get drawn into the mire. It's a dirty ploy used by the schools and employers both, to flood the field to their advantage. The schools get a revenue stream from naive students, the employers get to drop wages and benefits. It's happening right now in the nursing field as well.
Now, anytime I read an article or see a news story about a supposed shortage in any field, or that it will be the next 'hot' field, I immediately suspect it as being BS.
Yea it's the big thing now. When wages get too high, or the workers won't accept peanuts for pay, there is all the sudden a shortage. They did it with teachers, they did it with nurses, and now I see they are doing it with my profession, machinists. No crap, they offshored all the jobs 10 years ago, wages plummeted, and no one wanted to take on that god awful profession. And now they expect everyone to invest thousands of $$$ in tools and years of learning to join in this sorry profession for the hope of 35K in straight time, maybe???
I think engineering was facing similar problems. Wages were stagnant in many engineering realms, and work that used to be done in this country started going overseas. America doesn't graduate all that many engineers either, so I think the supply stays only slightly above the demand.
They always cry shortage flood the market and drive wages to the floor. Then cry about how US workers are lazy will not take the jobs. Andy your right about the jobs you talked about in your post. Once wages get good or even a living wage they cry shortage why even train?
This is pretty surprising... There are engineering jobs all out the wazoo here in Austin, TX. I'm an Electrical as well and have been out of school for a little more then 4 years now. I was employed about 4 months after I graduated in May 2008. I'm currently looking for a career change, however. I've been doing more electrical inspection work (electrician-y stuff) than actual engineering. Now THAT is pretty depressing. Go on LinkedIN and put your info out there. There are tons of positions open all over the WORLD from what I have been seeing in my recent google searches. You'll get more of a chance for employment if you're straight out of college, though. Go to IBM.com and look up their job listings. They have lots of opportunities for new grads. I see their ads all the time for them!
I hate job interviews too. I think they are to most ridiculous spectacle of pointless psychobabble I have ever witnessed. I witnessed it at work. The second the interview starts qualifications and experience are out the window and they pick their hire based on BSing ability and likability.
As a result, they hired a BSing idiot with none of the attributes necessary to be a successful tech or chemist and he caused a frigggin disaster reporting bad data and damaging equipment. Companies don't deserve competent STEM professionals. I am trying hard for a govt job. American companies just revolt me.
Agreed. At my former employer, all the BS'ers and idiots (and even the actual criminals!) are still employed, while the good workers, especially the older ones, were shown the door. Companies like that don't deserve good workers since they clearly know who's doing their job and who isn't - believe me, the bums were not subtle at all - and yet they'll trash the workers!
Most interviews are similarly idiotic. I've been shot down for really stupid reasons, including "Using the wrong CAD tool," and because, "we don't like to hire unemployed people." Right...
While engineering has more job potential than most fields, I think this is really only true for YOUNG engineers. When you graduate college, most companies are willing to consider you if you have a few years of reasonably relavent experience.
But when you're older, they expect the moon from you. You have to match so many narrow requirements that the only way to qualify for a job is to basically all ready work for the company in the same position! Oh, and since you're older and more experienced, they figure you're too expensive, so they'll hire nobody instead... or lay you off later... or perma-temp you... or whatever it takes to save a few bucks. Being a middle-aged engineer who is not in the current "in-demand" field is terrible - at that point, you're basically seen as having done nothing so far in your career, which is insane.
EEs should be able to find work. You may have to move though. Its not like IT work where
every city in the country has positions available. Cast your net wider.
For electrical engineers, also check out postings for "system engineers." I've found that about half of those heavily involve EE work, while the other half heavily involve software work. Admitteldy, many have a mix of the two, but if you can find one that it is almost entirely EE work, apply to it.
What kind of work are you EEs doing? Software, hardware, construction, optics, etc? Have any of you done one thing and tried to switch careers doing something else and found it difficult finding a job that way?
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