I recently posted a question asking how an industrial engineer could make themselves more marketable to the oil and gas industry. Someone confirmed my guess that a chemical engineering minor would be helpful, but if I was still unable to find a job in an oil refinery, could the minor hurt me? Would a company that has nothing to do with chemicals seriously consider not hiring me because my minor shows that I have an interest in chemicals? Would they be afraid that I may leave them for another job opportunity.? Is it possible to hide a minor from a prospective employer? Just thinking about college is stressful…lol
Thanks in advance!
not likely.
Keep in mind that you can craft a resume differently for different positions-- a company that has a need for a person w/ a chemistry background–> highlight your minor; a company with no/little need for chemistry --> don’t mention the minor and use the space to highlight a different aspect of your training. Most people when applying for jobs may have 2, 3 or more different variations of their resume to suit different kinds of positions.
But what you can’t do is highlight some additional knowledge/skills that you never pursued!
It can hurt you if your expertise is not in the field you are applying to. It generally does not hurt you if you have experience in the field you are applying to, and in some unrelated field X. That’s generally a good thing, and unrelated skills might happen to come in handy (e.g. maybe some subportion of the business benefits from chemical knowledge).
You can exclude it from your resume, but you shouldn’t because it won’t hurt you.
Minors can benefit you if anything. However, unless you list it on your resume, nobody will be able to tell if you have a minor.
Thank you for the insight everyone. It definitely removed some of the uncertainty I had about getting a minor.
There are different ways to approach minors, each with different outcomes.
For me, I would always require to get a copy of your college transcript, so not mentioning it on your resume doesn’t “hide” it from me.
Combining a minor like chemical engineering with industrial engineering will help in something like the oil and gas industry. It may not help outside of fields that combine the two areas, but it probably won’t hurt. I was always looking at the STEM classes to see how one did. Even if they weren’t directly applicable to the job I was offering, it showed me that you could figure things out if you got a good grade in the class.
Combining two vastly different fields (engineering and music anyone) would usually result in fewer engineering classes than one who didn’t have a different minor. Since I was looking for the best prepared applicant I could find, that minor would hurt you. And for reasons I’ve stated a few times before, engineering majors with minors in business were IMDEDIATELY round filed.