After working like a dog for the last 3+ On a double engineering major years my kid had planned on a job in engineering. But at a campus fair she dropped a resume at a business consulting company, got interviews and call backs, a trip to thier offices for final rounds and then an offer! Money is excellent. She’d be in an area that seems nice and there would be a group of about 50+ other people her age starting at the same time ( so a great way to meet people…she’s takked to friends a few years older who loved this sort of first job arrangement and found it fun and so helpful when moving to a new city) She thinks the job sounds interesting and she would be using her technical knowledge on the job. BUT it means leaving hands on engineering. Most of the engineering firms she’s Intersted in haven’t even started the hiring process. Plus at many she’d be moving to a new part of the country without the kind of support that a large incoming group of other workers would provide ( she’s taken to older friends who struggled a bit with this aspect)
And it’s very hard to turn down a sold offer. Any thoughts about this are welcome!! I’ve asked in Oarentsfirum but would like advice too from those with engineering knowledge.
This is simply a matter of what she wants to do with her life. Neither path is better or worse, it just is. It’s a less common career for engineers because those that lean that way often choose the business path. Engineers (and mathematicians), through their command of higher maths and problem solving, bring a different set of strengths to the table and can be in high demand. Students who want to be engineers beyond any doubt don’t even apply to those types of jobs. Something intrigued her. What ever she chooses, that’s really going to set the trajectory she’ll be on. What’s her window for giving them an answer? After all, it is still pretty early.
There is nothing about having an engineering degree that says that you have to go do “hands on engineering” work for your entire life, or for any amount of time for that matter. She should do what she thinks is best for her personally.
She does need to do hands on engineering work if she plans to sit for her P.E. license. This license is a gold mine. I would focus on making sure she gets the required experience to sit for that exam.
Problem is that she only has a few weeks to decide. And she’s torn. She dropped her resume off basically randomly. She was with Econ major a friend at the career fair and just threw it in on a whim. But when she got a call back she looked at job and it sounded intersting. It’s really hard to turn down a firm offer.
Sometimes the best jobs are ones that didn’t seem like the “dream choice” from the very beginning, but that turn out to be interesting nonetheless. There is no special reason why you need to have one type of engineering/technical job over some other kind, and there is absolutely no problem in choosing to take a more business-focused direction since the business side is a very important side of engineering too (one that, I might add, some engineers tend to underappreciate). I don’t see any red flags here and really, she should just weigh her options and make a choice. There are upsides and downsides to this choice and any other choice (the Parents Forum thread gave a lot more for you to consider) and you ultimately just have to choose.
As for having an offer in hand, the saying “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” could apply here. Having something concrete is a very useful thing, but at the end of the day you really should make sure that what you have is close enough to what you want that you could not easily be convinced that you made the wrong choice and that you should have either taken another offer or kept applying. Every firm offer that seems reasonable should be given some serious consideration.
If you have engineering degree, you can do also Sales Engineer, banking as analyst using higher math or applying as banking trainee as they require engineering background too, business consultant trainee, etc. There is no short cut in life. With engineering degree also you can start as engineering trainee with small, boring job and work you way up thru rank and file to be line manager or VP of Operations, etc.