Son graduates in May with a degree in mechanical engineering. He has already completed a three-rotation co-op and a summer internship, both in manufacturing, and while they were great opportunities and he learned a lot, he really doesn’t want to work in manufacturing. His interests are in design (as I imagine a lot of students’ are).
How realistic is it to think he has a shot at a design job, and what can he do to increase his odds of working in design in the future?
I am not an engineer, but I keep thinking design jobs go to employees who’ve proved themselves in other areas, like manufacturing. Are there first jobs that are more likely to lead to design opportunities in the future? Or does some type of master’s degree make sense? My son is relatively reasonable, but I’d like to steer him in a realistic direction.
He will graduate summa, Pi Tau Sigma, and Tau Beta Pi, having passed his FE exam, and with zero debt because he took the advice offered here five years ago to take the money at an out-of-state flagship (Alabama) rather than our in-state one (Penn State).
Is there such a thing as a postgraduate internship that might make him more marketable or are there companies that hire a lot of new grads and train them for a design track I can direct him to?
Sorry if any of these questions are stupid, and I am not a STEM person myself!
@LucieTheLakie - there are but it’s really more a matter of finding the job than getting more education. My D did an ME internship where she got to do design for a summer - she has a job offer from them and if she does end up back there she’ll be doing design with a BSE. So it’s possible. Friends who have graduated also have design work with BSEs. I think the answer for your S is to interview aggressively - get out there and talk to companies. Find out what opportunity each company offer incoming engineers and find the employer(s) who will offer him a chance to do what he wants to do. The market is good right now and with no debt he can afford to be both pickier and more flexible. He really needs to find a company that won’t put him in a manufacturing slot and keep him there. Also have him highlight his student design experience on his resume and website (which I hope he has). He needs to market himself as well. Just tell him NOT to settle for a company where he’l be stuck doing things that won’t help him towards his goal. With a strong resume, a flexible attitude towards location and salary and a positive mindset I am sure he’ll find a good fit.
That’s pretty much what he’s been doing so far, although he doesn’t have a website to my knowledge. He’s working on refining his resume and updating his LinkedIn profile right now. I’m glad to learn he’s actually taken the right approach, for the most part, so far.
Any suggestions for a good tutorial on setting up a new grad website?
My son is in a similar boat. He is a ME, both PTS and TBP, debt free. His concentration was in mechatronics, with extensive design/build experience on lab projects, senior project, his masters thesis, and at his internship. He was offered a job at his internship company where design would be a significant part of the job description. They know what he is capable of.
As he looks at other jobs though, most of the ones he is interested in require work experience. It is very hard for companies to vet new grads and to weigh the quality of their experience based just on a resume or even by seeing a portfolio. Worked X number of years at Company Y just seems to carry far more gravitas.
I can certainly relate to the situation you and your student find yourselves in, but also am happy that like your son, because of the way the stars aligned financially, ours can afford to be a bit more choosy.
@HPuck35 likes to remind posters that find themselves in a rush that their career will be very long relative to an extra few months getting their ducks in a row to be in the best situation they can be.
As far as web pages go, your son already has all the skills he needs to build a page with Wix or Squarespace. He’s done far more complex things.
At my D’s school for her other major she’s required to have a website and go through a review each year so hers has 4 years of experience on it. If he is starting out I’d say make sure he has his career interest clearly outlined on the first page plus links to his resume and sections for his co-op and intern work plus a page for academic or other honors. The more he can include concrete stuff (images, videos, showing what he’s done) for any of his design projects the better because that’s where he wants to go. My D’s has some motion and force analysis papers and a video of a project she was particularly proud of. Just have him include whatever he wants to showcase but make it easily viewable and have a couple of other people look it over to see if they can find everything. Once it’s good the website link should go on his resume, his business cards and his LinkedIn page.
My daughter sent out 6 resumes, went to the first interview and took the job. I thought she should have looked a little longer but it has worked out for her. Like your kids, little debt, but she was very young and had a boyfriend to consider when deciding where she wanted to live. She is at a bigger firm so if she wants to move to another concentration she could, but so far she likes where she is.
Taking a job not doing exactly what he wants is not a life sentence. Some of the bigger firms have a lot of opportunities to work on other projects or learn another specialty.
I think he’s fairly open to any industry, but he’d rather be on the design side of things. I will try to get more information from him and get back to you on that.
I did send him a job opening with Disney Imagineering that sounded like a dream job in a lot of ways, even though a bachelor’s degree wasn’t actually required - preferred, but not required. (I think they would consider applicants with an associate’s in some technical field I can’t recall.)
He’s got a performing background (theater, school mascot), so I thought a place like Disney might be the best of both worlds.
There are design jobs out there for BS grads, and it’s much easier to get them with experience of some kind, even if it’s not design experience. The fact that your son has already done a co-op and internship is excellent. Manufacturing experience is valuable in design because designs ultimately have to be manufactured. In fact, DFM (design for manufacturability) is a big concept in the product development world, and this is definitely something he should play up when selling himself as a good candidate for design jobs.
Like those above have said, a portfolio or portfolio website can be helpful. Most pure design jobs seek skills in CAD, drafting and GD&T, materials and material selection, and prototyping/fabrication techniques (CNC machining, 3D printing, etc.). Different jobs may value other skills, but those are the ones that tend to come up the most. He should make sure that he a) has some skill or knowledge in all of these things, and b) can demonstrate it with a portfolio or a website.
More education can be helpful, but not without experience. I graduated with an MS in mechanical engineering (and no industry experience in engineering) and found it nearly impossible to get interviews for design jobs. I was finally able to land one and get a job as a design engineer thanks to a reference from a friend. A fellow MS graduate from my cohort had the same experience. In fact, the MS indicates specialization and sometimes overqualification, and can actually prevent an applicant from getting interviews for entry-level design jobs. And, without design experience in a professional capacity, the MS doesn’t necessarily help in getting interviews slightly above-entry-level jobs, either. To make a sweeping generalization that’s true for most (but not all) design jobs: in the design world, experience beats education.
Can someone share with me exactly what they consider to be a “design job” or a “design engineer?” I see this pop up on these boards a lot, and it’s never clear to me what this even means.
@boneh3ad In my experience, most job descriptions for “design engineers” refer to mechanical design or product development jobs, i.e., mechanical design and analysis with lots of CAD/FEA, prototyping, drafting and engineering drawings, and sometimes physical testing or manufacturing of the product. Of course, there’s the electrical counterpart, which usually involves PCB layout design and CAD for circuit design, electrical component selection, motor/sensor selection, etc.
@AuraObscura, thanks for sharing all of that. Very helpful. Since you quit your design job after two years, curious what you’re doing now and if you feel like it’s the right fit?
@boneh3ad, aren’t all entry-level jobs kind of shudder-inducing?
I confess to not totally understanding what my son is looking for, but I know he would prefer not to work in manufacturing at the plant level. And I know the design jobs for the company where he interned in their US plant are at the US headquarters (in another state), which makes me think “design” is referring more to new product development rather than maintaining and overseeing current production. My son’s internship focused on preventative maintenance.
Actually, not all entry level jobs are shudder-inducing and that is a great thing about studying engineering (and computer science). You learn so much practical information along with your theoretical education that you can jump right into do all kinds of fun things. There is no such thing as a “perfect job” that fits everyone. My D’s roommate landed a job right out of college working in the transmission design department for a major truck manufacturer. Some people might find design for truck transmissions horribly dull (my D would) but it’s her ex-roommate’s field and she loves it! That’s why I encourage your S to put his goals out there and try not to compromise too much too fast on his first job. You can get good experience and an interesting job with a BSE, even if as an entry-level engineer you will have more dull work than a senior. Chances are good that his idea of an interesting job is one that would make someone else snooze! So aim for finding that “fit”.
@LucieTheLakie I’m currently in the process of entering the world of computer science and software engineering, and it’s a much better fit for me. While I do still enjoy design, working as a design engineer showed me that a design job wasn’t really what I was looking for. In fact, even while at that job, I found myself going out of my way to write code and develop algorithms and programs to solve problems, which was an early sign that CS was a better fit for me.
Like @CaMom13 said, though, it’s all about what one finds interesting. Many of my friends/coworkers love design and will spend the rest of their lives doing it. Others (like me) would find a design job dull and shudder-inducing at any level, not just entry level.
There are certainly a lot of entry-level engineering jobs that apply to cool products or end results but are, themselves awful-sounding (to me). This was a big factor in my decision to prusue a graduate degree and get into the research side of things.
So aim for finding that “fit”.