Job Outlook for ChemE

College Majors Engineering Majors
21

<p>Toronto_guy, allow me to make a proposal. Do what you have to do to accumulate ~$6000 (USD). Since you said that you have a job, albeit perhaps not a desirable one, I think you should be able to accumulate that amount, perhaps with some borrowing, in relatively short order (certainly in no more than a year). Once you have that amount, take a leave of absence from your job - or even quit if necessary - and immediately move to the GC. Your Canadian passport lets you stay in the US for up to 6 months. You should certainly be able to live in the GC for less than $1000 a month, including housing, food, and a rental car on the days that you need it (or, even better, if you already have a car that can make it, drive it to the GC from Toronto: it will probably take you only 2-3 days of driving from Toronto to Houston). Remember, housing is dirt-cheap in the GC, and you can reduce the cost further by coming during the summer (when nobody really wants to be there) and renting, say, a furnished college sublet during that summer, when many of the college students have left. </p>

<p>Then you use those 6 months to actively look for a job. You go to the all of the career fairs, of which there are many. You crash college recruiting events. After all, since you won’t be working, you won’t have anything else to do but look for work. </p>

<p>After you do all of that for 6 whole months, if you still haven’t found any decent engineering job at all, fine, then I will concede, and I’ll let you talk all the smack that you want about the difficulties of the chemical engineering career path in the GC. But until you do, then you have not given this profession a fair shake. {Note, if you encounter the problem that you can’t be hired because of your immigration status, then that’s not really a problem with the profession per se, but rather a problem with being Canadian, and you should then put the blame where it properly belongs.} </p>

<p>But to be clear, the job that you may find may not necessarily be a dream engineering job. All you really want to find is some engineering employer that will sponsor your work permit while still providing you with an engineering job that is better than your current job in Toronto (which, judging from your posts, shouldn’t be a high bar to surmount), and that allows you to develop work experience from which you eventually switch to another employer more to your liking. Heck, it may be a way for you to segue to the oil industry in Canada (read: Alberta).</p>

22

<p>Saaky no offense but those houses were horrible and are in bad neighborhoods with uneducated hoodlums. Certainly not a good place for us intellectuals to be living. It’s better to get a condo or a nice apt.</p>

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<p>I never said that those super-cheap houses were great houses. Indeed, I’ve always said that they required refurbishment. </p>

<p>But the upshot is that there is plenty of ridiculously cheap housing to be found in the GC. Let’s face it - most brand-new college graduates do not really need a 3/4-bedroom house, even if the house is of middling quality in an unposh neighborhood. The upshot is that if it is easy to find those houses for dirt-cheap, then surely it should be easy to find a decent condo in a nice locale for cheap.</p>

24

<p>Most the Chemical Engineers that I know do not work in the chemical or energy industries. In the upper Midwest only about 5% of Chemical Engineers have the word Chemical in their job title. The forecast for job growth may be related to job title and not demand for Chemical Engineers.</p>

<p>I do know chemical engineers working for the following companies: Genentech, Merk, General Electric, Eli Lilly, Medtronic’s, 3M, General Mills, Kraft, Nestlé, Malt-O-Meal, Cargill, Ford, P&G, Colgate-Palmolive, Lever Brothers, Eco-Lab, Stat-Ease Inc, American Crystal Sugar, Seagate Technologies, Rosemount, Statasys, Boston Scientific, OSI Soft and Allen Bradley.</p>

<p>The night before a test on Electrical motors you will read the Electrical Engineering text book not the Physical Chemistry text book. Real word problems and job functions do not have sharp lines separating different undergraduate degrees. General Mills may consider a Mechanical Engineer or Chemical Engineer for the same job.</p>

25

<p>ThinkSnow,</p>

<pre><code>I’m pretty most of us chemical engineers do you look for any positions that utilize the skills we possess and not the title of the degree we earned. I’ve looked into many positions that could use whatever skills I’ve gained, but to no avail. I have been checking for research position as a research associate or a lab tech. Still looking, unfortunately, because of this economy. Also, many of those companies are highly competitive. I know several colleagues working for them, but they have a strong network inside the company.
</code></pre>

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<p>Daeyum… if cheme position is really hard to find, what about civils…</p>

27

<p>It seems some of the posts have gone astray here. ChemE has some good pros and some notable cons. Pros are that you come out with relatively marketable skills, but the same could be said for EE or Aerospace, and thus higher than average starting salaries. The cons in my opinion are you are rarely going to be out on your own using this degree, i.e. startup, and thus are tied to a company’s need for your skill set. EE or computer science offer more of that kind of opportunity. Thus the need for ChemE in the short-term is tied to companies’ hiring practices and the economy. You can get laid off if your company goes under. Additionally, you have a glass ceiling at the level of project manager, etc. Thus most chemE jobs level off around 120 to 150k, surely not chump change, but not silicon valley engineer poaching stuff either. The same applies for aerospace and mechE. In short, great starting salary, flatter incremental income, more a company man kind of job, but relatively stable.</p>