Thought I would start a thread for job-seeking engineering students. We all know the giant household-name companies. What are some lesser known companies that hire entry level engineers? Not talking about small firms with a random opening now and then, but companies that regularly hire new engineers (and interns) and are considered good places to start a career.
I know that in Ann Arbor, Terumo Cardiovascular Group is a good place to look if you are interested in the healthcare industry.
This is going to depend greatly on the specific majors most desired by the company. In the main, Illinois Tool Works will want Mechanical Engineers. Sherwin Williams will want Chemical Engineers or Materials Scientists. TEL (Tokyo Electronics) wants Electrical Engineers and Computer Engineers. McCain Foods employs all kinds of engineers; etc. etc.
The great thing to do is to have your son set up a LinkedIn profile (if he doesn’t already have one) and search there. One of the coolest LinkedIn features is searching to see if any alumni from his school are employed at th ecompanies he’s looking at. With a pro account, he can message them directly. The other resource is engineerjobs(dot)com. There’s some redundancy between sites, but there are jobs that are unique to each. Both have internships directed at graduating seniors or graduate students, if he’s interested in that route and both have big, medium and even some small companies. The other approach is to decide where he’s interested in living and search even small companies. The problem with the list “lesser known companies” approach is that there are a bazillion firms that employ engineers. Wish him luck. He’ll land well I’m sure.
Local to me: Paccar, Astronics, and Philips Ultrasound come to mind.
Boeing, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Amazon get all the press.
This, to me, is a little like asking “what are some lesser known restaurants that make hamburgers?” There are just way too many answers to such an overly broad question to be meaningful.
I had a neighbor who was the engineering manager for a Frito Lay potato chip plant. It may not sound too difficult to make potato chips, but the challenges they face in making zillions of them every day is real. He loved his job.
Yes, I agree. eyemgh has the best advice. In addition, try and connect with anyone you see who is your alum on linked that works at a company you are interested in so you can message them without having to pay the $45 a month for a premium account. Write in the invitation that you will be a new grad at their school and that is why you are reaching out to them. If they accept, then you can message them.
$45 a month is a bit of change, but personally I hate strangers asking me to connect to them on LinkedIn since I have a solid network of people that I know well, can vouch for, and who can vouch for me. One exception is recruiters. One issue with LinkedIn is that anyone you link to can see all your contacts too …
So cold connecting to people on LinkedIn better come with a really nice note on the invite explaining why I would possibly link with you. You can be pretty sure they will check out your LinkedIn site so do some real work on that, talk about any student projects, work experience, college activities, etc. Make sure you highlight that you are an aspiring whatever looking to work in field whatever and click all the contact options. Also completely fill in your profile, you can use a distance photo if you don’t want to share your mug with strangers.
My son was hired by Garmin. He sought out the opportunity on his own, since the company did not recruit at his school. They hire a lot of interns/co-ops too, supposedly. What kind of engineering are you looking for?
for my own job, I went to the website called glassdoor. Also seen a lot of engineering jobs there. they offer very detailed descriptions and once you look at something, they email you more companies or jobs that are similar.
linked in also posts jobs.
When helping my son track down internships in civil-e a few years ago, I googled civil engineering firms, best engineering firms, etc and would find lists like this;
http://cenews.com/article/8292/2011_top_civil_firms
He could then go to their website to see if there was a place for prospective interns to submit resumes.
Also I would go on the career site of other colleges that have respected civil engineering programs. Often places like Purdue, UIUC, Georgia Tech publish the list of companies that are recruiting on their campuses. Once you know that company is seeking students/new grads, then you can reach out to them directly.
Now that’s a good idea
That’s what Lake Jr. did. Although he discovered that some of the big name STEM universities do not disclose the identify of recruiting firms on their open web pages.
What about accessing IEEE?
The Society for Women engineers often has postings for openings. You can look and see who is hiring.
Getting onto the career sites of other schools is pretty hard without a log in. I have tried that and you only get to view basic stuff on their career page. I have thought about having my son ask a friend for their log in but it really would put them on the spot as usually the log in for the career page is their log in for everything.
And one doesn’t need to be a woman to join the Society for Women Engineers! 
Some schools do password protect the info (probably because of people like me 
), but on others it often just takes a bit of searching. And even if some schools password protect the list of companies that come to their main job fair, if professional organizations host job fairs at the school or businesses have smaller sessions to interact with students that info can be found on their site. It can be a lot of work, so I took on the task of searching and compiling lists of companies and contact info and passing them along to son, so then he could take care of composing cover letters and submitting resumes.
Here’s the list of businesses that attended the Civil Engineering job fair at Purdue last year (including if they are seeking interns or full time employees and which specialties they are hiring):
https://engineering.purdue.edu/CESAC/careerfair/2015CompanyList.pdf
I have been doing much the same. My son is interested in Product Design so I searched up those companies and sent him links. It is harder when a student wants to work on the other coast though as those companies don’t necessarily come to your school’s career fairs.