<p>My son is in a 2.5 hour interview right now at an engineering company. He’s done about a dozen applications resulting in five interviews. We thought that he had a job in one case but it fell through. Tomorrow he has a career fair and there are eight good candidate companies for him. I’ve found another eight postings for him to look at. If I spent a little time, I’m sure that I could find far more postings that would suit him but he needs to get going on applications.</p>
<p>I have run across companies looking for EE majors too in the Boston area.</p>
<p>I have coworkers that are looking around for their kids for summer internships. The kids, in general, haven’t applied to that many places - too busy doing schoolwork I guess. Things aren’t too bad in the Boston area - the question - should he be picky about jobs? That’s a hard one to answer.</p>
<p>Engineering has been highly cyclical for decades. Never thought of it as a secure field at all. When big companies cut back engineers get fired by the 100s. Very few highly secure jobs today. Accounting maybe if you do well at a good school.</p>
<p>My father worked in Chemical Engineering and the job market back in the 1960s wasn’t particularly good. One of my sisters got her degree in ChemE from Penn a few decades later and her job prospects were so-so though ChemE wasn’t in demand in our area. She resolved her job difficulties by marrying well.</p>
<p>My comments won’t help the OP much (any?) but may be useful to others earlier in the process. DS is graduating from a large state flagship as a mechE BEng next month and has an excellent entry-level job in his desired area. I feel very fortunate (I think he does too). Keys to getting that job?</p>
<p>1) Meeting the gpa cutoff for that school. Most employers “know” the big engineering schools and have a line they don’t want to cross. That line varies from school to school but seems to be well known locally. At S’s school it’s a 3.0. Don’t have a B average? Don’t bother applying to us. Other schools in the region have higher cutoffs which seem to reflect the strength of the program.</p>
<p>2) Having worked as an intern. S completed two 1-semester-long internships in two totally different areas (and neither related to his permanent job). He will be working for a big multinational engineering-services company, but interned for the Feds one summer and at a paper manufacturer on his second internship. He had also worked with a prof for one summer, but that didn’t impress anyone when he was interviewing. Those internships came about through networking (more senior students who had worked there in the past). The permanent job was obtained in the “traditional” way after an on-campus interview during a career fair.</p>
<p>Why am I posting this? To encourage others to intern early and often. It makes a tremendous difference</p>
<p>Unemployment for engineers in Silicon valley is pretty low, the last number I saw was under 5%. New college grads have it toughter for sure. When a manager get approval to hire someone they would prefer someone with experience. Usually by the time approval is given the work has backed up and they need someone who can jump right in and get it done with minimal training or handholding. It doesn’t matter to me if I have to pay $80k + for someone with experience vs. $65k for a NCG. </p>
<p>Internships are key so that your resume stands out. I recently got a stack of resumes from EE’s, all the resumes look the same, only the names are different. They must have all used the same career center template. Same classes, projects, etc. </p>
<p>How do I decide which ones to bring in for an interview? The ones with something a little different to offer, the ones who were involved in things, clubs, extra projects, work experience. Then I call them, if they are well spoken, show initiative, seem bright (not necessarily correlated to GPA), have a good positive attitude and ask good questions will get an interview. </p>
<p>Have some good questions pre-planned and ready to go. This is your first job in industry, you should have tons of questions. And DON’T ask: how much will I get paid? How much vacation time will I get, what hours will I have to work? Just yesterday I had a kid ask me how many hours he would have to work. You have to get your foot in the door gain some experience, then you can make some demands. In this economy take whatever you can get and build on that.</p>
<p>I agree with the above post about interning. My son is a senior mechanical engineering major, and he starts his job next month. It was offered to him in October as a result of the internship he had last summer. (He applied to over 200 internships last year, resulting in 2 offers.) He also had an internship after his freshman and sophomore years. They helped get the last internship. He has a 3.9 GPA, and he is very proactive about networking. He has a Linkedin account, with almost 100 connections. One headhunter contacted him as a result. </p>
<p>He started looking for an internship in October of his freshman year. He went to the career fairs as soon as he started college. He also has some friends who haven’t put out one resume yet. And many who have, still haven’t received offers. We do feel very fortunate.</p>
<p>On another note, I saw on TV last night that many college grads are taking internships, even unpaid ones, just to get the experience. I think the economy is making it very hard for young people to start their careers. It is sad.</p>
<p>Tell him to put his resume on other online sites. Career builder? There are several. My daughter was actually contacted out of the blue for a couple of jobs that way - one was a really good one that didn’t materialize. She’s not in engineering but maybe it’s still a good option. The daughter of someone I know was out of school for 6 months and then someone contacted her through an online site and she got the job.</p>
<p>Someone else I know, son, in engineering, didn’t land a job until 2 weeks before graduation last year.</p>
<p>Tell him to not get discouraged. Engineering is a good field - I wish one of my kids would have an inclination to go that way.</p>
<p>If he doesn’t get anything - what about Teach For America or something like that? Schools really need kids with a math background, especially young men. It could be a good place to be for 2 years while hoping for an improvement in the market.</p>
<p>They asked a few esoteric questions. Basically detailed questions that CS students would have seen in their sophomore or junior year on overhead slides. Most students would see the information, memorize it for a quiz and then never see it again. So, in general, most CS grads wouldn’t know the answer. It just happens that I went over this stuff with my son yesterday (it’s a particular area of interest of mine) so he just lucked out.</p>
<p>They were also quite interested in a course that he tutored in that’s generally considered unrelated to CS.</p>
<p>They told him that he was in the running with one other graduate and that they would let him know within a few days. It’s pretty clear that they’re looking for something very specific - I think that this is the way it is out there - companies want specific skills, abilities, whatever - and they are able to get it - so that makes it a bit harder for those seeking jobs.</p>
<p>OP: Looking at the trends at DD college and in the Silicon Valley, the job market is on the improvement over 2009, 2010. So your DS actually is graduating in a much stronger job market than the past two years.</p>
<p>But I think internship is a key to getting a good job after graduation. Look at the following survey at DD’s college almost 72% of graduating seniors has done paid internship. But almost 36% of rising Sophomore too.</p>
<p>I think starting early and having a strong career office is the key. I’ve indicated in multiple threads that when choosing a college be on the lookout for a career office. If it’s a room with just a light bulb in it and your child goal is to get a job after graduation then run and look for another college.</p>
<p>Most people when visiting colleges don’t pay attention to career office which I think is a very important piece in selecting college if the goal is to get a job after graduation.</p>
<p>“It’s pretty clear that they’re looking for something very specific - I think that this is the way it is out there - companies want specific skills, abilities, whatever - and they are able to get it - so that makes it a bit harder for those seeking jobs”</p>
<p>I think you are exactly right. They have plenty of people to choose from, so they want someone with the exact skills they desire. And they can generally hold out until they find that person. Good luck to your son, we’ll be rooting for him!</p>
<p>" Look at the following survey at DD’s college almost 72% of graduating seniors do paid internship. But almost 36% of rising Sophomore too."</p>
<p>I thought there was some sort of legality issue with seniors getting internships after graduation? That internships were only available before graduation, after graduation it would have to be employment? The employer my son just got an internship with recently hired someone for the internship…then realized they were not legal to fill the position because it was a graduating senior. Isn’t this an issue?</p>
<p>The survey talks about rising Sophomore, Junior and Seniors. So it’s summer internship during the summer before that.</p>
<p>So the following pertains to paid summer jobs after freshman/sophomore/junior years for rising Seniors and after freshman year for rising Sophomore.
<p>For engineering paid engineering co-ops are very valuable as they tend to last longer ( 6 mos or more typically), pay better, and lead to jobs more often. </p>
<p>I sometime get baffled by state of undergraduate engineering education in US. Back home summer internship after Junior year of any engineering major was part of the graduation requirement.</p>
<p>Carreer offices were big part of universities with engineering major. So all institutes with engineering majors used to provide guranteed internship (paid or unpaid). The placement after graduation was big part of engineering college ranking system. Both my alma mater (BS/MS) still boast about their almost 100% placement after graduation irrespective of major.</p>
<p>It is only in US that I’ve come across only few colleges like DD college that spend considerable resources on the career office.</p>
<p>Okay, I understand. I misread it that almost 72% of seniors did internships after graduation. My mistake. There have been threads on that, and it seems rather a murky possibility, some people have said their kids got offered internships, even unpaid ones after graduation. Which seems like a sneaky way for companies to get free/cheap labor! It seems unclear whether it is actually legal, or if there are actually no penalties for doing so. Then again, for someone to gain experience, I’m sure they’d line up for unpaid internships in some fields.</p>
<p>I know alot of engineering majors do co-ops. I wonder if CS majors do that also.</p>
<p>POIH - I agree that co-op programs are great, but many co-op programs have suffered over the past decade as companies have cut back on recruitment. Older S graduated several years ago, and even then it was his experience that even with a good resume (including undergrad research), it could take more than one semester of regularly attending co-op fairs to snag a co-op. Even then, at some schools and in some majors, these opportunities eluded many hopeful students without prior industry connections, unless they had chosen the engineering major du jour. </p>
<p>Some years, in some majors, virtually any student who wanted a co-op could choose among multiple offers, while in other majors, even 4.0 students with research experience sent out many, many resumes without even snagging an interview. What we were told many years ago when S was looking at schools was that engineering co-op employment tends to be cyclical, and that students who did not get co-op experience through no fault of their own tended to do research in the summers and then enter grad school after graduating in four (rather than five) years.</p>
<p>In the market of the past several years, it does seem that URM students, female engineers, and students with a parent or close relative already employed by a company that hires lots of engineers, have had a decent leg up in securing co-op positions. Also, some companies that used to recruit broadly have cut back recruitment to the very top engineering schools or some local schools. It really gets my blood boiling when US companies complain that they need to go overseas to find trained engineers after they are unable to recruit at a tiny handful of American schools, but I suppose that is a topic for another thread.</p>
<p>“I thought there was some sort of legality issue with seniors getting internships after graduation”</p>
<p>my impression is that a for profit entity that offers an internship must EITHER offer an internship that is largely educational (not sure if it has to be associated with actual credit, I dont think so) OR they must pay minimum wage. </p>
<p>IE they cant use an internship to avoid the normal wages and hours laws.</p>
<ol>
<li>must be for either education credits or compensated with moneey.</li>
<li>must be essentially short-term. Cannot replace or be inlieu of a fulltime person.</li>
<li>cannot receive benefits afforded to fulltime/parttime employees.</li>
<li>Not eligible for unemployment benefits although they pay into it. </li>
</ol>
<p>DS did 2 post MS with Microsoft Research, and 1 as a visiting researcher at a German university. Each 3-5 months duration. Lots of post-docs during reseach at universities until they find a permanent position.</p>