Sub-3.0 GPA and Engineering Jobs

College Majors Engineering Majors
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<p>Just to generalize some of the comments here:</p>

<p>GPA is important to most companies on hiring. The vast majority of engineering graduates find jobs in the field, but graduates from better schools and/or with better GPA’s get better, more lucrative, and more interesting jobs with better prospects. With a sub-3.0 you are likely to get a decent job at a “lesser” company, or a lesser job at a decent company, but you will still get a job that pays very well and that has at least decent prospects. The ones who usually need to worry have sub-2.5 GPA’s, as they will be lucky to find professional employment at all.</p>

<p>EVERY company will review your work. They want you to get the solutions right the first time, but no one is perfect, so there is always a review process even if you are making plastic dog poop. Just FYI.</p>

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<p>even if you have a 2.8, you don’t have any relevant internships or skills, so places like Boeing would be a long shot. I agree with others who suggest staying in school longer and help your GPA up.</p>

<p>how the heck did you GPA didnt matter in the first place?</p>

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<p>What happens if you are a really hard worker but you just get stuck with the WORST, hardest professors of all time? I know that will probably be the case with me at my school- the ECE department at UF is known to be unfairly brutal. That is why their requirements for grad school (BS/MS) are much lower than other engineering departments at UF</p>

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<p>Let’s say you do have experience through internships or research positions. Will they look more closely at your experience, GPA, or both?</p>

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<p>They will look at both your GPA and your experience.</p>

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<p>Always keep in mind that the people who have the ultimately say in hiring are other engineers – and they were students once, too. They remember the slackers in their classes who never showed up to class and got by with barely passing grades. They remember the dudes who wouldn’t have graduated if it weren’t for the hard work and generosity of their lab mates and project partners. They can identify the graduates who earned degrees but gained little in the way of knowledge or insight. In short, they can sniff out dudes like the original poster from a mile away – and that’s why he has slim to zero chance of getting hired for an engineering position. He’ll have to built up his resume and prove himself worthy first. He has his work cut out for him…</p>

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<p>That being said, anybody who can bluff his way through an engineering degree at a decent school… I’d hire them for management. Hell, they’d make good executives. In a sense, don’t they deserve more money than us?</p>

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<p>Kind of harsh, Mokonon.</p>

<p>There are several reasons why people do poorly in engineering school. Some people are at the bottom of the distribution for admits and will struggle when mixed with smarter people. Some went to lousy high schools that did not adequately prepare them for the rigorous curriculum. Some have money issues that force them to work 40 hrs./week. Some are involved in athletics that eat up all their free time. I have friends who serve as specific examples for all of these, and all are wildly successful in their engineering careers. The worst engineer I ever met had a 3.6 from RPI. I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t be able to change the batteries in a flashlight.</p>

<p>Yes, the low gpa guys mostly had a harder time getting that first job. Most of the people who did poorly because they skipped classes and partied too much never finished their degrees and couldn’t adequately explain the Fs and Ws on the transcript. The ones who finished, even with 2.x gpas, eventually landed on their feet.</p>

<p>Triguy, stay persistent and stay confident. You will get there.</p>

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<p>So say one attends a respectable school that doesn’t necessarily have a top-ranked engineering program. For example, at Virginia, the average GPA of engineering undergraduates is about a 3.2. When I graduate from UVA in four years, am I basically screwed if my GPA is lower than a 3.2?</p>

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<p>I cannot speak for the other engineering disciplines but you certainly will not be screwed in software engineering. Software engineering is mostly about “staying current with the technology”. True, you may not get the higher end of the salary range on your first job, but if you say…acquire a skill-set (usually on your own time) of something that is “hot in the streets” then you can make up the difference in pay by the 3rd job. </p>

<p>In software engineering, changing employers every 3 years is accepted more than other engineering disciplines.</p>

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<p>I’ll concede that I was a little harsh, Magnetron, but my comments really weren’t directed at people with legitimate excuses for their poor GPAs. They were directed at people like the original poster who claims to have skated by on Cs because he thought grades didn’t matter and that all you needed was a degree.</p>

<p>I work full time and go to grad school half-time so I know how tough it is to do both. If some students are doing really poorly (sub 2.5 GPA) because they have too many commitments outside of school, those students needs to cut back on their classes.</p>

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<p>If I am hiring a person, I don’t really want to hear their excusses why they didn’t learn the material in college; not when I have plenty of others who did learn it to choose from. Also, I am looking for people that can handle playing sports, going to parties, having fun, etc. and still do well in college. When you get out of college, its called “life” and its what happens to you all the time. A good GPA requires good time management and attention to deadlines and after college is called your “job”.</p>

<p>If that sounds harsh, it is. But that’s the way it was in the company I worked for and what I was considering when I was making those hiring decisions.</p>

<p>I was also looking at a good GPA as evidence of good study skills. The skill set to be a good engineer is not static. Throughout your whole career you will need to study new concepts, new sub-areas with in your major area of engineering just to stay current in your field; even more so if you want to be a leader in your field.</p>

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<p>Mokonon, now I understand. I once hired a guy who showed up at 9:30 and left at 4. He was gone by the end of the week. </p>

<p>I went to engineering school back in the 80s and most of my friends had under 3.0. Every one of us came from the top 10% of our high school classes, most top 5%. In my experience, being lazy and unmotivated was rare among this group but the average GPA was still 2.7. The valedictorian (eagle scout, captain of the basketball team) of a large WA public high school could not compete with kids who had come from, at the time, much more rigorous public high schools from NY/NJ/Conn/Mass. If you met him you would see he had success written all over him but his grades pre-screened him from most companies. One kid from Oklahoma had only taken one science class in high scool. They started the marathon 5 miles behind and never really caught up.</p>

<p>As someone who used to hire engineers for a small manufacturing company, we would ask about it but gpa was almost a non-factor. We only needed people with stamina, a broad capacity to understand hands-on work, test equipment, machining, and assembly. As long as they had an engineering background I could teach them enough of the theory. They had to get along with the people on the production floor. </p>

<p>The past 10 years have been pretty harsh on us small mfrs - my guess is that if I hired today things would be different. I still think the small companies are the best chance for low gpa kids. The world needs hockey sticks just as much as satellites.</p>

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<p>There are some comapnies that won’t hire you because your GPA is under 3.0.</p>

<p>There are others who will never even ask for your grades, or won’t care if your GPA is under 3.0.</p>

<p>In general, the prestige employers are looking for the kids with better grades. Some people with 2.7 averages do get hired by these companies, but far fewer of them. Try to get in through a back door, instead of the front door, where you are competing with a huge pile of resumes.</p>

<p>At the same time, bear in mind that there are countless non-prestige employers that will be targets for you, as well. There are companies such as these ini aerospace and in every other industry. And for many, they’re more fun. There are kids hired by Boeing who hate it for countless reasons (being boxed into tiny niches, dealing with bureaucracy, being unable to do any meaningful/interesting work, etc.). Others do love Boeing, but majo, prestige comapny is not the only way to be successful.</p>

<p>The key for anyone looking for a job is not to spend your time applying for jobs. That is the worst way to be successful in a job hunt. There’s too much competition in the jobs that are announced, and only 25% of the external hires are hired when a job is announced.</p>

<p>Work hard at your job hunt, approach it form a contrarian viewpoint, and you’ll find a job.</p>

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<p>Here’s something I wrote on a blog about job hunting (this is actually aimed at senior execs, but applies to entry-level as well):</p>

<p>Applying for jobs. Applying for jobs. I hear those words so often. </p>

<p>Hate to say this to you, but if you apply for a job after you find out that a company is looking to fill it, chances are that you’re too late. </p>

<p>You need to get there before they announce to the world that they need to fill the job. </p>

<p>Job hunters keep telling me they applied for a job. They found out about it on a job board, a company web site, or they found out that the company was looking from someone on LinkedIn. </p>

<p>Then they applied for it.</p>

<p>And heard nothing.</p>

<p>Job board ads are generating 1000 applicants in a day or two in this economy. Unless you are an absolutely perfect fit for the job, and lucky enough to make it through the gears of the screening mechanism, your chances of landing the job are less than one in a thousand, once the job is advertised.</p>

<p>(Bear in mind – 1: Most job hunters think they are a perfect fit for the job. In the minds of an employer, however, a perfect fit is someone already doing exactly the same job with exactly the same level of seniority for an identical company – a competitor.)</p>

<p>(Bear in mind – 2: If you apply for a job through a job board or through a company web site, your resume goes into an enormous slush pile that is read by a screener – a low level human resources person or recruiter who will in turn pass on a handful – perhaps 25 – to a higher-level human resources person who will screen them further before discussing them with the hiring manager.)</p>

<p>You can better your odds a little bit by determining who the hiring manager is and sending your resume directly to him or her. But this still puts you in competition with countless others, some of whom are more likely to be closer fits than you are to what the employer is seeking.</p>

<p>If you’re going to spend your job hunting hours and days looking for jobs that companies have announced and then applying for them, you will likely have a long job search.</p>

<p>Those who are most successful make a job for themselves. By that, I don’t mean that they start their own business. They get to the employer before the organization has formerly announced its search for Director of Planned Giving. </p>

<p>That means you can’t take the easy way. Limit yourself to 10% of your time looking at ads and poring over company websites, looking for announced jobs. Limit yourself to 10% of your time chasing recruiters. Spend no more than 10% to 20% of your time applying for jobs.</p>

<p>Spend the remaining 80% to 90% of your time getting to companies before they’ve formally decided to fill a position. That means you need to do the following:</p>

<p>Networking
Direct Mail
Pounding the Phones </p>

<p>And all of this means that you’re going to have to become a good salesperson.</p>

<p>One fantastically successful sales rep who I kind of managed (he represented 20 companies, so I can’t say I really was his boss) told me that most people can become known. He found ways to get in front of seemingly anyone he needed to get in front of, using connections if he had them, and front doors and back doors if he didn’t.</p>

<p>With networking, you’ll talk to people you know, and find ways to get introduced to people you don’t know. </p>

<p>With direct mail, you’ll reach out to people you don’t know. With a vengeance. That means big numbers – 1000 letters or more. </p>

<p>By following up by phone (most people don’t do this, especially if no position is advertised), you’ll increase your batting average on direct mail significantly. You need to do this sensibly. Don’t go to the CEO, unless the company is small, or you’re big enough to work for the CEO. </p>

<p>Do your best to avoid your target’s secretary. He or she is there to limit access to the Beeg Boy. Place your calls when the secretary is not likely to be there – before 8AM or 9AM, or after 5PM. </p>

<p>I run a retained executive search firm. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve called someone just after 5PM, and gotten through to the person who I could never reach during the day. In particular, I remember making a cold call at 5:05PM, and the hiring manager picked up. I told him I was going to be in his town the next day (which happened to be true), and asked if I could come in for a meeting. I introduced myself the next day. A month later, he introduced me to his CEO, and they gave me four search assignments. </p>

<p>Did I get a job? Essentially, yes. I had a contract for about eight month’s work. And it wouldn’t have happened if I had waited for him to respond to the letter I had mailed him a month before that. In the days before I had my own business, I used the same technique to get myself full-time jobs.</p>

<p>Stop applying for jobs. </p>

<p>Instead, start contacting employers before they know they have a desperate need for you.</p>

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<p>An additional note: just because you don’t start with one of those prestige companies doesn’t mean that you won’t eventually work for one. Boeing, Goodrich and Lockheed often hire people they’ve worked with who work for their suppliers/subcontractors. At the point, you’re a known entity, and they won’t be concerned what your grades were three or five years ago.</p>

<p>Just because you have a terrible (is 2.7 that bad?) GPA doesn’t mean that you won’t be a good engineer; you may even exceed the performance of someone with a 3.5 GPA.</p>

<p>Best thing you can do is get a job, and become very good at that job, regardless of where you wind up working.</p>

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<p>Thanks Boondocks. I’ve been on this forum now for a while and your postings are the first time anyone has indicated that a student who didn’t get that magic 3.0 GPA might have a chance at a successful career. If I was a student reading that constantly it would be really disheartening. Good for you to let them know that their lives aren’t over if they can’t achieve that.</p>

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<p>Because most people posting here are students/prospective students, and everything they’re fed is “go to the best school” and “get the best GPA,” they’re all convinced that if you didn’t do both of these two things you’re going to be homeless. It’s really annoying, so it’s good when older folks post here with valuable insight about how the real world works. School only matters for your first job, after that - it absolutely doesn’t matter. Small firms aren’t all hiring MIT grads with 4.0s. If you’ve been working for 10 years, they are hiring you for your skills and they are going to look to your job(s) during those 10 years to see what kind of experience you have. A good school/GPA can definitely help you get your foot in the door after college but that’s about it.</p>

<p>You see evidence of their flawed thinking when they say things like “community colleges aren’t colleges” and whatnot, not realizing that many students from CCs transfer to top engineering schools all the time and are often very successful.</p>

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<p>Thank you, Boondocks :slight_smile: I’ve been looking for that answer for a long time.</p>

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<p>I don’t think anyone here was saying that you can’t become successful without going to a top ranked school and getting a high GPA. I think the point we were trying to make is that simply earning a degree isn’t enough. The original poster was under the impression that all he had to do was get the degree and the job offers would just come flooding in – that isn’t how the real world works.</p>

<p>In the real world, you have to be able to demonstrate your competence somehow before you’re offered an engineering position at a big tech company. Earning good grades at a rigorous school is one way of demonstrating that. If you don’t have that, you have to build up your resume in the industry by finding opportunities to work in cutting edge technologies, and, IMO, that’s a harder thing to do than earning good grades.</p>

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<p>^ I hate to bring you guys down, but just because Boondocks is saying things you like and therefore agree with, it doesn’t really mean that what he’s saying is right and what others are saying is wrong. Even if s/he is old and wise, it doesn’t mean what s/he’s saying is wise or better advice than what other people are giving, and it certainly doesn’t mean the rest of us are naive, snobbish students (I wish). Sometimes the news isn’t good news… at least keep an open mind to the idea that you might be significantly hindered - at least initially - in finding employment with a “prestigious” (whatever that means for engineering) company. The way to avoid this is to, well, do as well as you can in school. If you do your best in school and get a B/C average, there’s nothing wrong with that, but let’s none of us pretend that you have some magical right to complain when the > 3.5 GPA students from good schools (probably the snobs, right?) get the best jobs first… inconvenient, unpleasant, call it what you will… if it’s the truth, that’s what it is.</p>